IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/1820.html

Sovereign Liquidity Crises: the Strategic Case for a Payments Standstill

Author

Listed:
  • Miller, Marcus
  • Zhang, Lei

Abstract

Is sovereign debt so different from corporate debt that there is no need for bankruptcy procedures to handle potential defaults? The basic tools of finance seem to confirm that, without water-tight sovereign immunity, creditors face a Prisoner’s Dilemma: litiginous creditors may be tempted to grab what sovereign assets they can in a ‘race of the vultures’. Recent case history also suggests that there may be gains to ‘learning by suing’. To check this by a standstill on payments would doubtless run some risk of debtor’s moral hazard, as the Institute for International Finance have warned in their report on crisis resolution. But not to have an orderly procedure may mean that the IMF is de facto forced to bail out distressed members, leading to the risk of investors’ moral hazard, where investors lend without monitoring (secure in the belief that the international agencies will have to intervene). The strategic case for making legal a standstill on payments is to rescue the authorities from this ‘time consistent’ trap.

Suggested Citation

  • Miller, Marcus & Zhang, Lei, 1998. "Sovereign Liquidity Crises: the Strategic Case for a Payments Standstill," CEPR Discussion Papers 1820, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:1820
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=1820
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. William R. Cline, 1995. "International Debt Reexamined," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number 46, October.
    2. W.H. Buiter & A Sibert, 1999. "UDROP: A Small Contribution to the International Financial Architecture," CEP Discussion Papers dp0425, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    3. Stanley Fischer, 1999. "On the Need for an International Lender of Last Resort," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(4), pages 85-104, Fall.
    4. Maurice Obstfeld & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 1996. "Foundations of International Macroeconomics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262150476, December.
    5. Willem H. Buiter & Anne C. Sibert, 1999. "UDROP: A Contribution to the New International Financial Architecture," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 2(2), pages 227-247, July.
    6. Marcus Miller & Lei Zhang, 1998. "Macroeconomic Policy Options for Managing Capital Flows," CSGR Hot Topics: Research on Current Issues 01, Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation (CSGR), University of Warwick.
    7. Lambrecht, Bart & Perraudin, William, 1996. "Creditor races and contingent claims," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(3-5), pages 897-907, April.
    8. Maurice Obstfeld, 1994. "The Logic of Currency Crises," NBER Working Papers 4640, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Cohen, Daniel, 1993. "A valuation formula for LDC debt," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1-2), pages 167-180, February.
    10. Leonardo Bartolini & Avinash Dixit, 1991. "Market Valuation of Illiquid Debt and Implications for Conflicts among Creditors," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 38(4), pages 828-849, December.
    11. Amar Bhattacharya & Marcus Miller, 1999. "Coping with Crises: Is There a "Silver Bullet"?," CSGR Hot Topics: Research on Current Issues 06, Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation (CSGR), University of Warwick.
    12. Buiter, Willem H. & Sibert, Anne, 1999. "UDROP: A Small Contribution to the New International Financial Architecture," CEPR Discussion Papers 2138, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    13. Agénor,Pierre-Richard & Miller,Marcus & Vines,David & Weber,Axel (ed.), 1999. "The Asian Financial Crisis," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521770804.
    14. Jonathan Eaton & Mark Gersovitz, 1981. "Debt with Potential Repudiation: Theoretical and Empirical Analysis," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 48(2), pages 289-309.
    15. Jeremy Bulow & Kenneth Rogoff, 1991. "Sovereign Debt Repurchases: No Cure for Overhang," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(4), pages 1219-1235.
    16. Barry J. Eichengreen, 1999. "Toward a New International Financial Architecture: A Practical Post-Asia Agenda," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number 51, October.
    17. repec:bla:intfin:v:2:y:1999:i:2:p:227-47 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Jeremy Bulow & Kenneth Rogoff, 1988. "The Buyback Boondoggle," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 19(2), pages 675-704.
    19. Olivier Jean Blanchard & Stanley Fischer, 1989. "Lectures on Macroeconomics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262022834, December.
