Uncertainty Premia, Sovereign Default Risk, and State-Contingent Debt

We analyze how concerns for model misspecification on the part of international lenders affect the desirability of issuing state-contingent debt instruments in a standard sovereign default model à la Eaton and Gersovitz (1981). We show that for the commonly used threshold state-contingent bond struc...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Roch, Francisco
Other Authors: Roldán, Francisco
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Washington, D.C. International Monetary Fund 2021
Series:IMF Working Papers
Subjects:
Online Access:
Collection: International Monetary Fund - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
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245 0 0 |a Uncertainty Premia, Sovereign Default Risk, and State-Contingent Debt  |c Francisco Roch, Francisco Roldán 
260 |a Washington, D.C.  |b International Monetary Fund  |c 2021 
300 |a 38 pages 
651 4 |a Argentina 
653 |a Rational expectations 
653 |a Public debt 
653 |a Financial crises 
653 |a Public finance & taxation 
653 |a Deflation 
653 |a Saving and Capital Investment 
653 |a Expectations 
653 |a Debts, Public 
653 |a Exports and Imports 
653 |a Economic Development: Financial Markets 
653 |a International Lending and Debt Problems 
653 |a External debt 
653 |a Economics of specific sectors 
653 |a Asset prices 
653 |a Currency crises 
653 |a Bonds 
653 |a International Economics 
653 |a Rational expectations; Economic theory 
653 |a Macroeconomics 
653 |a Economic theory 
653 |a Speculations 
653 |a Economic & financial crises & disasters 
653 |a Inflation 
653 |a Economic Theory 
653 |a Financial institutions 
653 |a Economics: General 
653 |a Debt Management 
653 |a Debt 
653 |a Informal sector; Economics 
653 |a General Financial Markets: General (includes Measurement and Data) 
653 |a Economic theory & philosophy 
653 |a Investments: Bonds 
653 |a International economics 
653 |a Economic sectors 
653 |a Debts, External 
653 |a Sovereign Debt 
653 |a Price Level 
653 |a Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy 
653 |a Prices 
653 |a Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects 
653 |a Investment & securities 
653 |a Public Finance 
653 |a Debt default 
653 |a Corporate Finance and Governance 
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520 |a We analyze how concerns for model misspecification on the part of international lenders affect the desirability of issuing state-contingent debt instruments in a standard sovereign default model à la Eaton and Gersovitz (1981). We show that for the commonly used threshold state-contingent bond structure (e.g., the GDP-linked bond issued by Argentina in 2005), the model with robustness generates ambiguity premia in bond spreads that can explain most of what the literature has labeled as novelty premium. While the government would be better off with this bond when facing rational expectations lenders, this additional source of premia leads to welfare losses when facing robust lenders. Finally, we characterize the optimal design of the state-contingent bond and show how it varies with the level of robustness. Our findings rationalize the little use of these instruments in practice and shed light on their optimal design