IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/20857.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

When Bad Things Happen to Good Sovereign Debt Contracts: The Case of Ecuador

Author

Listed:
  • Porzecanski, Arturo C.

Abstract

The lesson from abundant history is that, despite decades of constructive innovations in international loan and bond contracts involving sovereign financial obligations, lawyers, bankers, analysts and investors are best advised to operate under no illusions: Sovereigns are indeed sovereign. To those who harbored the hope that Argentina’s bad behavior as a sovereign debtor was a major exception that would not soon be repeated, the case of Ecuador’s latest default on shaky claims of the “illegitimacy” of some of its obligations demonstrates that while the absence of sovereign willingness to pay remains rare, it is not rare enough. These rogue sovereign debtors can be effectively restrained only by the forceful actions of other sovereigns, bilaterally or multilaterally, but in this case, in a repetition of attitudes shown toward Argentina since 2002, the international official community not only failed to condemn Ecuador’s actions, but actually expressed verbal and provided financial support. The government in Quito gathered no plaudits from the many national and international NGOs that have been campaigning for the massive forgiveness of developing-country debt, but at least this attitude is understandable: the case of Ecuador did not lend itself to arguments in favor of repudiation on “odious debt” or any related grounds. Above all, the country provides a useful, cautionary tale of the bad things that can happen to good sovereign debt contracts.

Suggested Citation

  • Porzecanski, Arturo C., 2010. "When Bad Things Happen to Good Sovereign Debt Contracts: The Case of Ecuador," MPRA Paper 20857, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:20857
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/20857/1/MPRA_paper_20857.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/28341/1/MPRA_paper_28341.pdf
    File Function: revised version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arturo C. Porzecanski, 2005. "From Rogue Creditors to Rogue Debtors: Implications of Argentina's Default," International Finance 0510010, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Arturo C. Porzecanski, 2007. "Debt Relief by Private and Official Creditors: The Record Speaks," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(2), pages 191-214, July.
    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. Rohan Pitchford & Mark L. J. Wright, 2012. "Holdouts in Sovereign Debt Restructuring: A Theory of Negotiation in a Weak Contractual Environment," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 79(2), pages 812-837.
    2. Horn, Fabian, 2015. "Quantifying the costs of sovereign defaults using odious debt cases as a quasi-natural experiment," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 113125, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    3. Herman Barry, 2016. "A Role for Legitimacy in Sovereign Debt: A Review Essay on Odette Lienau, Rethinking Sovereign Debt, 2014," Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium, De Gruyter, vol. 6(3), pages 219-241, December.
    4. Arturo C. Porzecanski, 2016. "Sovereign Debt Restructuring After Argentina," Development, Palgrave Macmillan;Society for International Deveopment, vol. 59(1), pages 100-106, June.
    5. Christoph Trebesch & Mr. Michael G. Papaioannou & Mr. Udaibir S Das, 2012. "Sovereign Debt Restructurings 1950-2010: Literature Survey, Data, and Stylized Facts," IMF Working Papers 2012/203, International Monetary Fund.
    6. Porzecanski, Arturo C., 2012. "Behind the Greek default and restructuring of 2012," MPRA Paper 42432, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Gilbert, Christine, 2022. "The audit of public debt: Auditing as a device for political resistance in a neoliberal era," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    8. Porzecanski, Arturo C., 2012. "Buenos Aires to Athens: The Road to Perdition," MPRA Paper 37874, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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. Marc Flandreau & Juan H. Flores & Norbert Gaillard & Sebastián Nieto-Parra, 2010. "The End of Gatekeeping: Underwriters and the Quality of Sovereign Bond Markets, 1815–2007," NBER Chapters, in: NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics 2009, pages 53-92, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. repec:ces:ifodic:v:11:y:2013:i:3:p:19099069 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Anna Gelpern, 2013. "Sovereign Damage Control," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 11(03), pages 10-15, October.
    4. Martin Guzman, 0. "An Analysis of Argentina’s 2001 Default Resolution," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 0, pages 1-38.
    5. Marcus Miller & Dania Thomas, 2007. "Sovereign Debt Restructuring: The Judge, the Vultures and Creditor Rights," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(10), pages 1491-1509, October.
    6. Porzecanski, Arturo C., 2010. "Should Argentina Be Welcomed Back by the Capital Markets?," MPRA Paper 27536, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Porzecanski, Arturo C., 2012. "Behind the Greek default and restructuring of 2012," MPRA Paper 42432, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Martin Guzman, 2020. "An Analysis of Argentina’s 2001 Default Resolution," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 62(4), pages 701-738, December.
    9. Hans J. Blommestein & Javier Santiso, 2007. "New Strategies for Emerging Domestic Sovereign Bond Markets," OECD Development Centre Working Papers 260, OECD Publishing.
    10. Anna Gelpern, 2013. "Sovereign Damage Control," Policy Briefs PB13-12, Peterson Institute for International Economics.
    11. Anna Gelpern, 2013. "Sovereign Damage Control," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 11(3), pages 10-15, October.
    12. Arturo C. Porzecanski, 2007. "Debt Relief by Private and Official Creditors: The Record Speaks," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(2), pages 191-214, July.
    13. Arturo C. Porzecanski, 2016. "Sovereign Debt Restructuring After Argentina," Development, Palgrave Macmillan;Society for International Deveopment, vol. 59(1), pages 100-106, June.
    14. Marcus Miller & Dania Thomas, 2013. "Eurozone sovereign debt restructuring: keeping the vultures at bay," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 29(4), pages 745-763, WINTER.
    15. Dania Thomas & Javier García-Fronti, 2007. "Good faith in sovereign debt restructuring: the evolution of an open norm in ‘localised’ contexts?," WEF Working Papers 0017, ESRC World Economy and Finance Research Programme, Birkbeck, University of London.
    16. Porzecanski, Arturo C., 2015. "The origins of Argentina’s litigation and arbitration saga, 2002-2014," MPRA Paper 69585, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Porzecanski, Arturo C., 2012. "Buenos Aires to Athens: The Road to Perdition," MPRA Paper 37874, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    International finance; sovereign debt; default; Latin America; Argentina; Ecuador;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F34 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Lending and Debt Problems
    • F5 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy
    • F3 - International Economics - - International Finance
    • F51 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - International Conflicts; Negotiations; Sanctions

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:pra:mprapa:20857. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.