Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Debt'

Previous researchers, especially on large enterprises, have revealed that debt financing structure influences enterprise performance. Though the issue has been extensively researched, micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) have traditionally been operating differently as compared to large enterprises in terms of their financial decisions, ownership and management style, and behaviour. Therefore, this study will explore the gaps encountered by all MSMEs to grow their businesses. These include forms and type of industry, firm size, asset tangibility, and a firm’s current assets in relation to its current liabilities and profitability level. The study examines the influence of financing structures on performance of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in South Africa. The ordinary least squares (OLS) technique of measurement is applied to examine the effects of financing structure on performance across various industrial sectors in the years 2013, 2014 and 2015. The findings in this study indicate an increase in the use of leverage to drive the influence of total debt on performance in all industrial sectors of MSMEs in South Africa. From the cross-sectional regression analysis, the results show that financing structure has a negative effect on the profitability of MSMEs, although not absolutely. The findings show that the size of the enterprise, asset tangibility, and the ratio of current assets to current liabilities are the most influential of borrowing decisions in total debt, short-term debt, and long-term debt. A significantly negative effect is observed for long-term debt, while short-term debt (STDR) exhibits a significantly positive effect. Thus the influence on MSMEs’ leverage on performance is driven by the usage of short-term debt. The variables of size of the firm, and ratio of current assets to current liabilities, do not have the same effect in all debt levels; the significance is substantially higher for long-term debt than for total debt and short-term debt. On the other hand, our empirical results suggested that transactional costs, and an asymmetric information problem in smaller firms, may lead to a mainly negative influence on size and total debt. The asset structure on profitability observed across the years showed mixed experiences. The ratio of current assets to current liabilities was found to be positive and significant on long-term debt and short-term debt leverage.

The impact of external debt on economic growth is a debatable issue between scholars since the onset of the debt crisis in 1980’s. This thesis examines whether external debt affects the economic growth of selected heavily indebted poor African countries through the debt overhang and debt crowding out effect. This is carried out by using data for eight heavily indebted poor African countries between 1991 to 2010.The result from estimation shows that external debt affects economic growth by the debt crowding out effect rather than debt overhang. Moreover, in an attempt to mark out debt servicing history, the thesis found the selected countries are not paying (servicing) more than 95% of their accumulated debt.

Загальна сума зовнішніх державних і гарантованих державою боргів на кінець лютого 2020 року склала 49,81 млрд доларів. З 2009 року державний борг, який тоді становив 26,5 мільярдів доларів, з кожним роком зростає. Виняток становить 2013 рік, коли борги зменшилися з 38,7 до 37,5 млрд доларів. наступного року, а також у 2019-му – з 50,5 до 48,9 млрд дол. Найбільші запозичення Україні довелося зробити в 2011 році, коли борг зріс з 34,8 до 37,5 млрд грн, а в 2015 році борг зріс з 38,8 до 43,4 млрд доларів.
Общая сумма внешней государственной и гарантированной государством задолженности на конец февраля 2020 года составила 49,81 миллиарда долларов. С 2009 года государственный долг, который тогда составлял 26,5 миллиарда долларов, ежегодно растет. Исключение составляет 2013 год, когда долги снизились с 38,7 до 37,5 миллиарда долларов. в следующем году, как и в 2019 году - с 50,5 до 48,9 миллиарда долларов. Самые крупные заимствования Украине пришлось сделать в 2011 году, когда долг увеличился с 34,8 до 37,5 миллиарда гривен, а в 2015 году долг увеличился с 38,8 до 43,4 миллиарда долларов.
The total amount of external public and state-guaranteed debts at the end of February 2020 amounted to 49.81 billion dollars. Since 2009, the public debt, which then amounted to 26.5 billion dollars, has been growing every year. The exception is 2013, when debts decreased from 38.7 to 37.5 billion dollars. next year, as well as in 2019 - from 50.5 to 48.9 billion dollars. Ukraine had to make the largest borrowings in 2011, when the debt increased from 34.8 to 37.5 billion hryvnias, and in 2015 the debt increased from 38.8 to 43.4 billion dollars.

This thesis consists of three self-contained papers covering different aspects of public debt management. From a methodological point of view they all have in common that results and models from the theory of finance are used to analyze the effects of public debt management. The first paper, Neutrality of Public Debt Management, studies the case when public debt management does not matter, i.e. when it is neutral. Although strong assumptions are needed to ensure neutrality of public debt management it is nevertheless of interest to study it, since an analysis illuminates the mechanisms through which public debt management affects the economy. The paper starts with a discussion of the assumptions that are needed to ensure neutrality in the models used in the literature. The remainder of the paper tries to relax some of these assumptions. The model employed is an intertemporal general equilibrium model. It is shown that if the agents are identical, public debt is neutral provided the agents pierce the veil of government, and all taxes associated with public debt are lump-sum. It is also shown that if the agents are different but have sufficiently similar utility functions that exhibit hyperbolic absolute risk aversion (i.e., the agents have linear risk tolerance), public debt management is neutral in aggregates, provided the agents pierce the veil of government and all taxes associated with the debt service are lump-sum. This means that public debt management neither affects prices nor aggregate consumption; it might, however affect the individual agent’s consumption-savings decision. Since the class of utility functions that exhibit hyperbolic absolute risk aversion is widely used in economic analysis, this result has several theoretical and empirical implications. The result also has implications for the choice of model in the third paper of the thesis. The second paper, Objectives of Public Debt Management, discusses the objectives of public debt management in an atemporal mean-variance framework. The model employed in this paper differs in one important aspect from the ones previously used in the literature; it takes the firms’ investment decisions into account and hence endogenizes the supply of assets to some extent. It is shown that if the firms’ behavior is introduced, objectives that in the literature have been assumed to stimulate the economic activity do not necessarily have the desired effect. The paper also discusses different objectives aiming at welfare-improvements and economic stimulation. Since the analysis is performed in a unified framework, it is possible to compare the objectives and to discuss their welfare implications. Of particular interest is the welfare aspects of minimization of the costs of public debt. Finally, the paper also discusses the effectiveness of the objectives and it is shown that with one exception, cost minimization, effectiveness declines when the government-issued debt instruments’ share of the asset market falls. The last paper, Public Debt Management and the Term Structure of Interest Rates, develops and uses a stochastic overlapping generations model to analyze the impact of public debt management on the term structure of interest rate. In most of the literature public debt management is thought of as changes in the maturity structure of the outstanding public debt. A change in the maturity structure implies that public debt management affects, e.g., future tax liabilities and hedging opportunities. To capture these effects it is necessary to use an intertemporal framework. In contrast to most models in the literature on public debt management, the model in this paper is intertemporal and takes the general equilibrium effects of public debt management into account, by integrating the financial and real sectors of the economy. This means that current and future asset prices, as well as investments are affected by public debt management. The analysis suggests that it is not the quantities of the long-term and short-term bonds, per se, that determine the effects on the term structure of interest rates. What determines these effects is how public debt management affects the hedging opportunities through changes in asset supply, taxes and prices.
Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan

There is a growing and legitimate concern about sovereign debt increasing to unsustainable levels among the Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Understanding the determinants of external debt to these countries influenced the direction of this study. The existing literature that was examined shed light mostly on the qualitative determinants of sovereign borrowing. In addition to existing empirical literature, there is a complimentary need to examine further the quantitative determinants of external debt. The researcher seeks to establish the extent to which the cost of borrowing (proxied by interest rate) explains the changes in the borrowing behaviour (proxied by external debt) among SSA countries. To achieve this objective, data from 36 SSA countries for the period 2009–2017 was used. The data were collected from International Debt Statistics compiled by the World Bank. External debt has been regressed against interest rate and other predictor variables. Hausman tests, robustness tests and collinearity tests were carried out to ascertain the validity of results. Interest rate is found to have a positive determining impact on external debt for all SSA countries aggregated: SSA countries excluding South Africa (SA); SSA excluding Nigeria; SSA excluding Nigeria and SA; SSA excluding debt-distressed countries, middle income and oilexporting countries. It does not have predictive power over changes in external debt for SSA excluding countries at high risk of distress; countries with low to moderate risk of distress; heavily indebted poor countries (HIPC) initiative post-implementation recipient countries; low income, other resource intensive and non-resource-intensive countries. External debt is also found to respond to changes in: gross national income (GNI); exports-to-imports ratio; primary income on foreign direct investment (FDI); reserves-to-imports ratio; FDI-to-GNI ratio; debt service-to-GNI ratio; interest arrears on long-term debt; short-term-to-total-debt ratio; and reserves-to-debt ratio for different country groupings. Different country groupings are found to have unique combinations of external debt determinants.

