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We offer a model and evidence that private debtholders play a key role in setting the endogenous asset value threshold below which corporations declare bankruptcy. The model, in the spirit of Black and Cox (1976), implies that the recovery rate at emergence from bankruptcy on all of the firm's debt taken together is increasing in the pre-bankruptcy share of private debt in all debt. Empirical evidence supports this and other implications of the model. Indeed, debt composition has a more economically material empirical influence on recovery than all other variables we try taken together.

We introduce long-term debt and a maturity choice into a dynamic model of production, firm financing, and costly default. Long-term debt saves roll-over costs but increases future leverage and default rates because of a commitment problem. The model generates rich distributions of maturity choices, leverage ratios, and credit spreads across firms. It explains why larger and older firms borrow at longer maturities, have higher leverage, and pay lower credit spreads. Firms' maturity choice matters for policy: A financial reform which increases investment and output in a standard model of short-term debt can have the opposite effect in a model with short-term debt and long-term debt.

Debt operating has dual characters, it could bring along both financial lever income and financial loss to the enterprises because of the financial leverage. Too low debt lever will lose the income...

A dynamic equilibrium model of schooling, borrowing, and job search is developed to quantify the aggregate implications of student loans. In my model, risk-averse agents under debt tend to search less and end up with lower-paid jobs. Calibrating the model using micro data, I show that student loans have significant effects on borrowers’ job search decisions under the fixed repayment plan. The income-based repayment plan (IBR) largely alleviates the burden of debt repayment by insuring labor market outcomes, allowing borrowers to conduct a more adequate job search. In general equilibrium, IBR also increases social welfare by encouraging college attendance.

We test whether high-frequency net-debt issuers (HFIs)—public industrial companies with relatively low issuance costs and high debt-financing benefits—manage leverage toward long-run targets. Our answer is they do not: (1) the leverage–profitability correlation is negative even in quarters with leverage rebalancing; (2) the speed-of-adjustment to target leverage deviations is no higher for HFIs than for low-frequency net-debt issuers; and (3) under-leveraged HFIs do not speed up rebalancing activity in significant investment periods. Thus, even in the subset of firms most likely to follow dynamic trade-off theory, the theory does not appear to hold.

Established, low-leverage equity REITs with access to the public debt market rely on both non-recourse mortgages and full recourse bonds/notes as sources of long-term debt. Interest rates on secure...

The valuation of government debt is subject to strategic uncertainty. Pessimistic lenders, fearing default, bid down the price of debt, leaving a government with a higher debt burden. This increases the likelihood of default, thus confirming the pessimism of lenders. Can monetary interventions mitigate debt fragility? With one-period commitment to a state-contingent policy, the monetary authority can indeed overcome strategic uncertainty. Under discretion, debt fragility remains unless reputation effects are sufficiently strong. Simpler forms of interventions, such as an inflation target, cannot eliminate debt fragility. (JEL E31, E43, E52, E62, G01, H63)

We empirically investigate the impact of government debt on corporate financing decisions in an international setting. We show a negative relation between government debt and corporate leverage using data on 40 countries between 1990–2014. This negative relation is stronger for government debt that is financed domestically, for firms that are larger and more profitable, and in countries with more developed equity markets. To address potential endogeneity concerns, we use an instrumental variable approach based on military spending and a quasi-natural experiment based on the introduction of the Euro currency. Our findings suggest that government debt crowds out corporate debt.

Does a country’s ability to enforce debt contracts affect the sensitivity of economic activity to collateral values? To answer this question, we introduce a novel industry-specific measure of real asset redeployability - the ease with which real assets are transfered to alternative uses - as a proxy for collateral liquidation values. Our measure exploits the heterogeneity of expenditures in new and used capital and the heterogeneity in the composition of real asset holdings across U.S. industries. Using a cross-industry cross-country approach, we find that industry size and growth are more sensitive to collateral values in countries with weaker debt enforcement. Our estimates indicate that the differential effect is sizeable. The sensitivity of economic activity to collateral values is not affected by a country’s financial development once the quality of debt enforcement is accounted for. We then rationalize our empirical findings based on a model of credit under imperfect enforcement and discuss an important implication of our empirical result: macroeconomic volatility generated by fluctuations in collateral values is higher in countries with weaker debt enforcement institutions.

