A Risk Management Approach to Emerging Market's Sovereign Debt Sustainability with an Application to Brazilian Data

Marcio Garcia, Roberto Rigobon

NBER Working Paper No. 10336
Issued in March 2004
NBER Program(s):   IFM

In this paper we study the question of debt sustainability from a risk management perspective. The debt accumulation equation for any country involves variables that are stochastic and closely intertwined. When these aspects are taken into consideration the notion of debt sustainability is expanded to studying the stochastic properties of the debt dynamics. We illustrate the methodology by studying the Brazilian case. We find that even though the debt could be sustainable in the absence of risk, there are paths in which it is clearly unsustainable. Furthermore, we show that properties of the debt dynamics are closely related to the spreads on sovereign dollar denominated debt.

(520 K)

Published: Giavazzi, Francesco, Ilan Goldfajn, and Santiago Herrera (eds.) Inflation Targeting, Debt, and the Brazilian Experience: 1999 to 2003. Cambridge ,MA: MIT Press, 2005.

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