We use a new, comprehensive data set on the sovereign debt investor base to document three novel empirical facts: (i) sovereign debt is repatriated - that is, shifted from external private to domestic investors - prior to sovereign defaults; (ii) not all crises are equal: evidence for repatriation during banking and currency crises is more limited; and (iii) the nature of defaults matters: external investors do not leave during preemptive debt restructurings. We further show that repatriation appears to be prevalent when defaults happen in large markets with low capital controls. The data set we use is uniquely suited to analyzing investor base dynamics during rare crises due to its large cross-section and time series, covering 180 countries from 1989 to 2020.

Contributes to a better understanding of the policy, economic, and legal options of countries struggling with debt problems.

In this gripping narrative, Carlo Bastasin reconstructs the main political decisions of the euro crisis, unveiling the hidden interests and the secret diplomacy behind the scene. The European dream was both the rejection of war and the creation of a new spirit of peaceful cooperation. Yet confrontation has been the hallmark of the euro crisis, and national opportunistic gimmicks have driven the awkward attempts to solve the crisis itself. Today, Europe is in a crisis of democracy, which Bastasin has dubbed, "the first War of Interdependence of the global age." Praise for the first edition of Saving EuropeBastasin does an admirable job in analysing the euro-zone's economic challenges and is a sure-footed guide through the seemingly endless European Union summit meetings that were supposed to resolve them. He also has an eye for the human detail that makes his sad account of institutional muddle surprisingly compelling. — Financial Times Bastasin's book is worth reading for its detailed political narrative of the eurozone crisis to date, focusing on the interaction among decision-makers in Europe's capitals. — Foreign Affairs A reconstruction that may be considered definitive. Revelations on the European negotiations are written with talent and go hand in hand with no-esoteric economic analysis and with the right amount of realism to reach the political substance. —Corriere della Sera Anyone looking for general knowledge and deeper understanding of the crisis, I can recommend a formidable analysis by Carlo Bastasin: Saving Europe. The author is a very unusual combination of a qualified economist and driven journalism. —Svenska Dagbladet

Sovereign debt is necessary for states to function, yet its impact on human rights is underexplored. Bantekas and Lumina gather experts to conclude that imposing structural adjustment programmes exacerbates debt, injures the entrenched rights of peoples and their state's economic sovereignty, and worsens the borrower's economic situation.

This book provides a thorough legal analysis of sovereign indebtedness, examining four typologies of sovereign debt – bilateral debt, multilateral debt, syndicated debt and bonded debt – in relation to three crucial contexts: genesis, restructuring and litigation. Its treatise-style approach makes it possible to capture in a systematic manner a phenomenon characterized by high complexity and unclear boundaries. Though the analysis is mainly conducted on the basis of international law, the breadth of this topical subject has made it necessary to include other sources, such as private international law, domestic law and financial practice; moreover, references are made to international financial relations and international financial history so as to provide a more complete understanding. Although it follows the structure of a continental tractatus, the work strikes a balance between consideration of doctrinal and jurisprudential sources, making it a valuable reference work for scholars and practitioners alike.

Developing country debt crises have been a recurrent phenomenon over the past two centuries. In recent times sovereign debt insolvency crises in developing and emerging economies peaked in the 1980s and, again, from the middle 1990s to the start of the new millennium. Despite the fact that several developing countries now have stronger economic fundamentals than they did in the 1990s, sovereign debt crises will reoccur again. The reasons for this are numerous, but the central one is that economic fluctuations are inherent features of financial markets, the boom and bust nature of which intensify under liberalized financial environments that developing countries have increasingly adopted since the 1970s. Indeed, today we are in the midst of an almost unprecedented global "bust." The timing of the book is important. The conventional wisdom is that the international economic and financial system is broken. Policymakers in both the poorest and the richest countries are likely to seriously consider how to restructure the international trade and financial system, including how to resolve sovereign debt crises in a more effective and fair manner. This book calls for the international reform of sovereign debt workouts which derives from both economic theory and real-world experiences. Country case studies underline the point that we need to do better. This book recognizes that the politics of the international treatment of sovereign debt have not supported systemic reform efforts thus far; however, failure in the past does not preclude success in the future in an evolving international political environment, and the book thus puts forth alternative reform ideas for consideration.

This innovative and thought-provoking study puts forth a compelling analysis of the constitutive nexus at the heart of the European refugee conundrum. It maps and historically contextualises some of the distinctive challenges that pervasive ethnic and cultural pluralism present to real politics as on the level of political theorizing. By systematically integrating hitherto insufficiently linked research perspectives in a novel way, it lays open a number of paradoxical constellations and regressive tendencies in contemporary European democracy. It thereby redirects attention to the ways in which liberal thought and liberal democratic institutions shape, interact with, and may even provide justification for illiberal and exclusionary practices. This book thus makes an important contribution to the analysis of post-migrant realities in Europe and the ways in which they are defined by imperial legacies, punitive migration regimes, the culturalization of mainstream politics, and the discursive construction of a European Other.

Sovereign debt crises are a little like the weather: One can get ready to endure them and maybe take some steps to lessen their impact, but so far it hasn't been possible to prevent them. Like the weather, they just keep happening. That's the overriding thesis of this book tracing the major debt crises of the past century, starting with the Great Depression and running through the recent Great Recession. Written by a former World Bank expert on debt crises, this book discusses best practices for how such crises can be resolved. As the painful experience of the past decade reminded everyone, frequent debt crises and defaults do great damage to economies and cause vast personal hardship. But resolving them has proven difficult—both economically and politically—and has taken time, almost always requiring a lender of last resort such as a country's central bank or the International Monetary Fund. Too often, efforts to end debt crises have been little more than a palliative, and the debt overhang from one crisis contributes to the next, as illustrated by the ongoing saga in Greece. Both private and sovereign debts have increased substantially since the 2008 crisis, with inadequate deleveraging. This debt overhang leaves countries vulnerable and with limited maneuverability to address the next crisis. This book does not pretend to describe how debt crises can be prevented. But it does draw useful lessons from recent crises that can help economists, bankers, policymakers, and others resolve the inevitable future crises with the least possible damage.

Eichengreen and Lindert bring together original studies that assess the historical record to see what lessons can be learned for resolving today's crisis.

​This book explores some relevant distortions and market failures in financial and banking markets caused by the recent financial crisis and offers important insights to policymakers as well. After having introduced the reader to the economic background behind the origin of the present financial turmoil, the book proposes a distinct angle to look at some macro and microeconomic aspects. The volume discusses whether and to what extent policies, implemented by governments and monetary authorities to countervail bank defaults and avoid a disastrous financial instability, have in some way determined opportunistic conducts (moral hazard), changes in banks’ behaviour, distortive incentives and market failures. Furthermore, the book offers a viewpoint on the effects of the evolution of regulation for the banking sector. Finally, the book assesses how the increase in the cost of funding and the shrinking in credit supply (credit crunch) has modified the financial structure of small and medium firms. To illustrate this, some specific cases at Italian regional level are examined.