We study optimal policy in an economy in which public debt serves as collateral or buffer stock. Issuing more public debt can raise welfare by easing the underlying friction; but it also reduces the premium that the private sector is willing to pay for this service, which in turn raises interest rates. This trade off shapes the optimal long-run quantity of public debt. It justifies larger deficits during financial crises. It may subsume other considerations, such as whether public debt crowds out, or in, capital. And it clarifies the circumstances under which a low risk-free rate represents an opportunity of cheap borrowing by the government. * This paper supersedes an earlier paper, entitled "Optimal Public Debt Management and Liquidity Provision" (Angeletos et al, 2016). We are grateful to Behzad Diba for his collaboration on the early stages of this project; to Pedro Teles and Per Krusell for discussing our paper in conferences; to numerous seminar participants for their comments; and, last but not certainly not least, to Harald Uhlig and three anonymous for their extensive feedback. Angeletos also thanks the University of Bern, the Study Center Gerzensee, and the Swiss Finance Institute for their hospitality.

This chapter discusses distress-triggered liabilities: contingent obligations of a corporate debtor that are likely to be triggered by the debtor’s own financial distress. Three common examples of such liabilities are loan default penalties, loan prepayment fees such as make-whole premiums, and intragroup guarantees. Because the risk that a distress-triggered liability will become payable correlates positively with the debtor’s insolvency risk, the incurring of the liability shifts expected losses onto the debtor’s general creditors. The result is an incentive-distorting value transfer from creditors to shareholders that generates the agency costs of debt. Bankruptcy courts could prevent these costs by subordinating distress-triggered claims to general creditor claims. Subordination would preserve the positive economic functions of distress-triggered claims, which in most instances require only that the claims be enforceable to the extent the debtor is solvent. A subordination rule would be consistent with both the purpose and the text of the Bankruptcy Code.

Since January 2014 the U.S. Treasury has been issuing floating rate notes (FRNs). We estimate that the U.S. FRNs have been paying excess interest between 5 and 39 basis points above the implied cost for other Treasury securities. We find a strong positive relation between our estimated excess spreads on FRNs and the subsequent realized excess returns of FRNs over related T-bill investment strategies. With more than 300 billion dollars of FRNs outstanding, the yearly excess borrowing costs are estimated to be several hundreds of millions of dollars. To rationalize this finding, we examine the role of FRNs from the perspective of optimal government debt management to smooth taxes. In the model, bills can be cheaper to issue than FRNs, and the payoffs for FRNs are perfectly correlated with future short rates. FRNs can be used to manage the refinancing risk from rolling over short-term debt. We derive conditions under which the issuance of FRNs can optimally be positive.

We study how allowing agents to use debt as collateral affects asset prices, leverage, and interest rates in a general equilibrium, heterogeneous-agent model with collateralized financial contracts and multiple states of uncertainty. In the absence of debt collateralization, multiple contracts are traded in equilibrium, with some agents borrowing using risky debt and others borrowing with risk-free debt. When agents can use debt contracts as collateral to borrow from other agents, margin requirements decrease, asset prices increase, and the interest rate on risky debt decreases. We characterize equilibrium for N states and L levels of debt collateralization and prove that enough levels of debt collateralization creates an equilibrium featuring maximal leverage on all debt contracts. In the dynamic model, debt collateralization creates larger asset price volatility.

We challenge the common view that short-term debt, by having to be rolled over continuously, is a risk factor that exposes banks to higher default risk. First, we show that the average effect of expiring obligations on default risk is insignificant; it is only when a bank has limited access to new funds that maturing debt has a detrimental impact on default risk. Next, we show that both limited access to new funds and shorter maturities are causally determined by deteriorating market expectations about the bank's future profitability. In other words, short-term debt is not a cause of fragility but the result of creditors losing faith in the long-run prospects of the bank, hence forcing it to shorten its debt maturity. Finally, we build a model that endogenizes the debt maturity structure and predicts that worse market expectations lead to a maturity shortening.

