I construct a database that maps the timing of sovereign default decisions into elected politicians' terms of office, that provides an empirical means of investigating political economy theories of sovereign default. I find no robust patterns in the timing of default decisions over terms of...

We study Irelandś inheritance of debt following its secession from the United Kingdom at the beginning of the twentieth century. Exploiting structural differences in bonds guaranteed by the UK and Irish governments, we can identify perceived uncertainty about fiscal responsibility in the...

We study the daily yields on Irish land bonds listed on the Dublin Stock Exchange during the years 1920–1938. We exploit Irish events during the period and structural differences in land bonds to tease out a measure of investors׳ credibility in a UK sovereign guarantee. Using Ireland׳s...

This paper studies fiscal policy in a model of sovereign debt and default. A time inconsistency problem arises: since the price of past debt cannot be affected by current fiscal policy and governments cannot credibly commit to a certain path of tax rates, debtor countries choose suboptimally low...