This paper studies the efficiency of the cryptocurrency market by looking at the distribution of bitcoin prices over time and across exchanges-currency pairs. We document persistent differences in relative bitcoin prices (or discounts), with a half-life of 1 day, and a distribution which is...

Governments in emerging countries are increasingly issuing bonds in local currencies and foreign holdings of these bonds have been growing significantly. Motivated by these novel facts, we build a model where local (foreign) investors specialize in local (foreign) currency bonds. After paying a...

Relative bitcoin prices, across locations and currencies, are persistent over time, with the location component accounting for more than 50 percent of the variability. Their distribution is leptokurtic, with negative skewness for fiat pairs, and a standard deviation of 4.5%. Counter- party...

The COVID-19 pandemic causes sharp reductions in economic output and sharp increases in government expenditures. This increases the riskiness of sovereign debts, especially in emerging economies. We propose a framework to study debt sustainability. The economy is subject to productivity and...

The rapid growth of US financial services coupled with rapid increases in wealth inequality have been focusing policy debate on the function of the financial sector and on its social desirability as a whole. I propose a heterogeneous agent model with asymmetric information and matching frictions...

We present a theory of determinants of sovereign debt stability on foreign and domestic markets. Besides the two traditional factors - debt size and output contractions, we highlight the role of the third factor: distortionary tax, which hinders the government’s ability to freely raise...