When encumbered property is sold, the taxation of that sale is different if the sale involves recourse debt as opposed to nonrecourse debt. This difference raises an intriguing question: when debt changes from recourse to nonrecourse, or vice versa, which rules will control? Examples of when debt changes from recourse to nonrecourse, or vice versa, include bankruptcy discharges, nonjudicial foreclosures in some states with deficiency statutes, some short sales in deficiency states, and the operation of section 1111(b) of the Bankruptcy Code. The Cottage Savings regulations, Regulation section 1.1001-3, have specific provisions designed to address what happens when debt changes from recourse to nonrecourse, or vice versa. These regulations are sometimes helpful to creditors (e.g. , elections under section 1111(b)(2) of the Bankruptcy Code). Sometimes, they appear punitive to debtors (e.g. , the mandatory conversion of recourse debt into nonrecourse debt in Chapter 11). And, sometimes, they do not provide an answer (e.g. , short sales and nonjudicial foreclosures in deficiency states). The Author believes that when recourse debt is converted to nonrecourse debt by operation of a discharge in bankruptcy, there should be a discharge of indebtedness event, and thereafter, the nonrecourse rules would apply, albeit with the nonrecourse debt reduced by the amount of the debt discharged. As a result, after discharge, the nonrecourse debt would be reduced to the fair market value of the collateral. Upon a subsequent sale, the amount realized by the debtor would be the fair market value of the property (or the new taxvalue of the debt if the property declines in value). The current rule, with the amount realized equaling the old face value of the debt, would no longer apply. This change would put an end to the punitive gains resulting from the current nonrecourse-sale rules. Unfortunately, this proposal is probably not administratively feasible.

This paper provides an empirical framework for computing a flow measure of public debt called the debt-to-duration ratio. A ratio of this measure to GDP (DD-to-GDP) is a unit-free measure of debt burden interpreted as the percentage of income for debt service or repayment. Using monthly US Treasury data (1997–2018), we compare this measure to the debt-to-GDP ratio. The DD-to-GDP ratio is an alternative for use in discussions about sustainability of current levels of debt. An empirical test of the relationship between rising debt ratios and growth shows that duration has an important counteracting relationship with higher debt lowering growth but longer duration being associated with higher growth in the medium term.

We study optimal debt management in the face of shocks that can drive the economy into a liquidity trap and call for an increase in public spending in order to mitigate the resulting recession. Our approach follows the literature of macroeconomic models of debt management, which we extend to the case where the zero lower bound on the short-term interest rate may bind. We wish to identify the conditions under which removing long-maturity government debt from the secondary market can be an optimal policy outcome. We show that the optimal debt-management strategy is to issue short-term debt if the government faces a sizable exogenous increase in public spending and if its initial liability is not very large. In this case, our results run against the standard prescription of the debt-management literature. In contrast, if the initial debt level is high, then issuing long term government bonds is optimal. Finally, we find a role for revisions in the debt management strategy during LT episodes, whereby the government actively manages the maturity structure, in some cases removing long bonds from the secondary market.

We examine the relation between chief executive officer (CEO) inside debt holdings and the firm's choice between debt and equity financing when it accesses external capital markets. We find positive relations between CEO inside debt holdings and both the firm's likelihood to issue debt and the proportion of debt of their total external financing. Additional analysis indicates that CEO inside debt is negatively related to the cost of debt and positively related to the stock price reaction around the public debt issue announcement. Our results are consistent with the argument that inside debt aligns managers' and debtholders' interests leading to favorable debt terms that motivate firms to raise debt to meet their capital needs.

