Over and over again, history shows that countries default on external debt when their economies experience a downturn. This paper presents a theoretical model of international lending that is consistent with this evidence. Productivity is stochastic and international capital markets are...

We analyze the interaction between committed monetary policy and discretionary fiscal policy in a model with public debt, endogenous government expenditures, distortive taxation and nominal rigidities. Fiscal decisions lack commitment but are Markovperfect. Monetary commitment to an interest...

We characterize competitive equilibria with perfect foresight in a deterministic, three-period pure-exchange overlapping generations economy with perfect information and no commitment to loan contracts. Commitment is replaced by an enforcement mechanism that excludes defaulters from asset...