IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v109y2019i10p3556-84.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is Inflation Default? The Role of Information in Debt Crises

Author

Listed:
  • Marco Bassetto
  • Carlo Galli

Abstract

We study the information sensitivity of government debt denominated in domestic versus foreign currency: the former is subject to inflation risk and the latter to default. Default only affects sophisticated bond traders, whereas inflation concerns a larger and less informed group. Within a two-period Bayesian trading game, differential information manifests itself in the secondary market, and we display conditions under which debt prices are more resilient to bad news even in the primary market, where only sophisticated players operate. Our results can explain debt prices across countries following the 2008 financial crisis, and also provide a theory of "original sin."

Suggested Citation

  • Marco Bassetto & Carlo Galli, 2019. "Is Inflation Default? The Role of Information in Debt Crises," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(10), pages 3556-3584, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:109:y:2019:i:10:p:3556-84
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.20170721
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20170721
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20170721.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20170721.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Aleh Tsyvinski & Arijit Mukherji & Christian Hellwig, 2006. "Self-Fulfilling Currency Crises: The Role of Interest Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1769-1787, December.
    2. Michael D. Bordo & Christopher M. Meissner, 2007. "Financial Crises, 1880-1913: The Role of Foreign Currency Debt," NBER Chapters, in: The Decline of Latin American Economies: Growth, Institutions, and Crises, pages 139-194, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Aguiar, Mark & Amador, Manuel, 2014. "Sovereign Debt," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 647-687, Elsevier.
    4. Aghion, Philippe & Bacchetta, Philippe & Banerjee, Abhijit, 2001. "Currency crises and monetary policy in an economy with credit constraints," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(7), pages 1121-1150.
    5. Charles Engel & JungJae Park, 2022. "Debauchery and Original Sin: The Currency Composition of Sovereign Debt," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 20(3), pages 1095-1144.
    6. Morris, Stephen & Shin, Hyun Song, 1998. "Unique Equilibrium in a Model of Self-Fulfilling Currency Attacks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(3), pages 587-597, June.
    7. Pablo Ottonello & Diego J. Perez, 2019. "The Currency Composition of Sovereign Debt," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 174-208, July.
    8. George-Marios Angeletos & Christian Hellwig & Alessandro Pavan, 2006. "Signaling in a Global Game: Coordination and Policy Traps," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(3), pages 452-484, June.
    9. Sandleris, Guido, 2008. "Sovereign defaults: Information, investment and credit," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 267-275, December.
    10. Giancarlo Corsetti & Amil Dasgupta & Stephen Morris & Hyun Song Shin, 2004. "Does One Soros Make a Difference? A Theory of Currency Crises with Large and Small Traders," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(1), pages 87-113.
    11. Manuel Amador & Pierre-Olivier Weill, 2010. "Learning from Prices: Public Communication and Welfare," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(5), pages 866-907.
    12. Judd, Kenneth L., 1985. "The law of large numbers with a continuum of IID random variables," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 19-25, February.
    13. Gary Gorton & Guillermo Ordo?ez, 2014. "Collateral Crises," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(2), pages 343-378, February.
    14. George-Marios Angeletos & Alessandro Pavan, 2009. "Policy with Dispersed Information," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(1), pages 11-60, March.
    15. Carlsson, Hans & van Damme, Eric, 1993. "Global Games and Equilibrium Selection," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(5), pages 989-1018, September.
    16. Mark Aguiar & Manuel Amador & Emmanuel Farhi & Gita Gopinath, 2013. "Crisis and Commitment: Inflation Credibility and the Vulnerability to Sovereign Debt Crises," Working Papers 2013-4, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    17. Iván Werning & George-Marios Angeletos, 2006. "Crises and Prices: Information Aggregation, Multiplicity, and Volatility," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1720-1736, December.