This paper considers the issue of sovereign debts in the Eurozone. The reasons for the reduction of public debt, which are quite strong in the present circumstances of slow growth, are briefly discussed with reference to EMU countries. Then the different possible strategies to reduce the public debt/GDP ratio while avoiding any form of debt restructuring are considered. The choice to cut public debt by means of a violent and unexpected upsurge of inflation, which in the past has often been the preferred solution, is not viable today in the Union. On the other side, alternative option for reducing the public debt by means of extraordinary finance instruments, such as wealth taxes, privatization of public companies and sale of public assets can assure only limited results. Thus the policy presently adopted in the EU, relying on the progressive accumulation of surpluses in the general government’s primary budget (the austerity solution), seems to be the only practicable exit. However the alternative of restructuring has been investigated with growing attention in the last few years. Two distinct perspectives have been followed. On one side a number of proposals deal with the issue of existing (legacy) debt. On the other one, several projects have been presented aimed to establish a permanent insolvency mechanism for sovereigns. The former group of projects wants to avoid the private sector involvement and are based on complex mechanism of securitization of future revenue of member states (seigniorage and taxes). There are reasons to doubt that they are something substantially different from the policies currently followed and, especially, that can be more favourable to growth. The latter group of proposals, concerning the institution of an ordered procedure of insolvency for sovereigns, are meant to make effective the no bail out principle, whose compliance has proved very difficult so far. The question is raised if this perspective is really realisable in the absence of any element of fiscal union.

In an environment of near-zero yields for traditional asset classes and tightening bank regulation, debt in privately-arranged loans has become an interesting alternative to publicly-distributed bonds for borrowers and professional investors. Key questions for potential investors concern the expected return and risk inherent to such investments, and the diversification benefits they offer for strategic asset allocation. Due to the private nature of these markets, however, historical data are not available at a micro level. For most segments of the market, representative current yield figures for Europe can be only inferred from anecdotal evidence around current transactions or derived from central banks’ aggregate series. In this article, the authors analyze private debt interest rates and the features that are relevant for asset allocation decisions using a mix of non-public data, snap-shot data, and publicly available, highly aggregated historical data on bank loans. By means of regression analysis, the authors find that they can disentangle the main components of private debt rates over time, and assess the existence of a premium related to the illiquidity and complexity of private debt markets. Then, they look for possible diversification opportunities that private debt may offer in asset allocation, and observe that efficient portfolios obtained by investing in private debt are more diversified and achieve higher expected returns for any given level of expected risk than portfolios that do not invest in this asset class.

We identify the effect of the bank credit shock of the 2007–2009 crisis on corporate debt structure by analyzing the substitution of bank debt with nonbank debt (both private and public). Using firm-level data in 34 countries, we find that nonbank credit partially substitutes bank loans in bank-dependent firms after the onset of the global financial crisis. However, there are differences across countries depending on creditor rights and information sharing among creditors. Strong creditor protection in bankruptcy increases the reduction in bank debt whereas a collateral regime favors substitution with private nonbank debt. Information sharing favors substitution with public debt.

This paper examines the potential for monetary policy to avoid self-fulfilling sovereign debt crises. We combine a version of the slow-moving debt crisis model proposed by Lorenzoni and Werning (2014) with a standard New Keynesian model. Monetary policy could preclude a debt crisis through raising inflation and output and lowering the real interest rate. These reduce the real value of outstanding debt and the cost of new borrowing, and increase tax revenues and seigniorage. We determine the optimal path of inflation required to avoid a self-fulfilling debt crisis. Stronger price rigidity implies more sustained inflation.

Debt reduction in business is recognised for the economic relief afforded to the debtor involved. The new debt reduction regime was introduced in the Income Tax Act (section 19 and paragraph 12A of the Eighth Schedule) with the aim of minimising the tax impact so as not to negate the economic benefit. The new regime introduced an exclusion for debt reduced by way of a donation and uncertainty exists on instances where this exclusion would apply. This article considered four broad categories of factors indicative in the classification of a debt reduction as a donation (inadequate consideration; gratuitous waiver; intent and motive; classification as connected persons) and concluded with the formulation of such factors. The classification as connected persons is regarded as the most indicative of a debt reduction being classified as a donation, which could result in tax arbitrage if the creditor and debtor are taxed at different rates on the taxable income result of the debt reduction.

