The Impact of Bailouts on Political Turnover and Sovereign Default Risk

Timm Marc Prein and Almuth Scholl

No 2018-04, Working Paper Series of the Department of Economics, University of Konstanz from Department of Economics, University of Konstanz

Abstract: This paper develops a stochastic dynamic politico-economic model of sovereign debt to analyze the impact of bailouts on sovereign default risk and political turnover. We consider a small open economy in which the government has access to official loans conditional on the implementation of austerity policies. There is a two-party system in which both parties care about the population’s welfare but differ in an exogenous utility cost of default. Political turnover is the endogenous outcome of the individual voting behavior. In a quantitative exercise we apply the model to Greece and find that bailout episodes are characterized by an increased risk of political turnover. In the short run, stricter conditionality raises the risk of sovereign default because it reduces the participation rate in bailout programs. In the long run, however, stricter conditionality limits the accumulation of debt which lowers sovereign default risk. We show that the frequency of political turnover is U-shaped in the strength of conditionality.

Keywords: sovereign default risk; political turnover; bailouts; conditionality; austerity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E44 E62 F34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2018-06-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge, nep-mac and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The impact of bailouts on political turnover and sovereign default risk (2021)
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