    18. Carlsson, Hans & van Damme, Eric, 1993. "Global Games and Equilibrium Selection," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(5), pages 989-1018, September.
    19. Amador, Manuel & Weill, Pierre-Olivier, 2012. "Learning from private and public observations of othersʼ actions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(3), pages 910-940.
    20. Iachan, Felipe S. & Nenov, Plamen T., 2015. "Information quality and crises in regime-change games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 158(PB), pages 739-768.
    21. Paul De Grauwe, 2014. "The Governance of a Fragile Eurozone," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Exchange Rates and Global Financial Policies, chapter 12, pages 297-320, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    22. George-Marios Angeletos & Christian Hellwig & Alessandro Pavan, 2007. "Dynamic Global Games of Regime Change: Learning, Multiplicity, and the Timing of Attacks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(3), pages 711-756, May.
    23. Bohn, Henning, 1990. "A positive theory of foreign currency debt," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3-4), pages 273-292, November.
    24. Cochrane, John H., 2005. "Money as stock," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(3), pages 501-528, April.
    25. Jonathan Eaton & Mark Gersovitz, 1981. "Debt with Potential Repudiation: Theoretical and Empirical Analysis," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 48(2), pages 289-309.
    26. Wallace, Neil, 2000. "A model of the liquidity structure based on asset indivisibility," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 55-68, February.
    27. George-Marios Angeletos & Alessandro Pavan, 2007. "Efficient Use of Information and Social Value of Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(4), pages 1103-1142, July.
    28. Michael D. Bordo & Christopher M. Meissner, 2005. "The Role of Foreign Currency Debt in Financial Crises: 1880-1913 vs. 1972-1997," NBER Working Papers 11897, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    29. Elias Albagli & Christian Hellwig & Aleh Tsyvinski, 2011. "A Theory of Asset Pricing Based on Heterogeneous Information," NBER Working Papers 17548, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    30. Bordo, Michael D. & Meissner, Christopher M., 2006. "The role of foreign currency debt in financial crises: 1880-1913 versus 1972-1997," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(12), pages 3299-3329, December.
    31. Barry Eichengreen & Ricardo Hausmann, 1999. "Exchange rates and financial fragility," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 329-368.
    32. Calvo, Guillermo A, 1988. "Servicing the Public Debt: The Role of Expectations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(4), pages 647-661, September.
    33. Franklin Allen & Stephen Morris & Hyun Song Shin, 2006. "Beauty Contests and Iterated Expectations in Asset Markets," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(3), pages 719-752.
    34. Dasgupta, Amil, 2007. "Coordination and delay in global games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 134(1), pages 195-225, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Barry Eichengreen & Ricardo Hausmann & Ugo Panizza, 2023. "Yet it Endures: The Persistence of Original Sin," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 34(1), pages 1-42, February.
    2. Galli, Carlo, 2021. "Self-fulfilling debt crises, fiscal policy and investment," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    3. R. Anton Braun & Tomoyuki Nakajima, 2018. "Why Prices Don't Respond Sooner to a Prospective Sovereign Debt Crisis," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 29, pages 235-255, July.
    4. Javier Bianchi & Jorge Mondragon, 2022. "Monetary Independence and Rollover Crises," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 137(1), pages 435-491.
    5. Elias Albagli & Christian Hellwig & Aleh Tsyvinski, 2021. "Dispersed Information and Asset Prices," Working Papers hal-03118639, HAL.
    6. Ricardo Reis, 2020. "The People versus the Markets: A Parsimonious Model of Inflation Expectations," Discussion Papers 2033, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM).
    7. Elias Albagli & Christian Hellwig & Aleh Tsyvinski, 2024. "Information Aggregation with Asymmetric Asset Payoffs," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 79(4), pages 2715-2758, August.
    8. Grace Weishi Gu & Zachary R. Stangebye, 2023. "Costly Information And Sovereign Risk," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 64(4), pages 1397-1429, November.
    9. Barthélemy, Jean & Mengus, Eric & Plantin, Guillaume, 2024. "The central bank, the treasury, or the market: Which one determines the price level?," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 220(C).
