IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/oxford/v29y2013i3p502-517.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Foreign debt versus domestic debt in the euro area

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel Gros

Abstract

The aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis has led to a sharp rise in public debt throughout the developed world. The problem is particularly acute within the euro area, where several governments needed financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund and the European Stability Mechanism. This paper argues that public debt poses much greater problems when it is owed to foreigners, i.e. when it constitutes foreign debt. This view implies that the key to overcoming the euro crisis is in the external adjustment, not the fiscal adjustment. Another implication is that in a crisis a strong fiscal adjustment is desirable, not because it can immediately reduce the public debt/GDP ratio, but because it reduces domestic absorption and thus reinforces the external adjustment. Copyright 2013, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel Gros, 2013. "Foreign debt versus domestic debt in the euro area," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 29(3), pages 502-517, AUTUMN.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:oxford:v:29:y:2013:i:3:p:502-517
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/oxrep/grt038
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul R. Krugman, 1988. "Market-Based Debt-Reduction Schemes," NBER Working Papers 2587, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Paul De Grauwe, 2014. "The Governance of a Fragile Eurozone," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Exchange Rates and Global Financial Policies, chapter 12, pages 297-320, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    3. Calvo, Guillermo A, 1988. "Servicing the Public Debt: The Role of Expectations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(4), pages 647-661, September.
    4. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2009. "Varieties of Crises and Their Dates," Introductory Chapters, in: This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, Princeton University Press.
    5. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2011. "The Forgotten History of Domestic Debt," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(552), pages 319-350, May.
    6. De Grauwe, Paul & Ji, Yuemei, 2013. "Self-fulfilling crises in the Eurozone: An empirical test," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 15-36.
    7. Yue, Vivian Z., 2010. "Sovereign default and debt renegotiation," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 176-187, March.
    8. Betty C. Daniel & Christos Shiamptanis, 2010. "Sovereign Default Risk in a Monetary Union," Working Papers 2010-3, Central Bank of Cyprus.
    9. Kopf, Christian, 2011. "Restoring financial stability in the euro area," CEPS Papers 4292, Centre for European Policy Studies.
    10. Pietro Alessandrini & Michele Fratianni & Andrew Hughes Hallett & Andrea Filippo Presbitero, 2012. "External imbalances and financial fragility in the euro area," Mo.Fi.R. Working Papers 66, Money and Finance Research group (Mo.Fi.R.) - Univ. Politecnica Marche - Dept. Economic and Social Sciences.
    11. International Monetary Fund, 1989. "Is Inflation Effective for Liquidating Short-Term Nominal Debt?," IMF Working Papers 1989/002, International Monetary Fund.
    12. Salvador Barrios & Per Iversen & Magdalena Lewandowska & Ralph Setzer, 2009. "Determinants of intra-euro area government bond spreads during the financial crisis," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 388, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    13. Gros, Daniel, 2011. "Speculative Attacks within or outside a Monetary Union: Default versus Inflation (what to do today)," CEPS Papers 6359, Centre for European Policy Studies.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gros, Daniel, 2014. "The EMS Crisis of the 1990s: Parallels with the present crisis?," CEPS Papers 9119, Centre for European Policy Studies.
    2. Gros, Daniel, 2012. "A simple model of multiple equilibria and sovereign default," CEPS Papers 7174, Centre for European Policy Studies.
    3. Giuliana Passamani & Roberto Tamborini & Matteo Tomaselli, 2014. "Sustainability vs. credibility of fiscal consolidation. A Principal Components test for the Euro Zone," DEM Discussion Papers 2014/09, Department of Economics and Management.
    4. Blot, Christophe & Ducoudré, Bruno & Timbeau, Xavier, 2016. "Sovereign debt spread and default in a model with self-fulfilling prophecies and asymmetric information," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 47(PB), pages 281-299.
    5. Eleonora Cutrini & Giorgio Galeazzi, 2017. "External Public Debt, Trade Linkages and Contagion During the Eurozone Crisis," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(9), pages 1718-1749, September.
    6. Nicolas Afflatet, 2019. "Public Interest Payments and Bond Yields: A Panel Data Estimation for the Eurozone," Applied Economics and Finance, Redfame publishing, vol. 6(1), pages 109-117, January.
    7. Valerio Filoso, Valerio & Panico, Carlo & Papagni, Erasmo & Francesco, Purificato & Vázquez Suarez, Marta, 2016. "Causes and timing of the European debt crisis: An econometric evaluation," MPRA Paper 75847, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Roberto Tamborini, 2012. "Market opinions, fundamentals and the euro-sovereign debt crisis," Department of Economics Working Papers 1210, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    9. Mitchener, Kris & Trebesch, Christoph, 2021. "Sovereign Debt in the 21st Century: Looking Backward, Looking Forward," CEPR Discussion Papers 15935, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Roberto Tamborini & Matteo Tomaselli, 2020. "When does public debt impair economic growth? A literature review in search of a theory," DEM Working Papers 2020/7, Department of Economics and Management.
    11. Roberto Tamborini, 2024. "Good Debt or Bad Debt?," CESifo Working Paper Series 11503, CESifo.
    12. Cornand, Camille & Gandré, Pauline & Gimet, Céline, 2016. "Increase in home bias in the Eurozone debt crisis: The role of domestic shocks," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 445-469.
    13. Michael Tomz & Mark L.J. Wright, 2013. "Empirical Research on Sovereign Debt and Default," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 5(1), pages 247-272, May.
    14. Fernando A. Broner & Guido Lorenzoni & Sergio L. Schmukler, 2013. "Why Do Emerging Economies Borrow Short Term?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11, pages 67-100, January.
    15. Carmen M. Reinhart, 2022. "From Health Crisis to Financial Distress," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 70(1), pages 4-31, March.
    16. Giovanni Dosi & Marcello Minenna & Andrea Roventini & Roberto Violi, 2021. "Making the Eurozone work: a risk-sharing reform of the European Stability Mechanism," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 299(1), pages 617-657, April.
    17. Panizza, Ugo & Fatás, Antonio & Ghosh, Atish R. & ,, 2019. "The Motives to Borrow," CEPR Discussion Papers 13735, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Cassola, Nuno & Jorge, José, 2016. "The ECB's OMTs: A tale of governments, investors, and the central bank," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 94-116.
    19. Bacchetta, Philippe & Perazzi, Elena & van Wincoop, Eric, 2018. "Self-fulfilling debt crises: What can monetary policy do?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 119-134.
    20. De Grauwe, Paul & Ji, Yuemei, 2013. "Self-fulfilling crises in the Eurozone: An empirical test," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 15-36.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:oxford:v:29:y:2013:i:3:p:502-517. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/oxrep .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.