This paper shows that China has launched a new global system for cross-border rescue lending to countries in debt distress. It builds the first comprehensive dataset on China’s overseas bailouts between...
This paper estimates the costs of sovereign defaults to a broader extent than has been done in the literature. Applying the synthetic control method to a sample of 131 defaults since 1900, it finds that...
China’s lending boom to developing countries is morphing into defaults and debt distress. Given the secrecy surrounding China’s loans, also the associated defaults remain “hidden”, as missed payments and...
This paper studies external sovereign bonds as an asset class. It compiles a new database of 266,000 monthly prices of foreign-currency government bonds traded in London and New York between 1815 (the...
This paper employs high frequency transactions data on the world’s oldest and most extensive centralized peer-to-peer Bitcoin market, which enables trade in the currencies of more than 135 countries. It...
Debt in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) is at its highest level in half a century. In about nine out of 10 EMDEs, debt is higher now than it was in 2010 and, in half of the EMDEs, debt...
I discuss the multifaceted economic and financial vulnerabilities that have been created or exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic on a foundation of already weak economic fundamentals in many countries...
Official ending is much larger than commonly known, often surpassing total private cross-border capital flows, especially during wars, financial crises and natural catastrophes. This paper assembles the...
The World Bank Economic Review is a professional journal used for the dissemination of research in development economics broadly relevant to the development profession and to the World Bank in pursuing...
Financial crises of every variety rocked emerging markets in the second half of the 1990s. Nearly every region experienced currency crashes, banking crises were both numerous and severe, and a few countries...
Sovereign credit ratings play an important part in determining countries' access to international capital markets and the terms of that access. In principle, there is no reason to expect that sovereign...