    10. Veldkamp, Laura & Farboodi, Maryam, 2018. "Long Run Growth of Financial Data Technology," CEPR Discussion Papers 13278, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Albagli, Elias & Hellwig, Christian & Tsyvinski, Aleh, 2022. "Information Aggregation and Asymmetric Returns," CEPR Discussion Papers 15644, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Teupe, Sebastian, 2020. "Keynes, Inflation, and the Public Debt: "How to Pay for the War" as a Policy Prescription for Financial Repression?," Working Papers 16, German Research Foundation's Priority Programme 1859 "Experience and Expectation. Historical Foundations of Economic Behaviour", Humboldt University Berlin.
    13. Maryam Farboodi & Laura Veldkamp, 2018. "Long Run Growth of Financial Data Technology," Working Papers 18-09, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Angeletos, G.-M. & Lian, C., 2016. "Incomplete Information in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1065-1240, Elsevier.
    2. Pavan, Alessandro & Vives, Xavier, 2015. "Information, Coordination, and Market Frictions: An Introduction," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 158(PB), pages 407-426.
    3. Toni Ahnert & Ali Kakhbod, 2017. "Information Choice and Amplification of Financial Crises," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(6), pages 2130-2178.
    4. Szkup, Michal & Trevino, Isabel, 2015. "Information acquisition in global games of regime change," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 387-428.
    5. Edmond, Chris, 2018. "Non-Laplacian beliefs in a global game with noisy signaling," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 297-312.
    6. Szkup, Michal, 2020. "Multiplier effect and comparative statics in global games of regime change," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(2), May.
    7. Nakata, Takeshi, 2010. "Interdependent bank runs under a collapsing fixed exchange rate regime," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 603-623, December.
    8. Iachan, Felipe S. & Nenov, Plamen T., 2015. "Information quality and crises in regime-change games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 158(PB), pages 739-768.
    9. Yi, Ming, 2017. "Speculator-triggered crisis and interventions," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 135-146.
    10. Kováč, Eugen & Steiner, Jakub, 2013. "Reversibility in dynamic coordination problems," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 298-320.
    11. Guimaraes, Bernardo & Morris, Stephen, 2007. "Risk and wealth in a model of self-fulfilling currency attacks," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(8), pages 2205-2230, November.
    12. Assaf Razin & Itay Goldstein, 2012. "Review Of Theories of Financial Crises," 2012 Meeting Papers 214, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    13. Goldstein, Itay & Razin, Assaf, 2015. "Three Branches of Theories of Financial Crises," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 10(2), pages 113-180, 30.
    14. Dengwei Qi, 2022. "Learning and Strategic Delay in a Dynamic Coordination Game," KIER Working Papers 1087, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
    15. George-Marios Angeletos & Chen Lian, 2016. "Incomplete Information in Macroeconomics: Accommodating Frictions in Coordination," NBER Working Papers 22297, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. David P. Myatt & Chris Wallace, 2008. "On the Sources and Value of Information: Public Announcements and Macroeconomic Performance," Economics Series Working Papers 411, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    17. Ahnert, Toni & Bertsch, Christoph, 2013. "A wake-up call: information contagion and strategic uncertainty," Working Paper Series 282, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden), revised 01 Mar 2014.
    18. Frankel, David M., 2017. "Efficient ex-ante stabilization of firms," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 112-144.
    19. Toni Ahnert & Christoph Bertsch, 2022. "A Wake-Up Call Theory of Contagion [Asymmetric business cycles: theory and time-series evidence]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 26(4), pages 829-854.
    20. Michal Szkup, 2022. "Preventing Self-Fulfilling Debt Crises: A Global Games Approach," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 43, pages 22-55, January.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations
    • F34 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Lending and Debt Problems
    • H63 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Debt; Debt Management; Sovereign Debt

    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:aea:aecrev:v:109:y:2019:i:10:p:3556-84. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.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.