IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/aei/rpaper/1008739.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The curious case of missing defaults

Author

Listed:
  • Carmen M. Reinhart

    (American Enterprise Institute)

Abstract

In a recent paper on the long coincident behavior of international capital flows, commodity prices, and interest rates in global financial centers, Reinhart, Reinhart, and Trebesch (2016 and 2017) discovered the curious case of missing defaults. Despite the drying up of global capital flows and a sharp fall in commodity prices from 2012 to 2016, sovereign defaults in emerging market and developing economies did not spike higher as predicted by the record of the prior two hundred years. An important new dimension in the latest global capital flow cycle is the surge in Chinese loans to developing countries, notably low-income commodity producers since the early 2000s. A key driver of China’s overseas lending boom is its significantly larger global footprint, which expanded at a record clip and helped stabilize global trade especially since the global financial crisis. Furthermore, Chinese official ambition to become a global power led to large official flows to support development projects and other purposes. The key question for policy makers and investors is whether these missing defaults are deferred or defused. There is also evidence to suggest that many developing borrowers are already encountering problems in servicing their recent debts to China (sovereign defaults are mis measured). This analysis aims to shed light into what is currently one of the most opaque issues in global finance. For researchers a key question is whether this new source of support changes the empirical determinants of global capital flows.

Suggested Citation

  • Carmen M. Reinhart, 2019. "The curious case of missing defaults," AEI Economics Working Papers 1008739, American Enterprise Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:aei:rpaper:1008739
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aei.org/publication/the-curious-case-of-missing-defaults
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carmen M. Reinhart & Vincent Reinhart & Christoph Trebesch, 2016. "Global Cycles: Capital Flows, Commodities, and Sovereign Defaults, 1815-2015," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(5), pages 574-580, May.
    2. Frankel, Jeffrey A. & Vegh, Carlos A. & Vuletin, Guillermo, 2013. "On graduation from fiscal procyclicality," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(1), pages 32-47.
    3. Forbes, Kristin J. & Warnock, Francis E., 2012. "Capital flow waves: Surges, stops, flight, and retrenchment," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 235-251.
    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. Eugenio Cerutti & Stijn Claessens & Andrew K. Rose, 2019. "How Important is the Global Financial Cycle? Evidence from Capital Flows," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 67(1), pages 24-60, March.
    6. Ethan Ilzetzki & Carmen M Reinhart & Kenneth S Rogoff, 2019. "Exchange Arrangements Entering the Twenty-First Century: Which Anchor will Hold?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(2), pages 599-646.
    7. Graciela L. Kaminsky & Carmen M. Reinhart & Carlos A. Végh, 2005. "When It Rains, It Pours: Procyclical Capital Flows and Macroeconomic Policies," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2004, Volume 19, pages 11-82, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Carmen M. Reinhart & Christoph Trebesch, 2016. "Sovereign Debt Relief And Its Aftermath," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 14(1), pages 215-251, February.
    9. Ostry, Jonathan D. & Ghosh, Atish R. & Chamon, Marcos & Qureshi, Mahvash S., 2012. "Tools for managing financial-stability risks from capital inflows," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 407-421.
    10. Carmen M. Reinhart & Graciela L. Kaminsky, 1999. "The Twin Crises: The Causes of Banking and Balance-of-Payments Problems," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(3), pages 473-500, June.
    11. Reinhart, Karmen & Rogoff, Kenneth, 2009. ""This time is different": panorama of eight centuries of financial crises," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 1, pages 77-114, March.
    12. Guillermo A. Calvo & Leonardo Leiderman & Carmen M. Reinhart, 1993. "Capital Inflows and Real Exchange Rate Appreciation in Latin America: The Role of External Factors," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 40(1), pages 108-151, March.
    13. Claessens, Stijn & Kose, M. Ayhan & Terrones, Marco E., 2012. "How do business and financial cycles interact?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 178-190.
    14. Aizenman, Joshua & Jinjarak, Yothin & Park, Donghyun, 2011. "International reserves and swap lines: Substitutes or complements?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 5-18, January.
    15. Carmen M. Reinhart & Graciela L. Kaminsky, 1999. "The Twin Crises: The Causes of Banking and Balance-of-Payments Problems," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(3), pages 473-500, June.
    16. Broner, Fernando & Didier, Tatiana & Erce, Aitor & Schmukler, Sergio L., 2013. "Gross capital flows: Dynamics and crises," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 113-133.
    17. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2014. "This Time is Different: A Panoramic View of Eight Centuries of Financial Crises," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 15(2), pages 215-268, November.
    18. Miyajima, Ken & Mohanty, M.S. & Chan, Tracy, 2015. "Emerging market local currency bonds: Diversification and stability," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 126-139.
    19. Reinhart, Carmen M. & Dunaway, Steven, "undated". "Dealing with Capital Inflows Are There Any Lessons?," WIDER Working Papers 295321, United Nations University, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    20. Reinhart, Carmen & Rogoff, Kenneth, 2009. "This Time It’s Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly-Preface," MPRA Paper 17451, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    21. Atish R. Ghosh & Jonathan D. Ostry & Mahvash S. Qureshi, 2016. "When Do Capital Inflow Surges End in Tears?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(5), pages 581-585, May.
    22. Valentina Bruno & Hyun Song Shin, 2015. "Cross-Border Banking and Global Liquidity," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 82(2), pages 535-564.
    23. Reinhart, Carmen & Rogoff, Kenneth, 2009. "This Time It’s Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly-Chapter 1," MPRA Paper 17452, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    24. Reinhart, Carmen M & Reinhart, Vincent R, 1999. "On the Use of Reserve Requirements in Dealing with Capital Flow Problems," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 4(1), pages 27-54, January.
    25. repec:idb:brikps:66338 is not listed on IDEAS
    26. Ethan Ilzetzki & Carmen M Reinhart & Kenneth S Rogoff, 2019. "Exchange Arrangements Entering the Twenty-First Century: Which Anchor will Hold?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(2), pages 599-646.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dähler, Timo, 2020. "Bias or ignorance? The politics and economics behind sovereign credit ratings," MPRA Paper 103965, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Gatien Bon & Gong Cheng, 2020. "China’s overseas Sovereign debt relief actions: What insights do recent cases provide?," Working Papers hal-04159690, HAL.
    3. Bon, Gatien & Cheng, Gong, 2021. "Understanding China's role in recent debt relief operations: A case study analysis," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 23-41.