This article is aimed to study the impact of collateral liquidity on debt-access. Such an effect is proven with regard to the difficult economic conditions which ensued from the Tunisian revolution in 2011. The results show that the previously acquired liquid assets enhance debt access. This result is realized by a first measure through the positive relationship between inventories and short term debt and between fixed assets and long term debt. A second measure highlights the positive effect of lands, buildings, machineries and equipments and the negative effect of other fixed assets on debt-access. After the revolution, the creditors lowered their lending to firms to deal with liquidity shocks in the monetary market. Also, they became more selective through their excessive demand for liquid collateral. This result is justified by the intensive effect of real estate assets (lands and buildings) and by the regressive effect of the movable assets (machineries, equipments and other fixed assets).

We document cyclical fluctuations in scheduled payments of newly issued sovereign debt. During recessions, scheduled payments become more back-loaded. Our results provide direct evidence on a key parameter governing the functional form of cash flows in the long-term debt literature.

We study public debt in competitive equilibria in which a government chooses transfers and taxes optimally and in addition decides how thoroughly to enforce debt contracts. If the government enforces perfectly, asset inequality is determined in an optimum competitive equilibrium but the level of government debt is not. Welfare increases if private debt contracts are not enforced. Borrowing frictions let the government gather monopoly rents that come from issuing public debt without facing competing private borrowers. Regardless of whether the government chooses to enforce private debt contracts, the level of initial government debt does not affect an optimal allocation.

When facing financial distress, French households can file a case to a “households’ over-indebtedness commission” (HDC). The HDC can order an immediate repayment or grant a debt suspension. Exploiting the random assignment of bankruptcy filings to managers, we show that a debt suspension has a very significant and negative effect on the likelihood to re-default but that this impact is only short-lived. The effect depends not only on the characteristics of the households but also on the nature of their indebtedness. Our results imply that rather than focusing on a specific debt profile, above all a deeper restructuring of the expenditure side is necessary to make the plan sustainable in case of an uniform increase of the HDC severity. They also single out specific banks lending to particular fragile households. They indicate the importance of policy actions on budget counseling, as well as the importance of regulation of credit distribution to avoid both entering into bankruptcy and re-filing for bankruptcy.

Sovereign debt distress has raised difficult issues in terms of debt sustainability in the past, but it has been associated not only with medium-term debt dynamics, but also with various di...

What are the welfare consequences of debt reduction policies? In this paper, we answer this question with the help of an incomplete markets economy with production in which households are subject to uninsurable income shocks. We focus on policies that raise revenues from taxing income. We make three contributions. First, we show that quantitatively sizable welfare gains can be reaped by reducing debt, at least in the long-run. Second, we find that, for some policies, the short-run losses that occur during the transition more than outweigh the long-run gains. And third, we show that both short-run and long-run welfare effects of government debt depend on the income composition of the consumption-poor. In our calibration, we thus target the skewed wealth and the earnings distribution of the US economy. Our results have important implications for the design of debt reduction strategies. Policies that imply more redistribution will find more political support, as they compensate the consumption-poor, who suffer the most during the transition.

The main reason of limiting the possibility of using external institutions in the context of public debt management seems to be high political nature of economic policy in Poland and lack of consequence and effectiveness in the realization of strategy aims in the context of public debt management (frequent changes in terms of not overly ambitious aims which loosen the discipline). A few phenomena have become significant: ad hoc public debt management and temporary actions for rating agencies (only to prevent rating decrease) or for not exceeding of national and/or EU limits in terms of acceptable public debt or deficit level (to avoid precautionary procedures which limit the expansive character of fiscal policy or the procedure of excessive deficit which decreases credibility and increases capital cost). And although this issue can be found in the majority of the EU member states, its effects are much more severe in the case of developing economies where more expensive capital, as a result of overestimated investment risk, in combination with stronger demand for foreign capital, limits the process of catching up in terms of development and further strengthens the dependency: more expensive capital – faster debt growth.