We argue that the 'New Debt Sustainability Framework' (DSF), as recently introduced by the Bretton Woods Institutions, is tailored to suit the aid allocation mechanism centred on the Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA), but fails to take into account low-income countries' economic vulnerability and exposure to exogenous shocks. As a result, the DSF further undermines the effective delivery of aid by the International Development Association (IDA), and fails to support recipient countries in their efforts to achieve lasting debt sustainability. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the findings of the empirical studies underlying the DSF and IDA14 replenishment are not robust to the introduction of vulnerability measures, such as the Economic Vulnerability Indicator (EVI), which undermine the significance of the CPIA in predicting debt distress episodes. In order to overcome the shortcomings of the DSF, we propose the introduction of a Contingency Debt Sustainability Framework (CDSF), which distinguishes between the causes of vulnerability underlying the external debt problem affecting most of the low-income countries. Drawing on the most established strands of sovereign debt and contract theory literature, we argue that state-contingent debt contracts represent the most effective financial instrument to link aid allocation and debt relief to recipient countries' financial requirements, contingent on the state of nature. To implement state-contingent contracts in the specific context of low-income debtor countries, we devise an accounting method by which shock and trend factors in the balance of payments are distinguished by their exogenous or endogenous origin. On the basis of this distinction, the CDSF financially compensates debtor countries for exogenous shock and trend factors, without giving rise to significant moral hazard implications. The CDSF is then simulated for the case of Uganda during the period 1988-2002, demonstrating its effectiveness in dealing with Uganda's severe exposure to price shocks and negative terms of trade.

Mestrado em Finanças
Portuguese public debt has attained an unsustainable trajectory in recent years. The eco-nomic downturn and a fiscal imbalance have contributed to this situation. The aim of this research is to explore the possibility of restructuring sovereign debt as an alternative policy for solving the country’s debt problem. It is not easy to answer the question as to which hypothesis is the best solution for solving the Portuguese public debt problem. Reducing interest rates, lengthening maturities and perpetual debt conversion, seem to be the most feasible ones. However the haircut strategy should not be disregarded. The empirical analysis shows the impact of each hypothesis in three different frameworks: present value, debt service and debt dynamics.

Thesis (M.Com (Economics)) --University of Limpopo, 2018
The burden of public debt is an economic issue, dominating debates in different sectors of our society. The post financial crisis era has been marked with an increasing level of public debt at international, national and sub-national level. The study investigates if public debt can affect economic growth in South Africa, for the period 1995 to 2016. The results for Johansen test of cointegration signposted the existence of cointegration among variables observed in this study. The trace statistic and max-eigen value complimented each other to confirm the cointegration, thus, showing a long run relationship. Furthermore, the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) is applied to achieve the objectives of the study, complemented by other econometric tests such as, Granger causality, impulse response function and variance decomposition. The VECM results revealed the existence of a short run relationship between public debt and economic growth. Granger causality results have shown that public debt can Granger cause economic growth, and there is bi-direction relationship between the two variables. The results for Variance Decomposition indicate that, a shock to public debt causes 1.509115 % fluctuation in economic growth in the second quarter. In the fourth quarter, a shock to public debt account for 16.39628 % fluctuations in economic growth. This shows that, as time goes on, a shock to public debt account for a high percent of fluctuation in economic growth. The Impulse Response Function has shown that, the period of ten quarters marks a negative response of economic growth to public debt. Thus, one standard deviation shock in public debt will inversely affect economic growth. The diagnostic tests such as serial correlation and heteroskedasticity bode well for the model because, neither serial correlation nor heteroskedasticity has been found. Moreover, the model has shown that the residuals are normally distributed, and also the stability of the model has been confirmed. The study recommends that, since South Africa is a capital scarce country, it is encouraged to borrow so that there is an increase in the accumulation of capital. However, the later stage of borrowing marked with high debt will lead to subdued economic growth.
SETA

In the past decades, financial crises have recast the spotlight on sovereign debt restructuring (SoDR). Despite decades of discussion on how to reform SoDR, it still raises complex legal tensions. Among these tensions is the current lack of a mechanism to administer SoDR and the fact that the current SoDR regime is fragmented and leads to suboptimal and unfair results. This thesis critically assesses these tensions, with a focus on the international reform of the restructuring of privately held sovereign bonds. In making its contribution to the discourse on SoDR, this study seeks to bridge the gap between the legal and policy debates on SoDR. The novelty of the approach in this study is that it aims to add an African perspective to the international literature on the procedural, normative and conceptual reform of SoDR. Towards this end, the question of how to reform the SoDR landscape is addressed within the framework of a developmental and a human rights approach. This paradigm through which SoDR should also be viewed has only begun to feature in the literature recently and thus requires further evaluation. This study assesses the historical evolution of SoDR, the current challenges in the contemporary era of SoDR and evaluates the corresponding proposals for reform. While acknowledging the role that the contractual approach (the primary mechanism for SoDR) has already played in the current landscape, this study argues that this approach alone is not sufficient to ensure fair, transparent and prompt restructuring. The study consequently assesses the policy debate on viable options for reform.
Thesis (LLD)--University of Pretoria, 2020.
Centre for Human Rights
LLD
Unrestricted

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2006.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 95-99).
This thesis explores the growth of subnational debt ("SND") and the different regulatory responses to this debt. It focuses on the recent emergence of credit rating agencies (e.g. Standard & Poor's, Moody's and Fitch) as an alternative regulatory mechanism, which has the potential to stabilize these markets, improve risk pricing, and alter traditional conceptions of local governance. The first chapter traces SND's long legacy of debt defaults, federal bailouts, and improperly priced risk; as well as the profound benefits that SND can provide to local governments, particularly as a means of resisting the siren song of privatization. Unfortunately, it finds that conventional strategies for regulating SND - including federal oversight, financial rules and market discipline - have not properly balanced these trade offs and have left lingering moral hazards, overly restricted debt markets, and a legacy of mispricing. The second chapter examines the emergence of debt rating agencies in Mexico as a possible alternative. It traces their growth, particularly the role of domestic and international agreements, their methodology, and their historic accuracy. It finds that they should improve debt pricing and obviate moral hazards when compared to existing regulatory interventions.
(cont.) However, these significant benefits come with profound implications on local governance and decentralization. The third chapter investigates rating agencies infringement on traditional local autonomy as well as the more subtle ways in which these bodies can actually improve local deliberation by enhancing transparency and formality. The thesis argues further that any restrictions are outweighed by the benefits from stabilizing SND markets and replacing more onerous regimes. The thesis also suggests that the agencies' view of governance actually fits in with broader international approaches and is part of a broader movement towards international local government law. The paper concludes by considering potential regulation to improve agencies' performance further.
by Ommeed S. Sathe.
M.C.P.

The paper empirically tests the relationship between earnings volatility and cost of debt with a sample of more than 77,000 Swedish limited companies over the period 2006 to 2013 observing more than 677,000 firm years. As called upon by many researchers recently that there is very limited evidence of the association between earnings volatility and cost of debt this paper contributes greatly to the existing literature of earnings quality and debt contracts, especially on the consequence of earnings quality in the debt market. Earnings volatility is a proxy used for earnings quality while cost of debt is a component of debt contract. After controlling for firms’ profitability, liquidity, solvency, cashflow volatility, accruals volatility, sales volatility, business risk, financial risk and size this paper studies the effect of earnings volatility measured by standard deviation of Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA) on Cost of Debt. Overall finding suggests that lenders in Sweden does take earnings volatility into consideration while determining cost of debt for borrowers. But a deeper analysis of various industries suggest earnings volatility is not consistently used by lenders across all the industries. Lenders in Sweden are rather more sensitive to borrowers’ financial risk across all the industries. It may also be stated that larger borrowers tend to secure loans at a lower interest rate, the results are consistent with majority of the industries. Swedish debt market appears to be well prepared for financial crises as the debt crisis seems to have no or little adverse effect borrowers’ cost of capital. This study is the only empirical evidence to study the association between earnings volatility and cost of debt. Prior indirect research suggests earnings volatility has a negative effect on cost debt (i.e. an increase in earnings volatility will increase firm’s cost of debt). Our direct evidence from the Swedish debt market is consistent for some industries including media, real estate activities, transportation & warehousing, and other consumer services.

