Commodity prices are an important driver of fiscal policy and the business cycle in many developing economies. We analyze a dynamic stochastic small-open-economy model of sovereign default, featuring endogenous fiscal policy and stochastic commodity revenues. The model accounts for a positive...

We offer a new methodology for the assessment of public debt sustainability in a stochastic economy when sovereign default taken into account. The default threshold differs from the no-Ponzi condition and depends on the post-default debt recovery rule. We distinguish sustainability and...

This paper studies the effects of government guarantees on the interconnection between banking and sovereign debt crises in a framework where both the banks and the government are fragile and the credibility and feasibility of the guarantees are determined endogenously. The analysis delivers...

The present dissertation tackles the topic government debt and comprises three papers. The first paper with the title "The Economic Impacts of a Government Default in a Stochastic Overlapping Generations Model under Homogenous Investor Expectations" analyses the short-term effects of a...

Increased sovereign credit risk is often associated with sharp currency movements. Therefore, expectations of the probability of a sovereign default event can convey important information regarding future movements of exchange rates. In this paper, we investigate the possible pass-through of...

We analyze the link between banking sector quality and sovereign risk in the whole European Union over 1999–2014. We employ four different indicators of sovereign risk (including market- and opinion-based assessments), a rich set of theoretically and empirically motivated banking sector...

We provide a comprehensive analysis of the determinants of trading in the sovereign credit default swaps (CDS) market, using weekly data for single-name sovereign CDS from October 2008 to September 2015. We describe the anatomy of the sovereign CDS market, derive a law of motion for gross...

Remittances are transfers of money by foreign workers to their home countries. These remittance flows have been considered a very important source of finance for many developing countries accounting between 5-40% of the recipient country's GDP. This paper empirically examines whether remittance...

Capital flow and commodity cycles have long been connected with economic crises. Sparse historical data, however, has made it difficult to connect their timing. We date turning points in global capital flows and commodity prices across two centuries and provide estimates from alternative data...

This contribution develops a blueprint for a European fiscal union. We argue that a viable European fiscal union can be constructed without joint liability for public debt or a centralized government with a large common budget. Such a fiscal union should combine elements of market discipline...

This thesis was written by Nadjeschda Katharina Arnold while having been a research assistant at the Center for Economic Studies (CES) at the University of Munich. It was completed in December 2014 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich in...

This paper estimates the cost of sovereign default by using novel econometric methods - dynamic local projections applied to a sample that is re-randomised using inverse propensity score weights. We find that the impact of default on output is negative, significant and persistent - around 2.8%...

This thesis was written by Nadjeschda Katharina Arnold while having been a research assistant at the Center for Economic Studies (CES) at the University of Munich. It was completed in December 2014 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich in...

This thesis was written by Nadjeschda Katharina Arnold while having been a research assistant at the Center for Economic Studies (CES) at the University of Munich. It was completed in December 2014 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich in...

Two centuries of Greek debt crises highlight the pitfalls of relying on external financing. Since its independence in 1829, the Greek government has defaulted four times on its external creditors - with striking historical parallels. Each crisis is preceded by a period of heavy borrowing from...

The recent financial and sovereign debt crises around the world have sparked a growing literature on models and empirical estimates of defaultable debt. Frequently households and firms come under default threat, local governments can default, and recently sovereign default threats were eminent...

This paper studies sovereign debt relief in a long-term perspective. We quantify the relief achieved through default and restructuring in two distinct samples: 1920-1939, focusing on the defaults on official (government to government) debt in advanced economies after World War I; and 1978-2010,...

This paper argues that the Eurozone crisis stems from a risk management failure in the Eurosystem's design, and that applying insurance theory is useful. We model risk neutral agents choosing portfolios of government bonds of n countries in a monetary union and other assets. We firstly analyse a...

This contribution develops a blueprint for a European fiscal union. The proposal addresses the shortcomings of most other reform designs which do not offer a solution for insolvent or noncooperative euro countries. We suggest a design which combines fiscal insurance with an orderly procedure to...

Griechenlands Zahlungsprobleme gefährden offensichtlich nicht die Stabilität der Eurozone, obwohl seine Schuldentragfähigkeit langfristig nicht gewährleistet ist. Dennoch wurde Griechenland eine Programmverlängerung um vier Monate zugestanden und auch über ein drittes Hilfsprogramm wird...

In this paper, the author considers the sovereign debt in the form of one-period government bonds with default risk, which can be purchased by and traded among domestic and foreign investors. She shows that the weight assigned to the lenders' interest by the borrowing government at the time of...

We study the occurrence of holdout litigation in the context of sovereign defaults. The number of creditor lawsuits against foreign governments has strongly increased over the past decades, but there is a large variation across crisis events. Why are some defaults followed by a "run to the...

Der Fall Griechenland macht deutlich, dass im reformierten EWU-Regelwerk eine Lücke klafft, da es kein geordnetes und verlässliches Staatsinsolvenzverfahren gibt. Dabei ist die Wahrscheinlichkeit eines Staatsbankrotts in einer Währungsunion tendenziell höher als bei Einzelstaaten, die ihre...

Griechenlands Zahlungsprobleme gefährden offensichtlich nicht die Stabilität der Eurozone, obwohl seine Schuldentragfähigkeit langfristig nicht gewährleistet ist. Dennoch wurde Griechenland eine Programmverlängerung um vier Monate zugestanden und auch über ein drittes Hilfsprogramm wird...

Der Fall Griechenland macht deutlich, dass im reformierten EWU-Regelwerk eine Lücke klafft, da es kein geordnetes und verlässliches Staatsinsolvenzverfahren gibt. Dabei ist die Wahrscheinlichkeit eines Staatsbankrotts in einer Währungsunion tendenziell höher als bei Einzelstaaten, die ihre...

Das vorliegende Gutachten umfasst drei Teile. Zunächst befasse ich mich mit dem Argument, dass ein Insolvenzverfahren zwingend zu höheren Zinsen auf Staatsanleihen führen würde. Im Anschluss daran beschreibe ich den Kontext und Ablauf der Restrukturierungen von Staatsanleihen in (i)...

Two centuries of Greek debt crises highlight the pitfalls of relying on external financing. Since its independence in 1829, the Greek government has defaulted four times on its external creditors - with striking historical parallels. Each crisis is preceded by a period of heavy borrowing from...