Self-Fulfilling Debt Crises, Revisited

Mark Aguiar, Satyajit Chatterjee (), Harold Cole and Zachary Stangebye ()

No 23312, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We revisit self-fulfilling rollover crises by exploring the potential uncertainty introduced by a gap (however small) between an auction of new debt and the payment of maturing liabilities. It is well known (Cole and Kehoe, 2000) that the lack of commitment at the time of auction to repayment of imminently maturing debt can generate a run on debt, leading to a failed auction and immediate default. We show the same lack of commitment leads to a rich set of possible self-fulfilling crises, including a government that issues more debt because of the crisis, albeit at depressed prices. Another possible outcome is a "sudden stop" (or forced austerity) in which the government sharply curtails debt issuance. Both outcomes stem from the government's incentive to eliminate uncertainty about imminent payments at the time of auction by altering the level of debt issuance. In an otherwise standard quantitative version of the one-period debt model, including such crises increase the default probabilities by a factor of five and the spread volatility by a factor of twenty-five.

JEL-codes: E6 F34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-opm
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Published as Mark Aguiar & Satyajit Chatterjee & Harold Cole & Zachary Stangebye, 2022. "Self-Fulfilling Debt Crises, Revisited," Journal of Political Economy, vol 130(5), pages 1147-1183.

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Related works:
Journal Article: Self-Fulfilling Debt Crises, Revisited (2022)
Working Paper: Self-Fulfilling Debt Crises, Revisited (2021)
Working Paper: Self-Fulfilling Debt Crises, Revisited (2020)
Working Paper: Self-Ful?lling Debt Crises, Revisited (2020)
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