COORDENAÇÃO DE APERFEIÇOAMENTO DO PESSOAL DE ENSINO SUPERIOR
O crescimento do volume de títulos indexados ao câmbio adicionou diversas questões a respeito da sustentabilidade da dívida pública. O objetivo deste trabalho é analisar a gestão da dívida pública ao longo dos anos de 1994 a 2003 quanto ao uso de títulos indexados à taxa de câmbio. Enfatiza-se o processo histórico do endividamento brasileiro e a evolução da composição da dívida interna. Através de um modelo de minimização de custos e riscos, estima-se a composição ótima da dívida interna para a economia brasileira com base em dados recentes. Analisa-se também a política monetária ótima frente a um choque externo em um país com elevado endividamento indexado à moeda estrangeira. Os resultados sugerem que a alocação da dívida deve ser predominantemente composta de títulos indexados a índices de preços e que frente a uma crise externa, a política monetária ótima deve ser restritiva, dado o elevado nível de endividamento indexado à moeda estrangeira.
Concerning the composition of the public debt, the recent growth in the foreign currency linked debt provoked the debate about sustainability of the public debt. The objective of this work is to analyze the management of the foreign currency linked debt from 1994 to 2003. The evolution of the composition and its historical process is emphasized. A model that estimates the optimal internal debt composition through cost and risk minimization is applied to recent Brazilian data. It is also analyzed the optimal monetary police facing an external crises for a country that has a high level of foreign currency linked debt. The results suggest that the optimal composition of the public debt implies a massive use of price linked indexed bonds. And also, for facing an external crisis, the optimal monetary policy should be restrictive since the foreign currency linked debt is in such a high level.

The idea that public debt may represent a burden for the economic system as a whole has distant origins and focuses on who and how should pay for debt, and with what consequences on the economy. Nevertheless, particularly influential both for academic research and the implementation of the fiscal corrective policies was the empirical paper proposed by Reinhart and Rogoff in 2010 at the dawn of the crisis. Reinhart and Rogoff (2010), in a large panel of countries, identified a critical threshold of 90% of the debt-to-GDP ratio beyond which debt is harmful to growth. Several countries in the world were fast approaching that threshold or already were well beyond it. Though Reinhart and Rogoff’s work was affected by many flaws, it has spurred buoyant empirical research in search of the general debt thresholds above which growth is jeopardised by public debt. Further works have supported the existence of critical debt-to-GDP ratios under various time and space observational fields, but results of these researches are inconclusive or controversial, as discussed in Chapter 2. Country-specific characteristics and contingencies play in fact a prominent role, thus prompting a branch of literature that attempts to comprehensively understand the debt-growth relationship and its determinants (see for instance Panizza and Presbitero, 2014; Eberhardt and Presbitero, 2015). In contrast with the findings of the broad threshold literature and of many theoretical models, the idea that public debt is always harmful to economic growth has partially been reconsidered in the last few years. Nevertheless, the existence of a linkage between debt and growth has not been rejected: the long-run relationship between such macroeconomic variables is inevitably and broadly affected by heterogeneous factors. However, in retrospect and as emerges in Chapter 1, one may say that the empirical pursuit of the debt-to-GDP threshold harmful to growth lacks deeper foundational work: why should we expect a negative public debt-growth relationship? In addition, if such a relationship exists, why should it take the specific form of a threshold of the debt-to-GDP ratio, and why should we expect this threshold to be equally valid across time and space? These questions are the starting point of this Doctoral Thesis, which is organised as follows. Chapter 1 surveys the theoretical literature concerning public debt and economic growth, aiming at finding a theoretical foundation for the debt-threshold literature. Overall, there is no clear and straightforward answer to the questions of why we should expect a negative public debt-growth relationship in the first place, why it should take the specific form of a threshold of the debt-to-GDP ratio, and why we should expect this threshold to be equally valid across time and space. Or, from another perspective, there are many possible answers and many elements affecting them, thus reflecting the complexity of the argument, as well as the variety of the empirical situations. In particular, the literature that I examine, on the one hand offers a rich variety of explanations and insights to researchers of the debt-growth relationship but, on the other, it does not provide any one-way conclusion: the relationship may be negative, positive, or even no relationship may exist, both from a theoretical and an empirical point of view. Even less is theoretically founded the existence of a general debt-to-GDP threshold above which growth is consistently stifled. Each country’s specific characteristics, circumstances, and events have an overwhelming importance that cannot be encapsulated in a single general law. In Chapter 1, I also present a fiscal model of endogenous growth that may help address the theoretical issues in an orderly and consistent manner along two specific coordinates of debt assessment: sustainability/unsustainability, and efficiency/inefficiency. The thrust of the model is that no meaningful assessment of debt and its effect on growth at any point in time is possible without reference to the whole debt trajectory and the specific state of the economy along the trajectory. Chapter 2 reviews the empirical literature and focuses on the debt-growth relationship from an econometric point of view. As before, it is difficult to derive a univocal conclusion on the nature of such a relationship on the basis of the literature’s findings: the existence of a significant negative relationship between debt and growth is the predominant thinking, though in contrast with the conclusions of several works. For these reasons, the aim of Chapter 2 is to go to the roots of the debt-growth relationship, to investigate whether the outstanding debt and the GDP are linked. To this end, I have adopted a research methodology that differs from the most common employed in the literature on debt-to-GDP thresholds. First, my analysis does not hinge on any specific theory, and it should not be considered as a proof of a specific theoretical statement. Rather, it is based on the approach outlined by Hoover et al. (2008) and aims at understanding "what the data say" without imposing aprioristic theoretical structures. A second methodological choice consistent with this approach is to treat the (growth of the) amount of public debt and (the growth of) GDP as the two genuine primitives, without imposing the debt-to-GDP ratio as a primitive itself. In fact, for this to be possible, the two underlying primitives should display well defend statistical properties, namely cointegration and convergence towards a long-term equilibrium value, which are usually not tested in the literature. Third, I believe that the heterogeneity, or non-generality, of results that I have pointed out before should be taken as an intrinsic feature of the problem at hand, so that a viable strategy is to restrict, rather than expand, the observational field. I have set time and space limits to my dataset by purpose: my analysis is based on a panel dataset including quarterly data for 25 Eastern and Western European countries from 1999Q1 to 2015Q4. The Eurozone represents a unique "field experiment" of a large number of countries where some key conditioning factors of fiscal policy are common and exogenous, namely fiscal targets and rules, monetary policy, and the exchange rate with the rest of the world. The main result is that a long-run equilibrium relationship between GDP and debt exists for some countries ? and debt and GDP tend to adjust towards it ? but it is not generalisable. Where a relationship exists, it does not always imply that the debt-to-GDP ratio may be the appropriate variable for describing it. Moreover, cross-country heterogeneity and the role of the financial crisis and of the austerity periods remain substantial and overwhelming factors. Therefore, a unique equation describing the GDP-debt relationship does not seem to exist, which entails the impossibility to derive a meaningful general debt-to-GDP threshold. Thus far I have focused on the general relationship between debt and growth from both the theoretical and the empirical points of view. Turning to the analysis of the Sovereign Debt Crisis and of the austerity period, Chapter 3 attempts to explain what has driven austerity ? measured as the first difference of the cyclically adjusted structural primary balance ? within a dataset of 28 European countries. In the first part of this chapter I present a correlation analysis that describes the relationship between the variable austerity and each of the considered determinants, that are brought back to four main sets of variables: fiscal discipline, market discipline, fiscal consolidation, and macroeconomic stabilisation. The second part implements a panel econometric analysis based on the principal component factor analysis and on the pooled partial common correlation effect estimator. Results show that the variables and factors of the analysis are not able to fully explain austerity, though an important contribution is provided by the enforcement of the Eurozone fiscal rules (the adoption of excessive deficit procedures) and is partially counterbalanced by the cyclical position of the economy. The last chapter, Chapter 4, aims at gaining insight into the role of debt and government expectations and their impact on growth under uncertainty conditions. In fact, it is possible that the effects of austerity measures in some countries, for instance the so-called PIIGS, were amplified by uncertainty. My ambition is to relate austerity with consumers’ expectations, thus studying whether and when consumers’ beliefs about public debt and government intervention affect their consumption, savings, and tax compliance choices with a direct impact, at the aggregate level, on economic growth. Therefore, Chapter 4 implements a laboratory experiment to study how people react in a generalized framework in which public debt may be unexpectedly reduced. The debt dynamics arises endogenously: within a public good game, taxes are collected from all participants and are used to cover a given level of public expenditure, which is then equally distributed to the same participants at the beginning of each round. If the collected amount of taxes is lower than what the public expenditure would require, a deficit is generated. Moreover, reproducing a forced withdrawal, the outstanding amount of public debt can be reduced upon accessing subjects’ savings. Within this setting, expectations are directly elicited by asking subjects if they believe that public debt is going to be reduced, and if they think that the other subjects believe that public debt is sustainable. Therefore, it is possible to identify whether and how agents’ allocations and expectations are affected by the public debt path. As mentioned above, a peculiarity of my approach is the endogenous dynamics of public debt: not only it avoids introducing predetermined dynamics, but also increases the ecological validity of the experiment. Participants are indeed more psychologically involved in the debt mechanism and they might feel responsible for the raise in debt. On the other hand, an exogenous dynamics could depict public debt and tax compliance as irrelevant. Results show that this experimental framework is characterized by relatively high and often increasing aggregate savings and relatively low and decreasing aggregate consumption. Interestingly, an increase in the debt-reduction expectations and a decrease in the perceived debt sustainability are also found to explain savings and consumption behaviours, as is shown in the econometric part of Chapter 4.

