Public and private sector balance sheets are an important component to any analysis of debt sustainability. A vulnerable and indebted private sector can become a sudden liability for the government; alternatively, resilient household and bank balance sheets may reveal potential sources of...

We compare the experience of Latin American external debt crises, in particular the one in the 80s, with the current European one. We do so with the aim of shedding some light on the needed adjustment mechanisms. We argue for the need of much larger debt relief in Europe. To address the moral...

In a dynamic model of optimal bailouts, we show how borrower myopia affects the severity of debt crises. Myopic borrowers misprice the option to default with a U-shaped negative pricing error. The myopia discount changes the optimal bailout policy. Myopia gets punished when the distortions from...

Episodes of debt accumulation have been a recurrent feature of the global economy over the past fifty years. Since 2010, emerging and developing economies have experienced another wave of historically large and rapid debt accumulation. Similar past debt buildups have often ended in widespread...

Emerging market and developing economies have experienced recurrent episodes of rapid debt accumulation over the past fifty years. This paper examines the consequences of debt accumulation using a three-pronged approach: an event study of debt accumulation episodes in 100 emerging market and...