Poland edged toward hyperinflation in the latter half of 1989, but inflation fell dramatically after drastic reforms were enacted in January of 1990. We analyze the consistency between fiscal deficits and inflation targets, and we assess Poland’s domestic and foreign debt management policies and the impact of the Brady debt reduction agreement on the relationship between fiscal deficits and inf...

What determines the sustainability of sovereign debt? In this paper, we develop a model where myopic governments seek electoral popularity but can nevertheless commit credibly to service external debt. They do not default when they are poor even though default costs are low because they would lose access to debt markets and be forced to reduce spending; they do not default when they become rich...

This paper deals with the externalities associated with the individual developing country’s cost of credit and borrowing level. As long as the supply curve of credit is positively sloped, the interest rate charged on credit extended to a particular developing country is affected by the aggregate borrowing level of the rest of the countries. Moreover, the relatively high level of indebtedness of...

External debt accrues as a result of borrowing by Australian residents from residents of other countries. It includes the borrowings of both the private and government sectors. Net external debt represents gross debt less lending by Australian residents to non-residents. Debt, however, is not the only form of external liability. Foreigners can also hold equity claims in the form of share portfo...

We examine the impact of explicitly incorporating a measure of debt capacity in recent tests of competing theories of capital structure. Our main results are that if external funds are required, in the absence of debt capacity concerns, debt appears to be preferred to equity. Concerns over debt capacity largely explain the use of new external equity financing by publicly traded firms. Finally, ...

We study annual logarithmic growth rates R of various economic variables such as exports, imports, and foreign debt. For each of these variables we find that the distributions of R can be approximated by double exponential (Laplace) distributions in the central parts and power-law distributions in the tails. For each of these variables we further find a power-law dependence of the standard devi...

This paper tries to identify the fiscal sustainability record of democratically and autocratically governed countries by applying various performance indicators (payment defaults, national debt, foreign assets) and also to clarify what effect the characteristics of a regime have on consolidation and intertemporal budgeting efforts in a country. Important economic, social and environmental chall...

We quantify the cost of limited liability rules in a traditional model of investment financing under moral hazard and risk aversion. Under limited liability, we show that external debt and the granting of absolute priority to debtholders are key (but not the unique) ingredients of the optimal financing package. Removing liability limits makes possible a superior contract that punishes the entre...

This paper shows that in a small open economy with downward nominal wage rigidity pegging the nominal exchange rate creates a pecuniary externality. The externality causes unemployment, overborrowing, and depressed consumption. Ramsey optimal capital controls are shown to be prudential in the sense that they tax capital inflows in good times and subsidize external borrowing in bad times. Under ...