The idea that public debt may represent a burden for the economic system as a whole has distant origins and focuses on who and how should pay for debt, and with what consequences on the economy. Nevertheless, particularly influential both for academic research and the implementation of the fiscal corrective policies was the empirical paper proposed by Reinhart and Rogoff in 2010 at the dawn of the crisis. Reinhart and Rogoff (2010), in a large panel of countries, identified a critical threshold of 90% of the debt-to-GDP ratio beyond which debt is harmful to growth. Several countries in the world were fast approaching that threshold or already were well beyond it. Though Reinhart and Rogoff’s work was affected by many flaws, it has spurred buoyant empirical research in search of the general debt thresholds above which growth is jeopardised by public debt. Further works have supported the existence of critical debt-to-GDP ratios under various time and space observational fields, but results of these researches are inconclusive or controversial, as discussed in Chapter 2. Country-specific characteristics and contingencies play in fact a prominent role, thus prompting a branch of literature that attempts to comprehensively understand the debt-growth relationship and its determinants (see for instance Panizza and Presbitero, 2014; Eberhardt and Presbitero, 2015). In contrast with the findings of the broad threshold literature and of many theoretical models, the idea that public debt is always harmful to economic growth has partially been reconsidered in the last few years. Nevertheless, the existence of a linkage between debt and growth has not been rejected: the long-run relationship between such macroeconomic variables is inevitably and broadly affected by heterogeneous factors. However, in retrospect and as emerges in Chapter 1, one may say that the empirical pursuit of the debt-to-GDP threshold harmful to growth lacks deeper foundational work: why should we expect a negative public debt-growth relationship? In addition, if such a relationship exists, why should it take the specific form of a threshold of the debt-to-GDP ratio, and why should we expect this threshold to be equally valid across time and space? These questions are the starting point of this Doctoral Thesis, which is organised as follows. Chapter 1 surveys the theoretical literature concerning public debt and economic growth, aiming at finding a theoretical foundation for the debt-threshold literature. Overall, there is no clear and straightforward answer to the questions of why we should expect a negative public debt-growth relationship in the first place, why it should take the specific form of a threshold of the debt-to-GDP ratio, and why we should expect this threshold to be equally valid across time and space. Or, from another perspective, there are many possible answers and many elements affecting them, thus reflecting the complexity of the argument, as well as the variety of the empirical situations. In particular, the literature that I examine, on the one hand offers a rich variety of explanations and insights to researchers of the debt-growth relationship but, on the other, it does not provide any one-way conclusion: the relationship may be negative, positive, or even no relationship may exist, both from a theoretical and an empirical point of view. Even less is theoretically founded the existence of a general debt-to-GDP threshold above which growth is consistently stifled. Each country’s specific characteristics, circumstances, and events have an overwhelming importance that cannot be encapsulated in a single general law. In Chapter 1, I also present a fiscal model of endogenous growth that may help address the theoretical issues in an orderly and consistent manner along two specific coordinates of debt assessment: sustainability/unsustainability, and efficiency/inefficiency. The thrust of the model is that no meaningful assessment of debt and its effect on growth at any point in time is possible without reference to the whole debt trajectory and the specific state of the economy along the trajectory. Chapter 2 reviews the empirical literature and focuses on the debt-growth relationship from an econometric point of view. As before, it is difficult to derive a univocal conclusion on the nature of such a relationship on the basis of the literature’s findings: the existence of a significant negative relationship between debt and growth is the predominant thinking, though in contrast with the conclusions of several works. For these reasons, the aim of Chapter 2 is to go to the roots of the debt-growth relationship, to investigate whether the outstanding debt and the GDP are linked. To this end, I have adopted a research methodology that differs from the most common employed in the literature on debt-to-GDP thresholds. First, my analysis does not hinge on any specific theory, and it should not be considered as a proof of a specific theoretical statement. Rather, it is based on the approach outlined by Hoover et al. (2008) and aims at understanding "what the data say" without imposing aprioristic theoretical structures. A second methodological choice consistent with this approach is to treat the (growth of the) amount of public debt and (the growth of) GDP as the two genuine primitives, without imposing the debt-to-GDP ratio as a primitive itself. In fact, for this to be possible, the two underlying primitives should display well defend statistical properties, namely cointegration and convergence towards a long-term equilibrium value, which are usually not tested in the literature. Third, I believe that the heterogeneity, or non-generality, of results that I have pointed out before should be taken as an intrinsic feature of the problem at hand, so that a viable strategy is to restrict, rather than expand, the observational field. I have set time and space limits to my dataset by purpose: my analysis is based on a panel dataset including quarterly data for 25 Eastern and Western European countries from 1999Q1 to 2015Q4. The Eurozone represents a unique "field experiment" of a large number of countries where some key conditioning factors of fiscal policy are common and exogenous, namely fiscal targets and rules, monetary policy, and the exchange rate with the rest of the world. The main result is that a long-run equilibrium relationship between GDP and debt exists for some countries ― and debt and GDP tend to adjust towards it ― but it is not generalisable. Where a relationship exists, it does not always imply that the debt-to-GDP ratio may be the appropriate variable for describing it. Moreover, cross-country heterogeneity and the role of the financial crisis and of the austerity periods remain substantial and overwhelming factors. Therefore, a unique equation describing the GDP-debt relationship does not seem to exist, which entails the impossibility to derive a meaningful general debt-to-GDP threshold. Thus far I have focused on the general relationship between debt and growth from both the theoretical and the empirical points of view. Turning to the analysis of the Sovereign Debt Crisis and of the austerity period, Chapter 3 attempts to explain what has driven austerity ― measured as the first difference of the cyclically adjusted structural primary balance ― within a dataset of 28 European countries. In the first part of this chapter I present a correlation analysis that describes the relationship between the variable austerity and each of the considered determinants, that are brought back to four main sets of variables: fiscal discipline, market discipline, fiscal consolidation, and macroeconomic stabilisation. The second part implements a panel econometric analysis based on the principal component factor analysis and on the pooled partial common correlation effect estimator. Results show that the variables and factors of the analysis are not able to fully explain austerity, though an important contribution is provided by the enforcement of the Eurozone fiscal rules (the adoption of excessive deficit procedures) and is partially counterbalanced by the cyclical position of the economy. The last chapter, Chapter 4, aims at gaining insight into the role of debt and government expectations and their impact on growth under uncertainty conditions. In fact, it is possible that the effects of austerity measures in some countries, for instance the so-called PIIGS, were amplified by uncertainty. My ambition is to relate austerity with consumers’ expectations, thus studying whether and when consumers’ beliefs about public debt and government intervention affect their consumption, savings, and tax compliance choices with a direct impact, at the aggregate level, on economic growth. Therefore, Chapter 4 implements a laboratory experiment to study how people react in a generalized framework in which public debt may be unexpectedly reduced. The debt dynamics arises endogenously: within a public good game, taxes are collected from all participants and are used to cover a given level of public expenditure, which is then equally distributed to the same participants at the beginning of each round. If the collected amount of taxes is lower than what the public expenditure would require, a deficit is generated. Moreover, reproducing a forced withdrawal, the outstanding amount of public debt can be reduced upon accessing subjects’ savings. Within this setting, expectations are directly elicited by asking subjects if they believe that public debt is going to be reduced, and if they think that the other subjects believe that public debt is sustainable. Therefore, it is possible to identify whether and how agents’ allocations and expectations are affected by the public debt path. As mentioned above, a peculiarity of my approach is the endogenous dynamics of public debt: not only it avoids introducing predetermined dynamics, but also increases the ecological validity of the experiment. Participants are indeed more psychologically involved in the debt mechanism and they might feel responsible for the raise in debt. On the other hand, an exogenous dynamics could depict public debt and tax compliance as irrelevant. Results show that this experimental framework is characterized by relatively high and often increasing aggregate savings and relatively low and decreasing aggregate consumption. Interestingly, an increase in the debt-reduction expectations and a decrease in the perceived debt sustainability are also found to explain savings and consumption behaviours, as is shown in the econometric part of Chapter 4.

