Governments in emerging markets often behave like a “tormented insurer,” who would like to smooth government outlays given the randomness of public revenues in an imperfect world where the only public debt instrument is a non-state-contingent bond denominated in units of tradable goods. How can a fiscal authority tell if the stock of public debt is consistent with fiscal solvency in this enviro...

Sovereign debt renegotiations take an average of nine years for bank loans but only one year for bonds. Our paper provides an explanation to this finding by highlighting one key difference between bank loans and bonds: bank debt is rarely traded, while bond debt is heavily traded on the secondary market. The secondary market plays a crucial information revelation role in shortening renegotiatio...

This paper analyzes the effects of government debt and income taxes on consumption and saving in a world of infinitely lived households having uncertain and heterogeneous incomes. The special structure of the model allows exact aggregation across households despite incomplete markets. The effects of government debt are shown to be substantial, roughly comparable to those resulting from finite h...

The paper examines the interrelationship between fiscal and monetary policy in a two-country monetary union. The worst scenario occurs when an independent central bank (CB) sets the nominal interest rate and responds to rising government debt/GDP ratios by monetisation. The result is high inflation, high debt/GDP ratios and a large public sector. Government debt and inflation are contained if t...

This paper examines equilibrium determination under different monetary policy regimes when the government might default on its debt. We apply a cash-inadvance model where the government does not have access to non-distortionary taxation and does not account for initial outstanding debt when it sets the income tax rate. Solvency is then not guaranteed and sovereign default can affect the return ...

Institutional context influences corporate financing behavior of firms and emerging economies provide an interesting scenario to investigate this phenomenon. Therefore, in this study, we focus on the capital structure decision of Chinese listed firms which continues to have government as a significant shareholder. We choose the sample period after the Split-Share Reform so that we can distingui...

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...