IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/2767.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Sovereign Debt Buybacks Can Lower Bargaining Costs

Author

Listed:
  • Julio J. Rotemberg

Abstract

I develop two models in which debt repurchases by highly indebted sovereign nations are advantageous for all parties. The models are based on the idea that when sovereign debts are large, bargaining costs are large. Creditors spend more resources convincing the debtor that they are tough when they have more at stake. Also, the sanctions which are sometimes triggered when bargaining fails to produce an agreement are larger when debts are larger. For both these reasons buybacks, which reduce the face value of the outstanding debt, can be beneficial. The resulting equilibria are constrained Pareto Optima. But, donors who subsidize buybacks increase overall welfare more than donors who make direct gifts. I also argue that Bulow and Rogoff (1988)'s empirical evidence on buybacks is consistent with my models.

Suggested Citation

  • Julio J. Rotemberg, 1988. "Sovereign Debt Buybacks Can Lower Bargaining Costs," NBER Working Papers 2767, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:2767
    Note: ITI IFM
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w2767.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fernando Broner & Alberto Martin & Jaume Ventura, 2010. "Sovereign Risk and Secondary Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1523-1555, September.
    2. Jacek Prokop & Ruqu Wang, 2012. "Strategic Buybacks of Sovereign Debt," Frontiers of Economics in China-Selected Publications from Chinese Universities, Higher Education Press, vol. 7(1), pages 1-21, March.
    3. Diwan, Ishac & Claessens, Stijn, 1989. "An analysis of debt-reduction schemes initiated by debtor countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 153, The World Bank.
    4. Jonathan P. Thomas, 2001. "Default Costs, Willingness to Pay and Sovereign Debt Buybacks," International Finance 0103002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Silvia Marchesi, 2006. "Buybacks of domestic debt in public debt management," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(5), pages 379-400.
    6. Balazs Szentes & Natalia Kovrijnykh, 2005. "A Theory of Debt Overhang and Buyback," 2005 Meeting Papers 447, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. Angelo Baglioni, 2015. "Leveraged Buybacks Of Sovereign Debt: A Model And An Application To Greece," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 33(1), pages 87-103, January.
    8. Joshua Aizenman & Eduardo R. Borensztein, 1989. "Strategic Investment in a Debt Bargaining Framework," NBER Working Papers 3019, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Michael Papaioannou, 2011. "Sovereign debt portfolios: risks and liability management operations," Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(3), pages 354-360.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:2767. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.