Private Debt with Default Risk within and across Border

Following Jeske's (2006) decentralized international risk sharing arrangement where residents have access to international capital markets, this paper studies the presence of resident default risk on borrowing happened between domestic agents, in addition to default risk on private debt contracts across border. The paper shows that, without the assumption of perfect domestic contract enforcement, more international risk sharing and higher welfare can be supported. Moreover, the domestic interest rate equals to the highest marginal rate of substitution in countries that are participation constrained in international financial markets. This asset pricing result overturns the well established argument that interest rate should be the lowest to induce repayment in closed economy models with domestic credit crisis.