Increase in home bias in the Eurozone debt crisis: The role of domestic shocks

Camille Cornand, Pauline Gandré and Céline Gimet

Economic Modelling, 2016, vol. 53, issue C, 445-469

Abstract: One of the most striking consequences of the recent episode of sovereign debt market stress in the Eurozone has been the increase in the share of public debt held by the domestic sector in fragile economies. However, the causes and potential consequences of this increase were only given scarce attention in the literature on the Euro area sovereign debt crisis. In order to fill this gap, we first determine the shocks that impact the variation in the share of sovereign debt held at home in an SVAR model on a sample of Eurozone countries between 2002 and 2014, distinguishing between external and domestic shocks. Thanks to several alternative tests, we show that home bias in sovereign debt responds positively to country-specific fundamentals and expectation shocks but we find no evidence that the increase in home bias is destabilizing per se in the short-run. Second, a stylized theoretical model backed by the empirical results predicts that the consequences for sovereign debt crisis depend on the relative impact of domestic initial destabilizing shocks and increased home bias. The analysis suggests that an increase in home bias in times of sovereign debt stress, despite reflecting deteriorating fiscal conditions, may make default less likely.

Keywords: Eurozone; Sovereign debt crisis; Home bias; Bayesian panel SVAR (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264999315003405
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Increase in home bias in the Eurozone debt crisis: the role of domestic shocks (2016)
Working Paper: Increase in home bias in the Eurozone debt crisis: the role of domestic shocks (2014)
Working Paper: Increase in home bias in the Eurozone debt crisis: the role of domestic shocks (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecmode:v:53:y:2016:i:c:p:445-469

DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2015.10.044

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Modelling is currently edited by S. Hall and P. Pauly

More articles in Economic Modelling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().