    20. Daniel Cohen, 1998. "The Sustainability of African Debt," International Economic Association Series, in: Daniel Cohen (ed.), Contemporary Economic Issues, chapter 7, pages 160-181, Palgrave Macmillan.
    21. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1977. "Rules Rather Than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(3), pages 473-491, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Luisa Lambertini, 2001. "Volatility and Sovereign Default," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 577, Boston College Department of Economics.
    2. Obregon, Carlos, 2018. "Globalization misguided views," MPRA Paper 85813, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Obregon, Carlos, 2018. "Globalización visiones equivocadas [Globalization misguided views]," MPRA Paper 86396, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. María Cecilia Acevedo & Leandro Andrián & Victoria Nuguer & Oscar Mauricio Valencia, 2023. "Understanding the Rise in Debt," IDB Publications (Book Chapters), in: Andrew Powell & Oscar Mauricio Valencia (ed.), Dealing with Debt, edition 1, chapter 4, pages 67-94, Inter-American Development Bank.
    5. Leopoldo Avellán & Arturo Galindo & Giulia Lotti, 2023. "Official Creditors: Providing More than Money," IDB Publications (Book Chapters), in: Andrew Powell & Oscar Mauricio Valencia (ed.), Dealing with Debt, edition 1, chapter 7, pages 161-182, Inter-American Development Bank.
    6. Buch, Claudia M., 1999. "Chilean-type capital controls: A building block of the new international financial architecture?," Kiel Discussion Papers 350, Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
    7. Juan Manuel Hernández & Andrew Powell & Oscar Mauricio Valencia, 2023. "Debt Sustainability: More Important than Ever," IDB Publications (Book Chapters), in: Andrew Powell & Oscar Mauricio Valencia (ed.), Dealing with Debt, edition 1, chapter 5, pages 95-122, Inter-American Development Bank.
    8. Neiss, Katharine S, 1999. "Discretionary Inflation in a General Equilibrium Model," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 31(3), pages 357-374, August.
    9. Alogoskoufis, George, 2021. "Asymmetries of financial openness in an optimal growth model," The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, Elsevier, vol. 23(C).
    10. Eduardo Cavallo & Eduardo Fernández Arias, 2023. "Strong External Balance Sheets for Resilient Economies," IDB Publications (Book Chapters), in: Andrew Powell & Oscar Mauricio Valencia (ed.), Dealing with Debt, edition 1, chapter 2, pages 5-36, Inter-American Development Bank.
    11. María Cecilia Acevedo & Vanessa Alviarez & Joaquin Lennon Sabatini, 2023. "Managing Private Debt," IDB Publications (Book Chapters), in: Andrew Powell & Oscar Mauricio Valencia (ed.), Dealing with Debt, edition 1, chapter 11, pages 255-284, Inter-American Development Bank.
    12. Eichengreen, Barry & Ruhl, Christof, 2001. "The bail-in problem: systematic goals, ad hoc means," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 3-32, March.
    13. Jonathan P. Thomas, 2001. "Default Costs, Willingness to Pay and Sovereign Debt Buybacks," International Finance 0103002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Powell, Andrew & Valencia, Oscar, 2023. "Dealing with Debt: Less Risk for More Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean," IDB Publications (Books), Inter-American Development Bank, number 12664, June.
    15. Andrew Powell & Oscar Mauricio Valencia, 2023. "The Debt Conundrum," IDB Publications (Book Chapters), in: Andrew Powell & Oscar Mauricio Valencia (ed.), Dealing with Debt, edition 1, chapter 1, pages 1-4, Inter-American Development Bank.
    16. Siebert, Horst, 1999. "Improving the world's financial architecture: The role of the IMF," Kiel Discussion Papers 351, Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
    17. Jeffrey A. Frankel & Nouriel Roubini, 2001. "The Role of Industrial Country Policies in Emerging Market Crises," NBER Working Papers 8634, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Olivier Jeanne, 2009. "Debt Maturity and the International Financial Architecture," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 2135-2148, December.
    19. Rogoff, Kenneth, 2022. "Issues in the theory of sovereign debt and post-covid workouts," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 44(4), pages 804-811.
    20. Eduardo Borensztein & Eduardo Cavallo, 2023. "Domestic Bond Markets: Successes and Challenges," IDB Publications (Book Chapters), in: Andrew Powell & Oscar Mauricio Valencia (ed.), Dealing with Debt, edition 1, chapter 3, pages 37-66, Inter-American Development Bank.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • F34 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Lending and Debt Problems
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:1820. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CEPR (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://cepr.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.