In my first chapter I follow the methodology put forth by Bohn(1998), the market-based sustainability method to measure whether the sovereign debt is sustainable or not. I work with a panel of 125 countries for 26 years and along with incorporate different institutions ratings by ICRG’s political risk ratings. In my analysis I find out that the debt on average is sustainable for countries up to certain extent and thus giving us an inverted U shape debt-exports curve. I use country exports to find out if the debt is sustainable or not. I also find that better institutions do give an edge to countries when it comes to borrowing as it lowers the risk expectations on the lenders part. The findings do vary based on the country’s income level and based on its geographical location.

This thesis analyzes various issues of sovereign debt from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. The first chapter investigates how global and country-specific factors like US interest rates, global risk aversion and the country-specific macroeconomic climate drive the dynamics of sovereign spreads in emerging countries. I develop a theoretical framework that pinpoints the determination of the equilibrium debt level, probability of default and sovereign spread, and test empirical implications derived from the predictions of the model. The chapter then employs a Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) model to show empirically how the spread of sovereign debt is influenced over time by the factors given above. The empirical results show that most of the variations in sovereign spreads are caused by global shocks such as the term structure of US interest rates and the global risk aversion. The findings also indicate that shocks from the US have a direct effect on sovereign spread and an indirect effect via country-specific macroeconomic fundamentals. Finally, the evidence produced validates the presence of some response patterns of sovereign spread to the global shocks. The second chapter deals with debt restructuring strategy from private initiatives when multiple players are involved. I show that when the old creditor is unable to extend new loans due to liquidity crunch and austerity, and incentive issues of the borrowing country worsen sovereign debt repayment problems, a debt equity swap where an old creditor swaps a part of the debt for an equivalent amount of equity is Pareto improving and benefits all stakeholders. The exchange of old debt into equity makes the new debt automatically more senior as the extra equity (swapped) is by definition junior to all other debt. The enhanced priority of the new debt increases the pay-off of new lenders in the bad state and makes this debt relatively safer and allows lenders to charge lower interest rates. This fall in the face value of new loans (payments in the good state) leaves an increased surplus to the borrowing country, which is then incentivized to make an extra effort to make risky project successful, which further lowers the probability of second time default, making everyone’s gains ex ante. Thus, unlike previous work on debt equity swap models which show ambiguous increments in welfare, my work shows the opposite when such swaps are designed in the debt restructuring process. My model further discusses why such swaps are most effective in the current European debt crisis. Finally, my model shows that debt exchange, where the old creditor exchanges its existing debt into a new junior debt, is Pareto improving. The third chapter empirically analyses the effect of participating in an IMF program on sovereign debt rescheduling. By applying simultaneous equation estimation for 115 countries from 1970 to 2012, I found that participating in a non-concessional IMF program increases the probability of subsequent debt rescheduling, but the probability and the quantity of debt rescheduling are negatively correlated with the amount of non-concessional IMF disbursed loans in the short term. The participation effect of IMF programs on sovereign debt rescheduling is larger for countries with a lower income. Furthermore, compliance with IMF conditionality could increase the probability and quantity of subsequent debt rescheduling, especially for low income countries. The results may indicate that participation in a non-concessional IMF program could signal a country’s willingness to reform and that the recipient country is rewarded with subsequent debt rescheduling. The effectiveness of signaling is negatively linked to the country’s level of income and compliance with IMF conditionality could enhance such signaling effects.

The main purpose of this study is to contribute to a theory of the causes of the Latin American international debt in the framework of the sociology of change and development, which has analyzed international debt only in passing. The study first examines international debt in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from the elaboration of the world-system up to the economic depression of the 1930s. Using data from the International Monetary Fund, the Bank for International Settlements, the Economic Commission for Latin America and other primary and secondary sources, the thesis analyses the process which begins after the Second World War and the efforts to create a new international financial order at Bretton Woods which has led to the contemporary debt crisis that has been especially severe in Latin America. The study indicates that debt crises are a recurrent phenomenon. It is suggested that the periodic occurrence of debt crisis is due to the functioning of capitalist production and accumulation. It is further argued that the cycle of debt begins with an excessive accumulation of money in the financial markets, and that this excessive liquidity is the result of depressive tendencies in the productive sectors of the economy. To solve the problem of diminished circulation, banks and other financial institutions energetically promote off—shore lending, which increases international indebtedness. A coincidence of interests between a segment of the ruling elites in debtor countries, and the financial sectors in the creditor countries tends to increase the debt load and exacerbate economic problems. This has been particularly the case in Latin America since the 1960s which has led to the crisis of the 1980S. The thesis suggests that, contrary to common belief, the international capitalist system can emerge from debt crisis with added strength. The self-serving pattern of elite management of such crisis, however, reinforces and deepens social and economic inequalities.
Arts, Faculty of
Sociology, Department of
Graduate

The overall theme of this thesis pertains to agents' response, as a result of having debt, in the wake of the Great Recession. Two chapters focus on households-this has been my primary focus throughout my studies. The first paper examines the relationship between mortgage leverage and consumption around the 2008 financial crisis. Using survey data, we show that highly leveraged households made larger cuts to consumption following the financial crisis and that this was largely driven by younger households. Using a life-cycle framework, we investigate the channels by which highly leveraged households may have reduced consumption by more than others. The second paper examines the link between mortgage product availability and final consumer choice. We find that the average person shopping for a mortgage has over 90 mortgages to choose from (although most have similar total costs). Most make reasonable choices, however we find that about 7.5\% of households choose very expensive mortgages (relative to their income). The larger the pool of mortgages to choose from, the more likely that a household makes a very expensive choice. The final paper examines the impact of changes in the supply of credit from banks on firm productivity. We use firm level data around the global financial crisis and information on pre-existing lending relationships to isolate exogenous credit supply shocks. We find some evidence that contractions in bank's supply of credit are associated with reductions in labour productivity and wages.

Master of Arts
Department of Economics
Lloyd B. Thomas Jr
The European sovereign debt crisis has had a profound impact on the rest of the world. The “debt crisis” refers to the rapid accumulation of debt within some struggling euro-zone countries. This debt accumulation has resulted in a variety of financial bailouts made to various countries within the European Union and a debt default by the country of Greece. The results of this crisis have changed the way of life for many living within the struggling economies. Division within the euro zone, on both policy and ideology, has begged the question of whether the euro will be able to survive in the long term. The purpose of this report is to investigate the buildup and evolution of this crisis, as well as to highlight various responses and proposed solutions of the future.

