Tag Archives: Debt restructuring

CEPR Discussion Paper 12755, February 2018. PDF. (Personal copy.) This paper reviews theoretical results on financial policy. We use basic accounting identities to illustrate relations between gross assets and liabilities, net debt positions and the appropriation of (primary) budget surplus funds. We then discuss Ramsey policies, answering the question how a committed government may use financial instruments to pursue its objectives. Finally, we discuss additional roles for financial...

NBER Working Paper 23864, September 2017, with Tamon Asonuma and Romain Ranciere. PDF. (Local copy.) Rejecting a common assumption in the sovereign debt literature, we document that creditor losses (“haircuts”) during sovereign restructuring episodes are asymmetric across debt instruments. We code a comprehensive dataset on instrument-specific haircuts for 28 debt restructurings with private creditors in 1999–2015 and find that haircuts on shorter-term debt are larger than those on debt...

CEPR Discussion Paper 12252, August 2017, with Tamon Asonuma and Romain Ranciere. PDF. (ungated IMF WP.) Rejecting a common assumption in the sovereign debt literature, we document that creditor losses (“haircuts”) during sovereign restructuring episodes are asymmetric across debt instruments. We code a comprehensive dataset on instrument-specific haircuts for 28 debt restructurings with private creditors in 1999–2015 and find that haircuts on shorter-term debt are larger than those on...

CEPR Discussion Paper 12252, August 2017, with Tamon Asonuma and Romain Ranciere. PDF. (ungated IMF WP.) Rejecting a common assumption in the sovereign debt literature, we document that creditor losses (“haircuts”) during sovereign restructuring episodes are asymmetric across debt instruments. We code a comprehensive dataset on instrument-specific haircuts for 28 debt restructurings with private creditors in 1999–2015 and find that haircuts on shorter-term debt are larger than those on...

IMF Working Paper 17/119, May 2017, with Tamon Asonuma and Romain Ranciere. PDF. Rejecting a common assumption in the sovereign debt literature, we document that creditor losses (“haircuts”) during sovereign restructuring episodes are asymmetric across debt instruments. We code a comprehensive dataset on instrument-specific haircuts for 28 debt restructurings with private creditors in 1999–2015 and find that haircuts on shorter-term debt are larger than those on debt of longer maturity....

The Economist reports about plans for Monte dei Paschi’s future: … retail investors in the bank’s junior bonds, many of them ordinary customers. European state-aid rules say that they should lose their money along with shareholders. Technically, they will. In fact, to preserve their savings and avoid a political outcry, they will be deemed to have been “mis-sold” the bonds: they will receive shares which will in turn be swapped for new, safer bonds. Italy has to come up with a...

On VoxEU, Myrvin Anthony, Narcissa Balta, Tom Best, Sanaa Nadeem, and Eriko Togo discuss the history of government debt with state contingent coupons and offer some lessons. In the mid-19th century, the Confederate states issued cotton-linked bonds In the late 1970s, Mexico issued oil-linked bonds In the 2000s, Turkey issued revenue-indexed bonds Since 2014, Uruguay issues nominal wage-issued bonds Some other examples (figure taken from the column): Obviously, confidence in data quality...

On Econofact, Daniel Bergstresser provides background information on Puerto Rico’s debt crisis. From his text: Unlike U.S. municipalities, a U.S. territory cannot resort to Chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy act. The island’s economy benefited from corporate tax exemptions (until 2006) and from tax exemptions on interest paid by municipal bonds issued by Puerto Rico and its agencies (“triple tax exemption”). Total bond indebtedness (face value) amounts to over $70 billion, about 70 percent of...

The Eurogroup has approved short-term debt measures for Greece. The explanations on the ESM website are not very precise. A chronology of the Greek debt crisis and the European institutions.

In the FT, Eric Platt offers an update on the debt situation in Puerto Rico: The U.S. territory carries a USD 70 billion debt burden. It has defaulted multiple times over the past year, “including on bonds backed with a constitutional guarantee.” It did not have access to a court-backed restructuring process until Congress recently passed and President Obama signed the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act (Promesa). A seven-person control board controls the...