A loan guarantee occurs when a company guarantees payment of an affiliate’s loan. Conflicting arguments regarding loan guarantees provided to affiliates have prevailed. First, some suggest that loan guarantees provided to affiliates would decrease firm value because they are contingent liabilities (Shim, 1996; Berkman, Cole & Fu, 2009). Second, others suggest firm value is high when the amount of loan guarantees provided to affiliates is large because loan guarantees would be regarded as a positive indicator of future cash flow (Lee, 2005). The purpose of this study was to present additional empirical evidence of these arguments. The result of this study showed that cost of debt is high when the amount of loan guarantees provided to affiliates is large. This result indicates that creditors demand higher risk premiums when the amount of loan guarantees provided to affiliates is large because they regard loan guarantees as contingent liabilities. Therefore, this result supports the assertion that loan guarantees decrease firm value.

Almost all governments issue large stocks of debt. Optimal taxation theory typically concludes that they should hold large stocks of assets. To reconcile facts and theory, we introduce two simple modifications into an otherwise standard optimal taxation model with commitment: government impatience and continuous debt limits. Two results are obtained. First, positive government debt is optimal for even minimal government impatience. Second, the optimality of negative government debt disappears even without impatience if discrete debt limits are replaced by very wide but continuous debt limits. We go on to quantify the implications for debt, interest rates and business cycle dynamics.

Since the birth of the Republic, the United States has gone through five debt-crisis episodes defined as year-on-year increases in net federal debt in the 95-percentile. The Great Recession is the second largest, and the only one in which primary deficits continue six years later and are expected to persist at least through 2026. Persistent deficits are also sharply at odds with the surpluses that contributed to the reversal of all major debt surges in U.S. history. There is a view that high debt is not a concern and more debt is needed for fiscal stimulus and/or strong global demand for ‘safe assets’. This paper makes four points to the contrary based on findings from the literature: First, empirical work shows that debt sustainability conditions display a significant break after 2008 and fiscal stimulus fails when debt is high. Second, a dynamic general equilibrium model predicts that tax adjustments may not make the debt sustainable and will have adverse effects on macro aggregates and social welfare. Third, the strong appetite for U.S. public debt worldwide can be a slow-moving, transitory result from financial globalization in an environment in which U.S. financial markets are relatively more developed and the expected financing needs of the U.S. government are large. Fourth, domestic sovereign default could become optimal if the cost of regressive redistribution in order to make debt payments outweighs default costs related to the social value of debt for liquidity provision, self-insurance and risk-sharing.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the odious debt concept in Greece. In Greece, the odious debt concept received high attention during recent financial crisis and Greek or Hellenic Parliament decided to establish a Special Committee. Design/methodology/approach The Greek Parliament Truth Committee on Public Debt investigated the public debt in Greece, and the main findings are: increase of debt was related to the growth in interest payments, high public spending in defence expenditures associated with corruption scandals, falsification of public deficit and debt statistical data and illicit capital outflows and adopting the euro led to a drastic increase in private debt. Findings Based on above the third Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) and the August 2015 loan agreement, according to Greek Parliament Truth Committee on Public Debt are illegal, illegitimate and odious because they fail to recognize the odious character of Greece’s existing debt, and the nature of the instruments by which this debt was financed from 2010 until early 2015. The Third MoU and the August 2015 loan agreement violate the fundamental human rights of the Greek people (both civil and political as well as socio-economic rights) as set out in the Greek Constitution and under international law (treaty-based and customary). Research limitations/implications On the other side of results, Greece was a democratic regime during the time it contracted the vast majority of its loans and membership into the Eurozone, which benefitted country by gaining the highly low interest rates that euro currency involved. Also, substantial borrowing for Greece spent directly on the people via social welfare and public sector wages and infrastructure development. Practical implications Therefore, Greece, instead of the odious debt doctrine, should resort to other debt solutions such as simple debt repayment, restructuring or “haircut” of the debt (principal and interest) or declare bankruptcy without invoking the odious debt doctrine. Although this recourse avoids the dangerous precedent-setting risks of the odious debt doctrine, it also involves numerous other complexities and policy problems because with default, the banking system would collapse. Originality/value It is the first study examining the topic of odious public debt in Greece.