Mestrado em Finanças
As leis económicas mudaram, devido à falta de liquidez no mercado, depois da maior crise da última década. Os bancos restringiram o financiamento às empresas, obrigando os gestores a encontrar formas alternativas de financiamento. De estudos anteriores chegamos à conclusão que os fornecedores de uma empresa podem ser também credores da mesma. O mercado experienciou uma mudança no peso do crédito comercial no balanço das empresas, no passado visto como uma força oposta ao financiamento bancário, nos dias de hoje é considerado uma alternativa válida de financiamento das empresas. Este projeto centra-se no estudo de uma empresa que concede crédito comercial a empresas do sector da restauração e hotelaria, a Iguarias d'Excelência, e todo o processo desenvolvido para a recuperação de dívida dos seus clientes.
The lack of liquidity in the market since the worst crisis of the last decade changed the laws of credit in the market, the banks restricted the supply of loans and the managers found the urge to be financed from other sources. From past studies the conclusion is that the suppliers of a company can be creditors as well. Also, the market experienced a change in weight and impact of trade credit in the balance sheet of the firms, in the past an opposing source of funding in relation to bank credit but nowadays a valid alternative to the companies financing. This project approaches the view of a trade credit company, Iguarias d'Excelência, supplier of firms present in the restaurant businesses and hotels, that suffered from the lack of liquidity in their clients accounts and the process developed to recover the credit and the re-balance of Iguarias balance sheet.

Doutoramento em Gestão
This work addresses several issues related to corporate debt, within a structural framework. Specifically, we model the value of finite maturity coupon bonds with rating-trigger based covenants. Prior and at maturity default are explicitly taken into account and two types of these covenants are considered, namely a coupon increase and a partial redemption of the bond face value. The coupon increase rating-trigger covenant is further analysed regarding the optimal debt and its effectiveness to solve the asset substitution problem. It is shown that the use of this particular type of covenant not only can inhibit the substitution of assets, but also, in some cases, can produce better results in terms of firm value, when compared with straight debt. This last result will depend on the trade-off between agency and inefficiency costs related to those two types of debt. Finally, we analyse the influence of bankruptcy procedures on the optimal debt level. Specifically we consider the possibility of a single Chapter 11 filling, which originates a grace period, before the occurrence of the firm's asset liquidation. Closed form solutions for equity and debt are delivered, considering different assumptions regarding debt forgiveness at the end of the grace period. The influence of such grace period on the optimal values of debt, equity and the leverage firm value is analysed.
Este trabalho debruça-se sobre diversas questões de investigação relacionadas com a divida privada. O enquadramento utilizado é a abordagem estrutural. Especificamente, modelamos o valor de obrigações com cupão e maturidade finita que incorporam cláusulas de salvaguarda relacionadas com a notação de risco da empresa. Considera-se explicitamente a possibilidade de incumprimento antes e na maturidade e analisam-se dois tipos de cláusulas, as que impõem um acréscimo de cupão e as que determinam um reembolso parcial do valor facial da dívida. E ainda analisado o efeito da cláusula de salvaguarda que impõe um acréscimo de cupão na dívida óptima da empresa e a sua eficácia em inibir a substituição de activos. Mostra-se que essa cláusula não só permite resolver esse problem como também, em alguns casos, permite gerar melhores resultados em termos de valor da empresa quando comparada com a alternativa de emissão dívida sem quaisquer cláusulas de salvaguarda. Tal facto vai depender do trade-off entre custos de de agência e ineficiência e associado a estes dois tipos de dívida. Finalmente, analisamos a influência dos procedimentos inerentes ao código de falência americano na dívida óptima da empresa. Especificamente, consideramos a possibilidade de uma empresa entrar no regime de protecção subjacente ao respectivo Capítulo 11, facto que dá origem a um período de graça, antes dos seus activos serem liquidados. São obtidas soluções fechadas para o valor da dívida e das acções considerando diferentes hipóteses quanto ao perdão da dívida no final do período de graça. A influência de tal período nos valores óptimos da dívida, das acções e da empresa é analisada.

This thesis consists of three studies that investigate the channels through which corporate governance reforms, accounting choice, and social capital influence contracting in the corporate bond market. In Chapter 1 (solo authored), I examine the public debt contracting consequences of shocks to managerial entrenchment. For identification, I exploit the mandatory adoption of board independence rules under the NYSE and NASD listing requirements as a regulatory reform that enhanced the intensity of CEO monitoring by independent directors. Using a large sample of corporate bond issues, I find that the rules induced economically significant contracting effects in non-compliant firms, namely in the form of lower payout, financing, and event-related covenants as well as higher credit ratings. In further tests, I show that while these effects are not mitigated by shareholder control, they ultimately depend on directors' private incentives and their ability and willingness to engage in costly monitoring. My findings speak to the debate on how equity-centric governance interacts with bondholders' interests and their incentives to impose long-term restrictions on firms' economic activities. Chapter 2 (co-authored with Peter Pope and Ane Tamayo) examines the contracting relevance of the balance sheet in the corporate bond market. Using "accounting bloat" in net asset values as a proxy for balance sheet quality, we predict and find that aggregate covenant intensity in bond indentures is negatively associated with the quality of issuers' balance sheet numbers. The magnitude of this effect is more pronounced for accounting and event-related covenants and is lower in the case of covenants that restrict payouts, refinancing, and investment activities. Our results are robust to controlling for corporate governance quality and the stringency of monitoring by lenders in syndicated loan deals. Turning to market outcomes, we find that offering yields, credit spreads, and credit ratings are decreasing in balance sheet quality, while the likelihood of agreement among credit rating agencies about new bond issues' credit risk increases with balance sheet quality. To establish a causal link between balance sheet quality and covenant structures, we exploit an exogenous court ruling in Delaware that substantially limits the fiduciary duties of directors to creditors. We show how the legal event affected bond issuers' reporting incentives and altered the debt contracting relevance of their balance sheet numbers. Finally, in Chapter 3 (co-authored with Kalr Lins, Henri Servaes and Ane Tamayo), we investigate whether a firm's capital, and the trust that it engenders, are viewed favourably by bondholders. Using firms' corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities to proxy for social capital, we find no relation between CSR and bond spreads over the 2005-2013 period. However, during the 2008-2009 financial crisis, which represents a shock to trust and default risk, high-CSR firms benefited from lower bond spreads. These effects are more pronounced for firms that, when in distress, have a greater opportunity to engage in asset substitution or divert cash to shareholders. High-CSR firms were also able to raise more debt capital on the primary market during this period, and those high-CSR firms that raised more debt were able to do so at lower at-issue bond spreads, better initial credit ratings, and for longer maturities. Our results suggest that bond investors believe that high-CSR firms are less likely to engage in asset substitution and diversion that would be detrimental to stakeholders, including debtholders. These findings also indicate that the benefits of CSR that accrued to shareholders during the financial crisis carry across to another important asset class, debt capital.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2015.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references.
This thesis consists of three chapters on debt markets. In chapter 1, I consider the interaction between domestic banking and growth in a DSGE model of sovereign default in order to address (i) the joint existence of sovereign debt and international reserves, and (ii) the occurrence of twin (domestic banking and sovereign default) crises. In chapter 2, joint with Hui Chen and Jun Yang, we build a structural model to explain corporate debt maturity dynamics over the business cycle and their implications for the term structure of credit spreads. In chapter 3, joint with Juan Passadore, we study debt policy of emerging economies accounting for credit and liquidity risk.
by Yu Xu.
Ph. D.

