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Leavey School of Business Santa Clara University
Department ofEconomics

Selected Publications

Sovereign Debt in the 21st Century

Kris Mitchener

Journal of Economic Literature (2023)

Mitchener, Kris James, and Christoph Trebesch. 2023. "Sovereign Debt in the Twenty-first Century." Journal of Economic Literature, 61 (2): 565-623.


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Abstract

How will sovereign debt markets evolve in the twenty-first century? We survey how the literature has responded to the eurozone debt crisis, placing "lessons learned" in historical perspective. The crisis featured: (i) the return of debt problems to advanced economies, (ii) a bank-sovereign "doom loop" and the propagation of sovereign risk to households and firms, (iii) rollover problems and self-fulfilling crisis dynamics, (iv) severe debt distress without outright sovereign defaults, (v) large-scale sovereign bailouts from abroad, and (vi) creditor threats to litigate and hold out in a debt restructuring. Many of these characteristics were already present in historical debt crises and are likely to remain relevant in the future. Looking forward, our survey points to a growing role of sovereign bank linkages, legal risks, domestic debt and default, and of official creditors, due to new lenders such as China as well as the increasing dominance of central banks in global debt markets. Questions of debt sustainability and default will remain acute in both developing and advanced economies.

LSB Research, ECON, Kris Mitchener, 2023,