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.

We consider an irreversible investment, of which the sunk cost is financed by a finite-term debt after entering into an option-for-guarantee swap (OGS) with negotiation. The OGS is a three-party agreement among a lender (bank), an insurer, and a borrower (entrepreneur), where the bank lends at a given interest rate to the entrepreneur and if the borrower defaults on debt, the insurer must pay all the principal and remaining interests to the lender instead of the borrower. In return for the guarantee, the borrower must allocate a perpetual American call option to purchase a fraction (guarantee cost) of his equity at a given strike price. We find that the investment threshold decreases but the exercise threshold of the insurer’s option increases with the borrower’s bargaining power. Both the investment and exercise threshold increase with debt maturity, but there is a U-shaped relation between the guarantee cost and debt maturity. The borrower postpones investment once the funding gap or project risk increases. The swap may overcome the inefficiencies from asset substitution and debt overhang, strongly depending on the debt maturity and borrower’s bargaining power.

This paper investigates the syndrome of “this time is different” with respect to Reinhart and Rogoff’s (This time is different: eight centuries of financial folly Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2011) interpretation of their extensive, historical data on financial default, and with particular regard to public debt in a closed-economy. Recurrent and over-generous promises to credulous investors of an ex ante, policy-optimal return amounts to an extra policy instrument in boosting the demand for public debt. In a numerical simulation of a version of the Diamond (Am Econ Rev 55:1126–1150, 1965) model, we find that the incentive for the policy-maker to pursue this strategy is trivial if taxes can be set at a policy-optimal level, but possibly over-riding if they cannot. Thus, the main result lines up with the empirical conclusion of Reinhart et al. (Debt intolerance. Debt intolerance, 2003) that “debt intolerant countries have weak fiscal structures”. The subsidiary result of the model is that defaulting countries will also have higher shares of public expenditure. Thus the model also predicts Wagner’s Law to the extent that fiscal structure is correlated with economic development.

This paper studies how the level of international reserves affects the maturity structure of external debt. We show in an illustrative theoretical model that reserves lengthen the maturity of external debt via a flattening of the yield curve. Using data of 66 emerging and developing countries and applying different econometric approaches, we find robust evidence that reserves increase the share of long-term in total external debt. Results hold for private and public external debt individually. Taking reserves and their effect on the debt maturity structure together, they reinforce financial stability. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This paper analyses debtors who proposed for a debt relief in a period between 1. 1. 2012 and 31. 12. 2013. Topic of debt relief has been already researched in Moravian and Silesian regions, therefore this paper concentrates mainly on Bohemian regions. The possibility of debt relief (personal bankruptcy in other words) for debtors has been in Czech legislation since year 2008 and number of personal bankruptcies has been considerably rising ever since. This paper presents only a part of ongoing research and therefore comprise only certain characteristics, such as the level and structure of debtor’s income, the amount of their debt and also structure of their creditors. The data and the results of the research are analysed and compared among regions.

The Indonesian bankruptcy law system adheres to the debt collective principle which is general seizure (sita umum) of the debtor’s property as guarantee for the payment of debt through the bankruptcy institution. The principle of debt collective stresses that the debtor’s debt shall be paid immediately from the property owned by the debtor. Based on such principle, bankruptcy serves as a means of coercion to materialize the creditors’ rights through liquidation of the debtor’s assets. Bankruptcy law in Indonesia does not recognize the principle of debt forgiveness, among others, the implementation of debt relief granted to the debtor to pay off debts that are truly incapable of being fulfilled. According to the Bankruptcy Law, after the completion of the bankruptcy process, the debtor is no longer in a state of bankruptcy, because the end of bankruptcy has revoked the status of insolvent debtors, hence debtors are considered as being competent to take care of their property. However, the termination of bankruptcy does not necessarily absolve the debtor from the remainder of the debt; creditors are entitled to collect it and debtors are obligated to pay it off. Upon the completion of the bankruptcy process, debtors or their heirs may apply for rehabilitation. However, rehabilitation is only to be granted if all creditors state that they have obtained payment in a satisfactory manner, meaning that recognized creditors will not file claims against the debtor concerned again even though they may not have received payment on all of their outstanding receivables. Request for rehabilitation can only be granted if the debtor has completed the entire scheme of bankruptcy and creditors were satisfied with the payment.

