IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/2637.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Sovereign Debt Restructurings: Panacea or Pangloss?

Author

Listed:
  • Jeremy I. Bulow
  • Kenneth Rogoff

Abstract

The most widely proposed LDC debt plans are flawed by their failure to recognize the fundamental differences between corporate and sovereign debt. Consequently, many plans intended to help highly-indebted countries mainly aid their foreign creditors. This paper emphasizes the crucial distinction between marginal and average sovereign debt. This distinction provides the cornerstone for an understanding of debt buybacks, debt-equity swaps, and debt-for-debt swaps involving new classes of seniority. Highly indebted countries would benefit more from direct transfers than from the same resources spent on any of these financial engineering schemes.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeremy I. Bulow & Kenneth Rogoff, 1988. "Sovereign Debt Restructurings: Panacea or Pangloss?," NBER Working Papers 2637, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:2637
    Note: ITI IFM
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w2637.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Atkeson, Andrew, 1991. "International Lending with Moral Hazard and Risk of Repudiation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(4), pages 1069-1089, July.
    2. Bulow, Jeremy & Rogoff, Kenneth, 1989. "A Constant Recontracting Model of Sovereign Debt," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(1), pages 155-178, February.
    3. Jeffrey Sachs, 1986. "Managing the LDC Debt Crisis," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 17(2), pages 397-440.
    4. Jeffrey Sachs & Harry Huizinga, 1987. "U.S. Commercial Banks and the Developing-Country Debt Crisis," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 18(2), pages 555-606.
    5. Barry Eichengreen and Richard Portes., 1988. "Settling Defaults in the Era of Bond Finance," Economics Working Papers 8885, University of California at Berkeley.
    6. Stanley Fischer, 1987. "Resolving the International Debt Crisis," NBER Working Papers 2373, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Michael P. Dooley, 1988. "Buy-Backs and Market Valuation of External Debt," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 35(2), pages 215-229, June.
    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. Joshua Aizenman & Brian Pinto, 2004. "Managing Volatility and Crises: A Practitioner's Guide Overview," NBER Working Papers 10602, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Cohen, Daniel & Villemot, Sébastien, 2015. "Endogenous debt crises," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 337-369.
    3. Froot, Kenneth A, 1989. "Buybacks, Exit Bonds, and the Optimality of Debt and Liquidity Relief," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 30(1), pages 49-70, February.
    4. Norman S. Fieleke, 1988. "International payments imbalances in heavily indebted developing countries," Conference Series ; [Proceedings], Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, vol. 32, pages 58-102.
    5. Siebert, Horst, 1989. "Güterwirtschaftliche Anpassungsprozesse zur Lösung der Verschuldungsfrage," Kiel Working Papers 349, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    6. Norman S. Fieleke, 1990. "Economic Adjustment In Heavily Indebted Developing Countries," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 8(2), pages 18-35, April.

    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. Fernando Broner & Alberto Martin & Jaume Ventura, 2010. "Sovereign Risk and Secondary Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1523-1555, September.
    2. Brian D. Wright & Kenneth M. Kletzer, 2000. "Sovereign Debt as Intertemporal Barter," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 621-639, June.
    3. Jonathan P. Thomas, 2001. "Default Costs, Willingness to Pay and Sovereign Debt Buybacks," International Finance 0103002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Eaton, Jonathan & Fernandez, Raquel, 1995. "Sovereign debt," Handbook of International Economics, in: G. M. Grossman & K. Rogoff (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 3, pages 2031-2077, Elsevier.
    5. Seung Jung Lee, 2009. "How Information Quality of Macro Aggregates Affects Sovereign Risk: An Empirical Investigation," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(3), pages 510-532, August.
    6. Cristina Arellano, 2005. "Default Risk, the Real Exchange Rate and Income Fluctuations in Emerging Economies," 2005 Meeting Papers 516, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. Xavier Mateos-Planas & Jose-Victor Rios-Rull & Cristina Arellano, 2013. "Partial Default," 2013 Meeting Papers 765, Society for Economic Dynamics.
      • Cristina Arellano & Xavier Mateos-Planas & José-Víctor Ríos-Rull, 2019. "Partial Default," NBER Working Papers 26076, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
      • Cristina Arellano & Xavier Mateos-Planas & Jose-Victor Rios-Rull, 2019. "Partial Default," Discussion Papers 1911, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM).
      • Cristina Arellano & Xavier Mateos-Planas & José-Víctor Ríos-Rull, 2019. "Partial Default," Staff Report 589, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    8. Mauricio Drelichman & Hans-Joachim Voth, 2015. "Risk sharing with the monarch: contingent debt and excusable defaults in the age of Philip II, 1556–1598," Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History, Association Française de Cliométrie (AFC), vol. 9(1), pages 49-75, January.
    9. Guimaraes, Bernardo, 2007. "Optimal external debt and default," CEPR Discussion Papers 6035, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Jeffrey A. Frankel & Nouriel Roubini, 2001. "The Role of Industrial Country Policies in Emerging Market Crises," NBER Working Papers 8634, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Francis A. Longstaff & Jun Pan & Lasse H. Pedersen & Kenneth J. Singleton, 2011. "How Sovereign Is Sovereign Credit Risk?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(2), pages 75-103, April.
    12. Diwan, Ishac & Claessens, Stijn, 1989. "An analysis of debt-reduction schemes initiated by debtor countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 153, The World Bank.
    13. Fernando Broner & Jaume Ventura, 2011. "Globalization and Risk Sharing," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 78(1), pages 49-82.
    14. Kenneth Kletzer, 2003. "Sovereign Bond Restructuring: Collective Action Clauses and official Crisis Intervention," IMF Working Papers 2003/134, International Monetary Fund.
    15. James Conklin, 1998. "The Theory of Sovereign Debt and Spain under Philip II," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(3), pages 483-513, June.
    16. Arellano, Cristina & Kocherlakota, Narayana, 2014. "Internal debt crises and sovereign defaults," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(S), pages 68-80.
    17. Yue, Vivian Z., 2010. "Sovereign default and debt renegotiation," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 176-187, March.
    18. Andrew G Haldane & Gregor Irwin & Victoria Saporta, 2004. "Bail out or work out? theoretical considerations," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(494), pages 130-148, March.
    19. Barry Eichengreen and Richard Portes., 1989. "Dealing with Debt: The 1930s and the 1980s," Economics Working Papers 89-104, University of California at Berkeley.
    20. Cristina Arellano & Enrique Mendoza, 2002. "Fricciones crediticias y 'paradas repentinas' en pequeñas economías abiertas: un marco de equilibrio del ciclo económico para crisis en mercados emergentes," Research Department Publications 4308, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.

    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:nbr:nberwo:2637. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.