This paper provides a comprehensive survey of pertinent issues on sovereign debt restructurings, based on a newly constructed database. This is the first complete dataset of sovereign restructuring cases, covering the six decades from 1950-2010; it includes 186 debt exchanges with foreign banks and...

Country practices towards managing financial risks on a sovereign balance sheet continue to evolve. Each crisis period, and its legacy on sovereign balance sheets, reaffirms the need for strengthening financial risk management. This paper discusses some salient features embedded in in the...

The recent round of debt relief has restored debt sustainability in many low-income countries (LICs). This, along with a continued search for yield and desire for portfolio diversification by investors, has increased the range of viable financing options, including international bonds, for many...

Intro -- Contents -- I. INTRODUCTION -- II. MEASUREMENT OF MARKET RISK -- III. MEASUREMENT OF CREDIT RISK -- IV. MEASUREMENT OF LIQUIDITY RISK -- V. AN INTEGRATED APPROACH TO RISK SENSITIVITY FOR A SECURITY WITH N RISK FACTORS -- VI. AN INTEGRATED APPROACH TO RISK SENSITIVITY FOR A PORTFOLIO...

Intro -- Contents -- I. INTRODUCTION -- II. DEFINITION AND TYPES OF EXCHANGE RATE RISK -- III. MEASUREMENT OF EXCHANGE RATE RISK -- IV. MANAGEMENT OF EXCHANGE RATE RISK -- V. HEDGING INSTRUMENTS FOR MANAGING EXCHANGE RATE RISK -- VI. HEDGING PRACTICES BY U.S. FIRMS -- VII. CONCLUDING REMARKS --...

In managing their foreign exchange exposure, international investors, including central banks, often compare actual portfolios with hypothetical portfolios that have been calculated using certain assumptions regarding the statistical properties of interest rates and exchange rates. One of these...

This paper presents some sound practices for foreign-currency risk management in developing countries and outlines instruments for managing sovereign debt portfolio currency exposures. Adoption of a debt management strategy with well-defined targets for foreign exchange risk is a critical...

This paper examines whether decisions about the appropriate exchange rate regime in six Central American countries were based on longer-run economic fundamentals or on the confluence of historical and political circumstances. To uncover any actual relationship both across countries and across...

During the last decade, a number of new financial instruments and derivative products related to the Greek drachma have emerged in local as well as international capital markets. The paper analyzes the characteristics of these financial instruments which are traded in organized exchanges and...

This paper presents some conventional and new measures of market, credit, and liquidity risks for government bonds. These measures are analyzed from the perspective of a sovereign's debt manager. In particular, it examines duration, convexity, M-square, skewness, kurtosis, and VaR statistics as...