    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. C. Bora Durdu & Alex Martin & Ilknur Zer, 2020. "The Role of US Monetary Policy in Banking Crises Across the World," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 68(1), pages 66-107, March.
    2. Horn, Sebastian & Reinhart, Carmen M. & Trebesch, Christoph, 2021. "China's overseas lending," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    3. Bora Durdu & Alex Martin & Ilknur Zer, 2019. "The Role of U.S. Monetary Policy in Global Banking Crises," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2019-039, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    4. 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.
    5. Cesa-Bianchi, Ambrogio & Eguren Martin, Fernando & Thwaites, Gregory, 2019. "Foreign booms, domestic busts: The global dimension of banking crises," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 58-74.
    6. Crespo Cuaresma, Jesus & von Schweinitz, Gregor & Wendt, Katharina, 2019. "On the empirics of reserve requirements and economic growth," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 253-274.
    7. Ṣebnem Kalemli-Özcan, 2019. "U.S. Monetary Policy and International Risk Spillovers," NBER Working Papers 26297, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Mr. Tamon Asonuma & Mr. Marcos d Chamon & Aitor Erce & Akira Sasahara, 2019. "Costs of Sovereign Defaults: Restructuring Strategies, Bank Distress and the Capital Inflow-Credit Channel," IMF Working Papers 2019/069, International Monetary Fund.
    9. Bjarni G. Einarsson & Kristófer Gunnlaugsson & Thorvardur Tjörvi Ólafsson & Thórarinn G. Pétursson, 2015. "The long history of financial boom-bust cycles in Iceland - Part I: Financial crises," Economics wp68, Department of Economics, Central bank of Iceland.
    10. Stijn Claessens & M. Ayhan Kose, 2013. "Financial Crises: Explanations, Types and Implications," CAMA Working Papers 2013-06, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    11. Hartwig, Benny & Meinerding, Christoph & Schüler, Yves S., 2021. "Identifying indicators of systemic risk," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    12. Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas & Thomas Philippon & Dimitri Vayanos, 2017. "The Analytics of the Greek Crisis," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(1), pages 1-81.
    13. Akhilesh K. Verma & Rajeswari Sengupta, 2021. "Interlinkages between external debt financing, credit cycles and output fluctuations in emerging market economies," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 157(4), pages 965-1001, November.
    14. Jean Pierre Allegret, 2012. "Responses of Monetary Authorities in Emerging Economies to International Financial Crises: What Do We Really know?," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(3), pages 3-32.
    15. Eberhardt, Markus & Presbitero, Andrea F., 2021. "Commodity prices and banking crises," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    16. Carmen M. Reinhart & Vincent R. Reinhart, 2009. "Capital Flow Bonanzas: An Encompassing View of the Past and Present," NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 5(1), pages 9-62.
    17. Grant, Everett, 2016. "Exposure to international crises: trade vs. financial contagion," ESRB Working Paper Series 30, European Systemic Risk Board.
    18. Julián A. Caballero, 2016. "Do Surges in International Capital Inflows Influence the Likelihood of Banking Crises?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(591), pages 281-316, March.
    19. Nabila Boukef Jlassi & Helmi Hamdi & Joseph P. Joyce, 2018. "External liabilities, domestic institutions and banking crises in developing economies," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(1), pages 96-116, February.
    20. Davis, J. Scott & Mack, Adrienne & Phoa, Wesley & Vandenabeele, Anne, 2016. "Credit booms, banking crises, and the current account," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 360-377.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Financial markets; finance; global;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A - General Economics and Teaching

    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:aei:rpaper:1008739. 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: Dave Adams, CIO (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeiiius.html .

    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.