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Legal Air Cover

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Abstract

The economic harm being caused by the novel coronavirus may soon result in multiple sovereign debtors moving into default territory. But the existing playbook for dealing with multi-sovereign emerging market debt crises is blank. The only debt crisis scenario we know is protracted country-by-country and contract-by-contract negotiated workouts. As of this writing, expert groups are working on the design of a mechanism to run multiple sovereign debt workouts simultaneously. Those designs, however, will take time to configure and get international buy-in. This paper sets forth some options to provide temporary legal protection to the debtor countries in the meantime; while they are in need of diverting resources toward Covid amelioration. This is the notion of "legal air cover". The options we propose involve ex post state intervention in debt contracts. They are extreme and may come with risks. But we show that in the case of Greece, when intervention such as we envision was necessary, there were no negative spillovers on periphery Eurozone debt markets associated with the Greek ex post modification of contract terms.

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  • Patrick Bolton & Mitu Gulati & Ugo Panizza, 2020. "Legal Air Cover," IHEID Working Papers 16-2020, Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:gii:giihei:heidwp16-2020
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    Cited by:

    1. Silvia Marchesi & Tania Masi & Pietro Bomprezzi, 2021. "Is to Forgive to Forget? Sovereign Risk in the Aftermath of a Default," Development Working Papers 475, Centro Studi Luca d'Agliano, University of Milano.
    2. Patrick Bolton & Mitu Gulati & Ugo Panizza, 2023. "Sovereign Debt Puzzles," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 15(1), pages 239-263, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Sovereign default; Incomplete contracts; Debt restructuring;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F34 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Lending and Debt Problems
    • F51 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - International Conflicts; Negotiations; Sanctions

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