Beyond the Sovereign Debt Crisis: Alternative Forms of Market-Based Debt Restructuring Schemes

The resolution of the international debt crises has stimulated extensive research onhow to design solutions for countries facing external debt overhang problems. Thispaper analyses the benefits for creditors and debtors of the following `market-based'debt restructuring schemes: (i) issue of collateralised new assets inexchange for the old debt; (ii) automatic roll-over of the debt repayment with astate-contingent penalty rate. The first proposal combines the basic debt conversionscheme proposed by Krugman (1989) with Cline's proposal (1995) of self-enhancementson the new claims as a form of risk-compensation for creditors (seealso Williamson, 1988). Under this scheme the debtor country modifies the streamof the debt service payments by voluntarily exchanging the outstanding debt fornew assets with different debt service characteristics where the principal and/or theinterest rate payment can be fully or partially collateralised. The roll-over schemeentitles illiquid countries to extend the outstanding debt for a specified period at apenalty rate which is contingent on a measure of the country's creditworthiness.This solution has the desirable effect of reducing the future contractual obligationsby lowering the penalty rate on the excess of debt rolled over, thus helping thedebtor country to use additional resources to invest in the economy.     

希腊主权债务危机的成因及对中国的启示

希腊主权债务危机是此次全球金融危机的延续,是希腊政府财政赤字不断累积的必然结果。在外部金融危机的冲击下,希腊政府受制于国内的政治压力和欧元区的货币制度,无力采取有效措施加以应对,从而导致了主权债务危机的深化和扩散,并引发了全球金融市场的持续动荡,影响了世界经济复苏的进程。以此为借鉴,中国应高度关注自身的债权安全,加强对公共债务的控制和管理,谨慎开展区域货币一体化合作,并加快国内经济结构优化调整的步伐,以实现国民经济的长期可持续发展。     

欧洲主权债务危机形成机理及对中国的启示

本文以希腊债务危机为切入点,着重分析此次欧洲主权债务危机的形成机理,同时从中得出对我国的启示。     

Grace Periods in Sovereign Debt

This paper presents a theoretical analysis of grace periods in the context of an overhang of external debt creating a tax on domestic investment. The grace period arises as a Nash equilibrium strategy of the creditor in a dynamic, noncooperative game. Its length is shown to depend on the planning horizon of the parties, the discount factor and the growth prospect of the debtor country.     

Profitable Buybacks in Sovereign Debt

Since the 1982 debt crisis, several debtor countries have repurchased fractions of their debts. Bulow and Rogoff have argued that these buybacks benefit the banks but not the countries. Krugman argues the opposite. This paper provides an explanation of why buybacks benefit both countries and banks. A lending environment with terms-of-trade shocks is considered. If a country defaults, banks impose a penalty on the country and incur some costs. It is shown that with a buyback, the country defaults on a smaller loan, if at all, and the economy saves part of these costs, if not all.     

Optimal Sovereign Debt for an Overdebted Country

In this study, the role of debt maturity is analysed in a framework that blends a number of key macro‐economic factors with a process of estimating an optimal debt maturity maximising net present value. The purpose is to reduce the real value of government liabilities for a highly indebted country, as for example in the case of Greece, over a 35‐year period. The conclusion that emerges is that management of debt maturity is an essential component of the equilibrium policy and, as such, it can play an important role both in implementing tax smoothing programmes and in reducing costs associated with debt financing.     

Sovereign Debt without Default Penalties

We develop a theory of sovereign borrowing where default penalties are not implementable. We show that when debt is held by both domestic and foreign agents, the median voter might have an interest in serving it. Our theory has important practical implications regarding (a) the role of financial intermediaries in sovereign lending, (b) the effect of capital flows on price volatility including the possible overvaluation of debt to the point that the median voter is priced out of the market, and (c) debt restructuring where creditors are highly dispersed.     

Learning from Japan: The European Central Bank and the European Sovereign Debt Crisis

What shapes central banks’ learning from the policy experiments of their peers? Both economic ideas and organizational interests play important roles. Thus, New Keynesian ideas led central banks to interpret Japan's experience with quantitative easing (2001–2006) through the impact on risk spreads, although the Japanese central bank never intended such effects. In turn, scholars and policy-makers alike ignored one critical lesson: successful policy innovations depend on banks’ funding models. It is argued here that this was a crucial omission because the shift to market-based funding impairs the effectiveness of the traditional crisis toolkit. Central banks must intervene directly in asset markets of systemic importance for funding conditions, as the Bank of Japan did by buying government bonds. Hence, market-based finance engenders a trade-off between financial stability and institutional stability defined through central bank independence. During critical periods, central banks cannot preserve both. The ECB illustrates this trade-off well. Early in the crisis, it outsourced financial stability to a (largely) market-dependent banking system to protect its independence. With the introduction of Outright Monetary Transactions in September 2012, the Bank recognized that the market-based nature of European banking required outright purchases of sovereign bonds. This new instrument gave the ECB additional powers to shape national fiscal decisions in the name of an independence that no longer has theoretical justifications.     

