I show that, in a benchmark model, debt securities minimize the welfare losses associated with the moral hazards of excessive risk-taking and lax effort. For any security design, the variance of the security payoff is a statistic that summarizes these welfare losses. Debt securities have the...

We document that governments whose local currency debt provides them with greater hedging benefits actually borrow more in foreign currency. We introduce two features into a government's debt portfolio choice problem to explain this finding: risk-averse lenders and lack of monetary policy...

We document that governments whose local currency debt provides them with greater hedging benefits actually borrow more in foreign currency. We introduce two features into a government's debt portfolio choice problem to explain this finding: risk-averse lenders and lack of monetary policy...

We provide a comprehensive account of the evolution of the currency composition of sovereign and corporate external borrowing by emerging markets over the past fifteen years. We show that a higher reliance on foreign currency debt by the corporate sector is associated with higher sovereign...

We construct a new dataset of 14 emerging markets and show that sovereigns increasingly borrow from foreigners in local currency but the private sector continues to borrow in foreign currency. We show that a higher reliance on foreign currency corporate financing is associated with more...

We document that governments whose local currency debt provides them with greater hedging benefits actually borrow more in foreign currency. We introduce two features into a government's debt portfolio choice problem to explain this finding: risk-averse lenders and lack of monetary policy...