EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Coups d’état and the cost of debt

Hippolyte Balima

Journal of Comparative Economics, 2020, vol. 48, issue 3, 509-528

Abstract: This paper extends the literature on the economic consequences of coups d’état by examining their impact on the cost of debt for sovereigns and, respectively, the likelihood of experiencing a sovereign default. Using a monthly panel dataset covering 134 countries over the period 1990 to 2014 and after employing the entropy balancing methodology, I find that the occurrence of coups d’état significantly increases the cost of debt for sovereigns and their likelihood of experiencing sovereign defaults. I demonstrate that this finding is extremely robust to different specifications, potential omitted variables, and the use of falsification tests. Moreover, I show that the impact of coups d’état on the cost of debt varies systematically depending on the political regime, the types of coups d’état, and the sovereign credit rating grade. Finally, I provide suggestive evidence that the induced drop in the real economic growth, the changes in the willingness function to honor contracts and irrational exuberance are the root of increased sovereign debt cost and the likelihood of defaults following coups d’état.

Keywords: Coups d’état; Sovereign credit ratings; Sovereign defaults (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 F34 G24 H56 H63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147596720300159
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:jcecon:v:48:y:2020:i:3:p:509-528

DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2020.04.001

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Comparative Economics is currently edited by D. Berkowitz and G. Roland

More articles in Journal of Comparative Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:48:y:2020:i:3:p:509-528