Adrian Penalver

Analytics of sovereign debt restructuring

Over the past few years there has been an active debate among policy-makers on appropriate mechanisms for restructuring sovereign debt, particularly international bonds. In this paper a simple theoretical model is developed to analyse the merits of these proposals. The analysis suggests that collective action clauses (CACs) can resolve the inefficiencies caused by intra-creditor coordination problems, provided that all parties have complete information about each others preferences. In such a world, statutory mechanisms are unnecessary. This is no longer the case, however, when the benefits from reaching a restructuring agreement are private information to the debtor and its creditors. In this case, the inefficiencies induced by strategic behaviour the debtor-creditor bargaining problem cannot be resolved by the parties themselves: removing these inefficiencies would require the intervention of a third party.

Capital flows to emerging markets

Capital flows to emerging market economies have occurred in cycles, with booms in lending often followed by financial crises. Economic theory, though, has had little to say on the optimal rate at which capital should flow. In this paper a model due to Barro, Mankiw and Sala-i-Martin is extended to make it more appropriate for analysis of emerging market economies, and optimal capital flows based on an estimated Barro-style conditional convergence growth equation are calculated. Flows derived from the model are lower than actually observed over the estimation period (1988-97) but the results are sensitive to the parameters chosen.

How can the IMF catalyse private capital flows? A model

This paper presents a model to explain how IMF programmes can catalyse private capital flows following a financial crisis, a concept that was at the heart of the IMFs strategy for dealing with capital account crises in the late 1990s. In the model, the IMF lends funds below the prevailing market interest rate and it is this subsidy that induces the borrowing country to exert adjustment effort to avoid default. By preventing default, future marginal rates of return on investment are kept high, thereby encouraging private capital flows. The IMF may also have a signalling role if it has superior information about debtor type and can affect the interest rate charged in the immediate aftermath of a crisis. In practice, however, IMF programmes based on the catalytic approach have been disappointing and actual private capital flows have been considerably below those projected. Therefore, the paper also considers how capital flows derived from the model are sensitive to the assumptions made. The paper concludes by discussing the policy implications of the analysis for IMF programme design.

The Effect of Payments Standstills on Yields and the Maturity Structure of International Debt

Payments standstills have been suggested as a tool for the resolution of financial crises in emerging markets economies. A simple model is developed here to examine the implications of standstills for yields and the maturity structure of debt. An emerging market country chooses to sell short and long-term debt to risk-neutral international investors. The key assumptions are that the level of short-term debt increases the probability of crisis, that crises have costs that spill over into the next period, and that the orderly resolution of financial crises will reduce the cost of crises. A standstill is depicted as an orderly rollover of short-term debt. Standstills have the benefit of reducing the proportion of short-term debt and so lower the probability of crisis. This comes at the cost of generally lower expected output.

Dealing with Country Diversity: Challenges for the IMF Credit Union Model

We develop a model in which countries can protect themselves against shocks by subscribing to a credit union that shares the key features of the International Monetary Fund, or by self-insuring through accumulating reserves. We assess the impact of the increasing heterogeneity of the Funds membership on the political equilibrium Fund size and hence its effectiveness as a credit union. We find the Funds existing lending framework is well suited to a world in which its members have homogeneous interests, but as the membership has become more heterogeneous the Fund is increasingly unlikely to provide financing on a sufficient scale to meet the demands of higher-risk members, leading them to rely more heavily on self-insurance. We conclude that the framework governing the Funds lending operations may no longer be appropriate.

Pre-Crisis Credit Standards: Monetary Policy or the Savings Glut?

This paper presents a theoretical model of how banks set their credit standards. It examines how a monopoly bank sets its monitoring intensity in order to manage credit risk when it makes long duration loans to borrowers who have private knowledge of their projects stochastic profitability. In contrast to standard models, it has a recursive structure and a general equilibrium. The bank loan contract considered specifies the interest rate, the monitoring intensity and a profitability covenant. Within this class of contract, the bank chooses the terms which maximise steady-state profits subject to the constraint that it must have as many deposits as loans. The model is then used to consider whether the reduction in credit standards and credit spreads observed before the financial crisis could have been caused by low official interest rates or a positive deposit shock. The model rejects a risk-taking channel of monetary policy and endorses the savings glut hypothesis.