希腊债务危机对欧洲认同的影响分析

希腊债务危机引发了欧洲认同危机：欧元信用受到质疑、在救助希腊问题上欧盟成员国的意见分歧、欧洲民众对欧元的信心动摇和欧盟的救助无力等因素弱化了欧洲认同。欧洲货币联盟的结构性缺陷、希腊债务危机中欧盟成员国对国家利益的维护和民族认同的差异是其主要原因。消除希腊债务危机对欧洲认同负面影响的出路在于缩小欧元区成员国的经济差距、加强成员国之间的团结和合作、建立欧元区财政合作机制、增强欧盟层面的领导力,并在此过程中强化欧洲认同。     

Investment Cycles and Sovereign Debt Overhang

We characterize optimal taxation of foreign capital and optimal sovereign debt policy in a small open economy where the government cannot commit to policy, seeks to insure a risk-averse domestic constituency, and is more impatient than the market. Optimal policy generates long-run cycles in both sovereign debt and foreign direct investment in an environment in which the first best capital stock is a constant. The expected tax on capital endogenously varies with the state of the economy, and investment is distorted by more in recessions than in booms, amplifying the effect of shocks. The government's lack of commitment induces a negative correlation between investment and the stock of government debt, a "debt overhang" effect. Debt relief is never Pareto improving and cannot affect the long-run level of investment. Furthermore, restricting the government to a balanced budget can eliminate the cyclical distortion of investment.     

欧债危机与资本主义福利国家新变化

欧债危机爆发后,有一种观点认为危机的原因是高福利。通过分析希腊债务危机与本国福利制度的关系,对比南北欧在危机中的不同表现,可以看出高福利制度只是债务危机的直接推手,欧债危机的发生还有其他原因。本文通过对北欧福利国家改革的历史考察以及这次债务危机中各国财政紧缩和福利改革措施的分析,探讨福利国家改革的走向和趋势。     

The Mystery of the Missing Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism

The absence of a formal international regulatory mechanism tofacilitate sovereign debt restructuring has long been recognizedas a most serious gap in the architecture of global finance.Why has it proven so difficult to create such a sovereign debtrestructuring mechanism (SDRM) at the international level? Politicaleconomists have devoted relatively little scholarly attentionto this question. This paper attempts to begin to fill thisgap in the literature by examining four failed initiatives tocreate a SDRM over the past century. In place of a realist orstructural Marxist account, the paper puts forward a more contingentexplanation for these failures that highlights three distinctpolitical problems that must be overcome in the constructionof a SDRM: (1) collective action problems on both the side ofsovereign debtors and that of private foreign creditors; (2)basic distributional conflicts embodied in any debt restructuringeffort; and (3) the uncertain behavior of the private creditors'home states.     

中国主权债务的现状分析及其风险防范对策

20世纪70年代以来,国际债务危机频繁发生,陷入危机的国家都遭受了重大损失。2007年由次贷危机所引发的经济衰退使一部分发达国家和发展中国家陷入债务危机,造成了全球的金融动荡。为此,改革国际货币体系、控制外债流动性风险、增强中国在国际市场上的融资能力具有重要的意义。     

The Government's Foreign Debt in the Argentine Crisis

Though the government had adopted a currency board regime since 1991, the Argentine economy suffered a currency crisis in 2002. It is shown that currency crises can arise, even under currency board systems in which the central bank has enough international reserves to respond to arbitrary withdrawals by individuals. The model implies that a government's rapid accumulation of foreign debt should be included as a major predictor of currency crises.     

我国基础教育债务危机探讨

文章对基础教育债务的危害和形成原因进行了深入剖析,认为彻底解决基础教育债务问题需要从防范新债务产生和化解已有债务两方面着手,防范的措施包括构建教育债务风险预警体系、建立常规的农村基础教育基建投入机制等,化解的措施包括依靠社会中介机构“锁定”教育债务、建立教育债务归口管理制度等。     

The Eurozone Sovereign Debt Problem: What It Means for U.S. Exports

The European sovereign debt problem became the focus of world attention in 2010, when the interest rates on Greek government bonds rose dramatically, requiring immediate action by the European Union to avoid an imminent default. It has become clear that the problem is not limited to Greece, but a more general problem of the fundamental imbalances and underlying inconsistencies in the Eurozone economic system of using a single currency for a set of countries that lack a unified economic and political system. Financial markets reacted to the debt offering of the other deficit countries in the Eurozone by increasing interest rates on their sovereign debt as well. The major consequences are likely to be largely felt by the Eurozone countries themselves, some of whom will be forced to go through significant structural adjustments over the coming years. The adjustment process could generate a range of alternative macroeconomic outcomes for affected countries??including differences in growth, exchange rates, and investment??which could have significant implications for U.S. trade. This paper attempts to allay some of that uncertainty by exploring a wide range of alternative global macroeconomic outcomes and their potential impact on U.S. exports. The analysis extends the work done in a previous paper which focused on U.S. agricultural exports and its major components. While U.S. exports vary across the scenarios, continued strong economic growth in developing countries supports demand for U.S. exports. Because the EU has represented a declining share of U.S. exports, the direct impact of changes in European demand affects U.S. exports less than the secondary effects of changes in exchange rates and global investment patterns associated with alternative EU outcomes.     

债务视角下的经济危机

按照债务率高低可将经济运行分为两种状态:债务正常状态和债务非正常状态。在债务正常状态下,负债对经济没有反馈作用,不过经济运行对债务具有反馈作用。在一定条件下(如稳定状态下的贷款利率大于经济增长率时),债务随经济增长而不断累积,从而使经济体从债务正常状态转向非正常状态。当经济进入债务非正常状态时,高负债开始对经济运行产生负反馈作用,进而导致经济危机。由债务所引发的经济危机通常无法由需求管理型的常规宏观稳定政策予以熨平,唯有非常规宏观稳定政策才能帮助经济摆脱危机。所谓非常规宏观稳定政策,本质上就是以政府直接购买债务的方式来缓解企业或金融机构的债务问题。不过,非常规宏观稳定政策会产生动态不一致和道德风险等问题。有鉴于此,政府救助必须辅以相应的惩罚,惩罚性救助是政府应对债务危机的根本之道。