IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/2850.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Sovereign Debt Repurchases: No Cure for Overhang

Author

Listed:
  • Jeremy Bulow
  • Kenneth Rogoff

Abstract

We show, in a reasonably general model, that if a highly indebted country has good investment projects available to it, then it will not benefit from using any of its resources to buy back debt at market prices. Debt buybacks and debt-equity swaps only make sense for the country if these programs are heavily subsidized by creditors. This result holds for all buyback programs large and small, so long as they involve voluntary creditor participation and are not part of a larger deal including offsetting concessions from lenders. Our analysis therefore casts doubt on the popular argument that unilateral debt repurchases benefit HICs by relieving "debt overhang".

Suggested Citation

  • Jeremy Bulow & Kenneth Rogoff, 1989. "Sovereign Debt Repurchases: No Cure for Overhang," NBER Working Papers 2850, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:2850
    Note: ME ITI IFM
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w2850.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Elhanan Helpman, 1989. "Voluntary Debt Reduction: Incentives and Welfare," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 36(3), pages 580-611, September.
    3. Helpman, Elhanan, 1989. "The Simple Analytics of Debt-Equity Swaps," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(3), pages 440-451, June.
    4. Jeremy Bulow & Kenneth Rogoff, 1988. "The Buyback Boondoggle," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 19(2), pages 675-704.
    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. Bowe, M. & Dean, J.W., 1997. "Has the Market Solved the Sovereign-Debt Crisis?," Princeton Studies in International Economics 83, International Economics Section, Departement of Economics Princeton University,.
    2. 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.
    3. Oladi, Reza, 2003. "International involuntary lending and contingent default threat," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 237-245.
    4. Cabral, Celia C., 1996. "Evaluating debt repurchases What are the alternatives to investment?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(3-4), pages 477-494, May.
    5. Michael P. Dooley, 1994. "A Retrospective on the Debt Crisis," NBER Working Papers 4963, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Strand, Jon, 1995. "Lending terms, debt concessions, and developing countries' resource extraction," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 99-117, August.
    7. Elhanan Helpman, 1989. "Voluntary Debt Reduction: Incentives and Welfare," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 36(3), pages 580-611, September.
    8. Goldberg, Linda & Spiegel, Mark M., 1992. "Debt write-downs and debt--equity swaps in a two-sector model," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(3-4), pages 267-283, November.
    9. Goopu, Sudarshan, 1996. "The analysis of emerging policy issues in development finance," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1589, The World Bank.
    10. Cohen, Daniel & Verdier, Thierry, 1995. "'Secret' buy-backs of LDC debt," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(3-4), pages 317-334, November.
    11. Schioppa, Claudio A. & Papadia, Andrea, 2015. "Foreign Debt and Secondary Markets: The Case of Interwar Germany," MPRA Paper 102863, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2016.
    12. repec:dau:papers:123456789/4089 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. repec:diw:diwwpp:dp1992 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Ozler, Sule & Huizinga, Harry, 1991. "How factors in creditor countries affect secondary market prices for developing country debt," Policy Research Working Paper Series 622, The World Bank.
    15. Gooptu, Sudarshan, 1996. "Emerging policy issues in development finance," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(Supplemen), pages 85-100.
    16. Peter Sinclair, 2011. "Deficits, Debts and Defaults - Past, Present and Future," Discussion Papers 11-20, Department of Economics, University of Birmingham.
    17. Sule Ozler & Harry Huizinga, 1992. "Bank Exposure, Capital and Secondary Market Discounts on the Developing Country Debt," NBER Working Papers 3961, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Hayri, Aydin, 2000. "Debt relief," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 137-152, October.
    19. Jean-Noël Ory, 1996. "Le financement des PVD par euro-obligations : rôle des procédures de réduction de dette et de desserrement des contraintes," Revue Tiers Monde, Programme National Persée, vol. 37(148), pages 829-852.
    20. Agenor, Pierre-Richard & Aizenman, Joshua, 1999. "Financial sector inefficiencies and coordination failures : implications for crisis management," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2185, The World Bank.
    21. Joshua Aizenman & Eduardo R. Borensztein, 1989. "Strategic Investment in a Debt Bargaining Framework," NBER Working Papers 3019, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    22. Fernandez-Ruiz, Jorge, 1996. "Debt and incentives in a dynamic context," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1-2), pages 139-151, August.

    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:2850. 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.