Denomination of the Debt of the Chilean Government: A Risk Management Perspective

This paper proposes a framework to assess the convenience of the current public debt denomination of the Chilean Government, through its implications on fiscal budget risk management. A “Value at Risk” methodology is proposed to compare alternative denominations regarding currency and interest rate. This methodology computes the implicit volatility of the budget’s result considering both the variance of individual accounts, as well as their respective covariance, and permits to compare quantitatively the relative risk of different debt denominations. The exercise suggests that changing the current debt denomination in fixed interest payments to variable payments indexed to Libor or government bond rates would significantly reduce the volatility of fiscal results. If more recent correlations are considered in the exercise, the results also suggest reducing current currency denomination in US dollars towards a stronger position in euros. An additional analysis that considers the volatility of estimated correlations, however, recommends taking previous conclusions with caution.