The debt brake for German states, which demands that they are forbidden from taking up new net debt from 2020 onwards, has two major shortcomings. First, states do not have tax autonomy. In fiscal crises, they can only make adjustments to expenditure but not on the revenue side. Given the fact that most expenditure is—at least in the short term—predetermined by law, in such a crisis a balanced budget without new debt is hardly feasible. Second, the measure does not take into account that large investments, in particular in small regional units, can scarcely be financed by current expenditure. Thus, there is a high probability that at least some states will take up new net debt even after 2020 and, therefore, violate the rules of the debt brake.

We investigate the role of information technology (IT) in the collection of delinquent consumer debt. We argue that the widespread adoption of IT by the debt collection industry in the 1990s contributed to the observed expansion of unsecured risky lending such as credit cards. Our model stresses the importance of delinquency and private information about borrower solvency. The prevalence of delinquency implies that the costs of debt collection must be borne by lenders to sustain incentives to repay debt. IT mitigates informational asymmetries, allowing lenders to concentrate collection efforts on delinquent borrowers who are more likely to repay. (JEL D14, D82, G21, L84, M15, O33)

This article concerns the temporality of debt. Against the claim that the society of debt has emptied out futures via the elevation of the promise to pay to a total social fact, it suggests that the time of securitized debt is speculative in form. Thus, in the time of securitized debt, pasts, presents and futures do not stand in a pre-set relation to one another, but are open to a constant state of revision: they may be drawn and redrawn, assembled and disassembled, set and reset. This time is tracked across changing schedules of household and personal debt − and crucially in the logics of accumulation via securitized debt – to argue that far from emptying out futures debt society demands subjects who must constantly adjust to recalibrations of pasts, presents and futures as well as to changes in the relations between and across these states.

The paper looks at the powers of the States to unilaterally modify their debt obligations in the context of sovereign debt restructurings. Drawing on the national case law on the unilateral modifications of domestic debt, the paper argues that the States entering into sovereign bonds act in private capacity and cannot modify the private obligations in a unilateral manner. To support the argument, paper relies on the case law from the US, the Russian Federation and England. The paper also considers the powers of the State to modify private-to-private debt obligations and the debt entered into by quasi-public entities.

The up-to-date approaches to external debt and its effects on economic processes entrench the standpoint of debt financing being the distinctive feature of the modern inclined-to-liberalization world. Subsequently, unhampered capital flow between economies is the offspring of macroeconomic equilibrium, since the allocation of capital based on barrier-free movement pays the way for factor prices levelling. Given these points, commodity prices develop a propensity for adjustment, financial system acquires sustainability and reliability. This research builds on existing knowledge in the domain of debt and is conducted in pursue of analyzing the U.S. external debt and effects it has on both the U.S. Economy and the global economy. Prior to looking into the external debt itself, the research study reveals the latest world financial and economic tendencies, the distinguishing features of which are low interest rates and smoldering economic growth. The IMF dubbed this economic agenda as “…a low growth, low-rate area” [1]. Along similar lines, the results of the research lend firm support to the view that the U.S. external debt poses little threat to the world economy in the short-run, since the U.S. economic growth outpaces debt servicing costs build-up. However, in case of the emergence of an economic decline, the United States may face challenges of debt servicing in the long-run perspective, hence fail to comply with the sacred principles of debt relationship such as timeliness and solvency

The authors argue that economic growth has been far too dependent on rising debt over the last few decades. Once it was housing debt, now it is consumer and student debt. The solution is fiscal growth policies, including public investment, and a version of debt forgiveness. We will not get rapid growth again with such a debt overload, which also increases the possibilities of another debt crash and accompanying economic deflation.