Honoring Sovereign Debt or Bailing Out Domestic Residents: A Theory of Internal Costs of Default

57 Pages Posted: 30 Mar 2014

See all articles by Eric Mengus

Eric Mengus

HEC Paris - Economics & Decision Sciences

Date Written: March 2014

Abstract

The internal cost of default, an important driver of sovereign debt repayment, increases with domestic portfolios' home bias. And so, when using capital controls or other instruments to steer these portfolios, a country faces a trade-off between commitment to repay and diversification. But why does a borrowing country not eschew the internal cost of default through domestic sector bailouts? And why does their sovereign not intermediate the diversification through swaps and other hedging devices? Answering these two questions is key to fathom the nature of internal costs of default. This paper investigates sovereign debt sustainability in a model where domestic and foreign investors optimally select their portfolios and the sovereign optimizes over its debt, default and bailout policies. It derives conditions under which internal bailouts do not preclude sovereign borrowing and establishes when, despite their disciplining benefits, capital controls are undesirable.

Keywords: sovereign debt, internal cost of default, bailouts, capital controls

JEL Classification: F34, G15, G18

Suggested Citation

Mengus, Eric, Honoring Sovereign Debt or Bailing Out Domestic Residents: A Theory of Internal Costs of Default (March 2014). Banque de France Working Paper No. 480, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2417330 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2417330

Eric Mengus (Contact Author)

HEC Paris - Economics & Decision Sciences ( email )

Paris
France

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