Doctor of Philosophy
School of Family Studies and Human Services
Sonya L. Britt
This study explored whether the use of debt, specifically mortgages and student loans, has a negative relationship with wealth accumulation over a consumer’s lifetime. The analysis looked at whether exploration questioned whether consumer debt is incongruent with good personal financial management and consumers should hold a philosophy of avoidance of debt in order to accumulate more wealth. Some financial planners believe in leveraging current assets in hopes of accelerating wealth accumulation. The latter approach is more congruent with a behavioral life-cycle hypothesis perspective (Shefrin & Thaler, 1988), which posits that consumers are the happiest when consumption remains relatively constant over a lifetime through use of debt and savings. To account for wealth accumulation across the lifespan, a measure of relative net worth was constructed by taking current net worth divided by current annual income divided by age. Relative net worth was used rather than net worth in order to allow comparisons between consumers of different ages and income. Data were collected from a sample of convenience, recruited from social media, friends and their acquaintances, and the clients of financial advisors who agreed to distribute the survey. Four ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses were conducted to determine the influence of current mortgage relative to the value of the home, mortgage obtained at the time of home purchase as a multiple of income, and student loans at graduation as a multiple of income on relative net worth accumulations. Results suggested that current mortgage debt that is 80% or less of home value, lack of a mortgage, and completing higher education without student debt are associated with higher relative net worth. Using a sample of convenience, the respondent pool was not nationally representative. In comparison to the United States population, the sample population is more highly educated, has a higher percentage of married and individuals in a committed relationship, contains more adults over the age of 50, and does not reflect the ethnic diversity of the United States. This study did not provide deep new insight into the factors contributing to wealth accumulation. It showed that mortgages and student loans alone do not have a large impact on wealth accumulation. This is evidenced by the low R² for all regressions (ranging from .00 to .07). Of the independent variables chosen for regression, the impact was not large and statistical significance for those factors was not present in all regressions. The results of this study do not provide direct support to the ability to use mortgages and student loans as part of wealth accumulation strategies. Future studies may be able to incorporate other elements with debt decisions as well as the impact of financial advice on the use and levels of debt as part of an integrated wealth accumulation strategy. The level of debt to positively impact socioeconomic status is also another area for future study.

The purpose of the research conducted for this thesis was to investigate perceptions of responsibility and blame for rising levels of consumer debt in the UK, focusing on two key stakeholder groups often associated with the issues relating to consumer debt: individual borrowers and consumer credit lenders. Research was conducted with these stakeholders; debtors represented the individual borrowers and debt collectors from a large multi national credit card company represented lenders. Three central research questions lay at the heart of the research: what are the respondents' perceptions of why and how debtors use consumer credit; how are debtors perceived and treated by their creditors (i.e. through contact with debt collectors); what are the respondents' perceptions of who is to blame for consumer debt? A mixed method approach was adopted, using primarily qualitative research methods in accordance with the interpretivist approach of the research. An online survey and in-depth interviews were adopted for the debtor respondents and focus groups and in-depth interviews were adopted for the debt collector respondents. The debtor respondents were recruited from the National Debt Line website, the biggest online money advice website in the UK, by posting an online survey on the site. The debt collector respondents were recruited from the shared employer of the respondents and the researcher, a large multi national credit card company. In answer to the research questions, the research revealed that, firstly, the majority of debtor respondents perceived that their consumer credit use was to supplement their low income, which contradicted previous stereotypes of debtors as reckless spendthrifts and, instead, proposed they are agentic rational decision makers. Secondly, debtors were negatively perceived and treated by their creditors (debt collectors) in that they were stigmatised and labelled as deviant. This occurred during the debtors' social interaction with debt collectors during the debt collection process. In line with the labelling theory of deviance, this societal reaction then led to self-labelling by the debtors, who expressed feelings of shame. Thirdly, therefore, both the debtors and debt collectors primarily blamed the debtor stakeholder group as responsible for increasing levels of consumer debt, although the debtors also placed some of the blame on the creditors for acting unethically in their lending practices, namely by lending irresponsibly to debtors without an accurate assessment of the affordability of the loan. This thesis makes an original contribution to sociological knowledge of the ways in which blame and responsibility for increasing levels of debt is perceived by different societal groups. A key part of the thesis' originality exists in its utilisation of concepts drawn from different strands of sociological theory to explore perceptions of debt, in particular the sociology of deviance and symbolic interactionism, such as labeling, stigma and shame.

My dissertation consists of three essays with the common theme of analyzing economic models of financial assets markets featuring heterogeneous market participants and testing the predictions of these models empirically. In the first essay, I present a simple model of heterogeneous traders and demonstrate that different sources of heterogeneity (discount factors vs. return expectations) imply opposite signs for the relationship of turnover and expected returns. This motivates me to analyze the correlational empirical relationship between asset turnover and measures of expected returns, both survey- and model-based, for the US stock and housing markets. I obtain mixed evidence on the sign of the turnover-expected return relationship in the stock market, while in the housing market the relationship is moderately positive. In the second essay (authored jointly with Andrea Fabiani and Luigi Falasconi), I ask whether monetary policy influences the maturity structure of corporate debt. I answer this question by exploiting: i) time-series and firm-level data on debt maturity for the US corporate sector; ii) several proxies of FED monetary interest rate shocks. The results show that a loosening of the policy rate lengthens corporate debt maturity, an effect entirely driven by the adjustments of very large companies. I explain such findings through a model combining moral-hazard frictions and yield-seeking investors, who increase their demand of long-term debt-securities when the policy rate goes down. Only large and unconstrained companies can accommodate the demand shift. Empirical evidence on the response of corporate bond issuance by large companies and holdings by mutual funds validates the proposed mechanism. In the third essay (authored jointly with Ilja Kantorovitch), I test the theoretical predictions of the differences-of-opinion literature by analyzing the extensive online discussion on Bitcoin by potential Bitcoin investors to build a time-varying sentiment distribution, defining disagreement as dispersion in sentiment. High disagreement is associated with negative subsequent returns, high turnover growth, and high volatility, confirming the theory’s predictions. However, I do not find that an increase in disagreement increases the price, which is seemingly at odds with the theoretical prediction of disagreement leading to overpricing. As the theory predicts, the effect of disagreement weakens significantly after shorting instruments were introduced at the end of 2017. The results are economically significant: at the monthly frequency, a one standard deviation increase in disagreement leads to a 9:2 percentage points lower cumulative return over the following eight months, and the adjusted R2 of regressing contemporaneous returns on average sentiment and disagreement is 0:33.
La meva dissertació consta de tres assajos amb el tema comú d’analitzar l’impacte de la introducció d ’agents no racionals i heterogeni en els models de mercats d’actius financers. En el primer capítol, presento un model simple d’agents heterogenis i dedueixo que diferents causes d’heterogeneïtat (diferents factors de descompte versus diferents expectatives de rendibilitat) impliquen un signe diferent per a la relació entre la velocitat transactional d’actius i els rendiments esperats. Analitzo la relació empírica entre les mesures dels rendiments esperats i la velocitat transactional d’actius per als mercats borsari i de l’habitatge dels EUA i obtinc evidència mixta sobre el signe de la relació entre la velocitat transactional d’actius i els rendiments esperats. En el segon capítol (escribido juntament amb Andrea Fabiani i Luigi Falasconi) pregunto si la política monetària influeix en l’estructura de venciments del deute corporatiu. Responc a aquesta pregunta utilitzant: i) dades de sèries temporals i a nivell d’empresa sobre el venciment del deute de el sector empresarial nord-americà; ii) diverses aproximacions a les pertorbacions dels tipus d’interès monetaris de la FED. Els resultats mostren que una flexibilització del tipus d’interès oficial allarga el venciment del deute corporatiu, un efecte totalment impulsat pels ajustos de les empreses molt grans. Explico aquests resultats a través d’un model que combina friccions de risc moral i inversors que busquen rendibilitat, que augmenten la seva demanda de títols de deute a llarg termini quan el tipus d’interès oficial baixa. Només les empreses grans i sense restriccions poden acomodar el canvi de demanda. L’evidència empírica sobre la resposta de l’emissió de bons corporatius per part de les grans empreses i les tinences dels fons d’inversió valida el mecanisme. En el tercer capítol (escrit juntament amb Ilja Kantorovitch) poso a prova les prediccions teòriques de la literatura sobre les diferències d’opinió en mercats financers analitzant l’extens debat en línia sobre Bitcoin per construir una distribució de sentiment variable en el temps, definint el desacord com la dispersió en aquest sentiment. Alt desacord s’associa amb rendiments negatius, un alt creixement de la facturació i una alta volatilitat, confirmant les prediccions de la teoria. No obstant això, no trobo que un augment del desacord augmenti el preu en el present, el que sembla contradir la predicció teòrica que el desacord condueix a la sobrevaloració. Com prediu la teoria, l’efecte de desacord es debilita significativament després de la introducció d’instruments de venda al descobert a la fi de 2017. Els resultats són econòmicament significatius: en la freqüència mensual, un augment d’una desviació estàndard en el desacord condueix a una rendibilitat acumulada 9:2 menor durant els vuit mesos següents, i el R2 ajustat de la regressió de les rendibilitats contemporànies sobre el sentiment mitjà i el desacord és de 0:33.

