Why are some financial crises associated with political crises and some are not? Does political instability cause financial fragility or the other way around? What are the implications of political distortions for policy in countries experiencing financial turmoil? This paper studies these and other questions in a formal model of debt, default, and financial crisis. A key assumption is that the default decision is made by a government that has superior information than the public about the social costs of default. Citizens, however, can dismiss the government, and overrule its default decision, at the cost of a political crisis. If there is a divergence between the objectives of the government and its people, political crisis may emerge in equilibrium. For this to be the case, the foreign debt must be large enough, and international reserves low. When this political equilibrium is seen as a part of a larger investment problem, I show that there are equilibria in which crises are "only financial," and equilibria in which default and political crises occur. In some cases, both kinds of equilibria coexist and, in this sense, a loss of confidence by foreign lenders can exacerbate the likelihood of a political crisis. If so, international intervention in financial markets may ensure financial and political stability at little cost. Policy analysis is delicate, however, and may require linking financial policies to political outcomes.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Rutgers University, Department of Economics in its series Departmental Working Papers with number
200229.
Find related papers by JEL classification: E0 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General F4 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)