This paper extends the baseline framework used in recent quantitative studies of sovereign default by assuming that governments can borrow using long-duration bonds. Previous studies have assumed that governments can borrow using bonds that mature after one quarter. Once we assume that the...

Two striking facts about international capital flows in emerging economies motivate this paper: (1) Governments hold large amounts of international reserves, for which they obtain a return lower than their borrowing cost. (2) Purchases of domestic assets by nonresidents and purchases of foreign...

We show that computing business cycles in emerging economy models using the discrete state space technique may be misleading. We solve the models of sovereign default presented by Aguiar and Gopinath (2006) using interpolation. We find that the simulated behavior of the spread is quite different...

We extend the model used in recent quantitative studies of sovereign default, allowing policymakers of different types to alternate in power. We show that a default episode may be triggered by a change in the type of policymaker in office, and that such a default is likely to occur only if there...

There is pervasive evidence that individuals invest primarily in domestic assets and thus hold poorly diversified portfolios. Empirical studies suggest that informational asymmetries may play a role in explaining the bias towards domestic assets. In contrast, theoretical studies based on...

We measure the effects of debt dilution on sovereign default risk and show how these effects can be mitigated with debt contracts promising borrowing-contingent payments. First, we calibrate a baseline model à la Eaton and Gersovitz (1981) to match features of the data. In this model, bonds'...

We study the sovereign default model that has been used to account for the cyclical behavior of interest rates in emerging market economies. This model is often solved using the discrete state space technique with evenly spaced grid points. We show that this method necessitates a large number of...