Contributing to the contentious debate on the relationship between sovereign debt and economic growth, I examine the role of theory-driven (non-)sustainable debt-ratios in combination with debt-ratio thresholds on economic growth. Based on both dynamic and non-dynamic panel data analyses in the euro area (EA) 12 countries over the period 1970-2013, I find that non-sustainable debt-ratios above and below the 60% threshold, have a detrimental effect on short-run economic growth, while sustainable debt-ratios below the 90% threshold exert a positive influence on short-run economic growth. In the long-run, both non-sustainable and sustainable debt-ratios above the 90% threshold, as well as non-sustainable debt-ratios below the 60% compromise economic growth. Robustness analysis supports these findings, and provides additional evidence of a positive effect of sustainable debt-ratios below the 60% threshold, as predicated by the Maastricht Treaty criterion, on (short- and long-run) economic growth. Overall, these results suggest that debt sustainability in addition to debt non-linearities should be considered simultaneously in the debt-growth nexus. In addition, the results indicate the importance of a timely reaction of fiscal policy in countries with non-sustainable debts, as implied by fiscal rules, in an attempt to ensure fiscal sustainability and, ultimately, promote long-run economic growth. (author's abstract)
Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

The thesis describes and analyses, within a framework of qualitative market development theory, the development of the Secondary Market in the bank debts of less developed countries. A survey of market participants is presented and analysed. The theory of financial market efficiency is assessed, and secondary market price data is used to test the theory in the secondary market context. Market-based debt reduction is described in theory and in practice, with a qualitative and quantitative assessment of the Brady Initiative. Simulations and sensitivity analysis of the likely effect on debt servicing ability for the first three beneficiaries of Brady debt restructuring are presented. Suggestions for further research are presented in the concluding chapter.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2006.
The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file viewed on (May 2, 2007) Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This paper investigates the determinants of sovereign debt crises by using cross-country data from 1977 to 2010. In particular, I focus on the structure of sovereign debt by analysing the debt composition (domestic versus external), maturity structure (short-term versus long-term), composition type (bank loans versus bond) and currency denomination (domestic currency versus foreign currency) of debts. I also assess whether the previous history of banking and currency crises affect the likelihood of a sovereign debt crisis. The results suggest that both the structures of debt and the past history of other financial crises are important determinants of debt crises. The results are robust when using alternative measures to understand the risks of sovereign debt. I also investigate the impacts of debt structure and past financial crises history on the levels and changes of foreign and local currency long-term debt credit ratings.

Management of public debt is crucial for every country. Public debt managers make efforts to both minimize the cost of borrowing and to keep debt stock at sustainable levels. However, due to competition for funds in the continuously changing and developing financial markets, new threats and opportunities appear constantly. Public debt managers construct borrowing policies in order to minimize the cost of borrowing and also to decrease risk by using various borrowing instruments. This thesis presents a mathematical model to determine the borrowing policy that minimizes the cost of borrowing in line with future projections and then seeks to extend it to construct risk sensitive policies that allow minimizing the effects of changes in the market on the cost of borrowing. The model&rsquo
s application results for determining the borrowing strategies of Turkish Treasury for 100 month horizon have been evaluated through the study.

This dissertation examines two different topics related to the issuance of a convertible debt security. The first essay addresses the question of how managers set the equity value in a convertible debt issue. A convertible debt security has value derived from an equity component and a debt component. As a result, managers must decide how much of the convertible debt's value will be derived from equity at issuance. I examine three hypotheses in addressing this question. Empirical evidence is provided supporting the assertion that managers issue more equity-like debt when the firm will have lower future operating performance and a greater potential for underinvestment. Empirical support is not found for managers take into consideration asset substitution concerns when setting the equity value in a convertible debt issue. The second essay examines why are abnormal returns negative for the equity during the convertible debt's issuance period. This has been documented by Dann and Mikkelson (1984), Mikkelson and Partch (1986, 1988), and also by this dissertation. I furnish evidence that is consistent with a bid-ask spread bias not causing the negative equity abnormal returns during the issuance period of a convertible debt security. Tests are also performed that provide results that are consistent with the issue period returns being partially due to a resolution of uncertainty.
Ph. D.

The theologically-inspired Jubilee 2000 campaign was highly successful but much theological reflection on the sovereign debt owed by the poorest nations has been overly polemical. Our study indicates that nonetheless a post-liberal, dialogical approach to the issue of international debt can be realised, and traces some of its key observations and themes. The origins and development of Jubilee 2000 are traced both in Britain and internationally, with particular reference to the campaign in Zambia. Key arguments and factors critical to the success of Jubilee 2000 are discussed and analysed. In performing this analysis we draw on the work of Atherton, whose approach offers criteria for establishing the adequacy of theological engagement in a plural and globalised context. Analysis of the themes of jubilee, grace and forgiveness, and usury reveal that despite their limitations, they offer valuable and distinctive contributions on issues of power and money, in their insights into the human condition, and into obligations across generations. Future theological engagement on debt will also require greater attention to the role that money performs, and a new synthesis of visionary and realistic elements.

It can be difficult for a sovereign debt manager to see the implications on expected costs and risk of a specific debt management strategy, a simulation model can therefore be a valuable tool. This study investigates how future economic data such as yield curves, foreign exchange rates and CPI can be simulated and how a portfolio optimization model can be used for a sovereign debt office that mainly uses financial derivatives to alter its strategy. The programming language R is used to develop a bespoke software for the Swedish National Debt Office, however, the method that is used can be useful for any debt manager. The model performs well when calculating risk implications of different strategies but debt managers that use this software to find optimal strategies must understand the model's limitations in calculating expected costs. The part of the code that simulates economic data is developed as a separate module and can thus be used for other studies, key parts of the code are available in the appendix of this paper. Foreign currency exposure is the factor that had the largest effect on both expected cost and risk, moreover, the model does not find any cost advantage of issuing inflation-protected debt. The opinions expressed in this thesis are the sole responsibility of the author and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of the Swedish National Debt Office.
Det kan vara svårt för en statsskuldsförvaltare att se påverkan på förväntade kostnader och risk när en skuldförvaltningsstrategi väljs, en simuleringsmodell kan därför vara ett värdefullt verktyg. Den här studien undersöker hur framtida ekonomiska data som räntekurvor, växelkurser ock KPI kan simuleras och hur en portföljoptimeringsmodell kan användas av ett skuldkontor som främst använder finansiella derivat för att ändra sin strategi. Programmeringsspråket R används för att utveckla en specifik mjukvara åt Riksgälden, men metoden som används kan vara användbar för andra skuldförvaltare. Modellen fungerar väl när den beräknar risk i olika portföljer men skuldförvaltare som använder modellen för att hitta optimala strategier måste förstå modellens begränsningar i att beräkna förväntade kostnader. Delen av koden som simulerar ekonomiska data utvecklas som en separat modul och kan därför användas för andra studier, de viktigaste delarna av koden finns som en bilaga till den här rapporten. Valutaexponering är den faktor som hade störst påverkan på både förväntade kostnader och risk och modellen hittar ingen kostnadsfördel med att ge ut inflationsskyddade lån. Åsikterna som uttrycks i den här uppsatsen är författarens egna ansvar och ska inte tolkas som att de reflekterar Riksgäldens syn.

This thesis analyses the new developments in sovereign debt restrcutrings implemented in the restructurings that took place in the past decades, highlighting new solutions to old issues and looking at the still oustadning problems. It focuses specifically on the contractual techniques implemented in order to develop an orderly sovereign debt restructuring framework.