Sovereign defaults

Abstract

JT03434701This document, as well as any data and map included herein, are without prejudice to the status of or sovereignty over any territory, to the delimitation of international frontiers and boundaries and to the name of any territory, city or area. ECO/WKP(2018)42 Unclassified English -Or. English ECO/WKP(2018)42 2 OECD Working Papers should not be reported as representing the official views of the OECD or of its member countries. The opinions expressed and arguments employed are those of the author(s).Working Papers describe preliminary results or research in progress by the author(s) and are published to stimulate discussion on a broad range of issues on which the OECD works.Comments on Working Papers are welcomed, and may be sent to OECD Economics Department, 2 rue André-Pascal, 75775 Paris Cedex 16, France, or by e-mail to eco.contact@oecd.org.All Economics Department Working Papers are available at www.oecd.org/eco/workingpapers.On 3 May 2018, the OECD Council invited Lithuania to become a Member. At the time of preparation, the deposit of Lithuania's instrument of accession to the OECD Convention was pending and therefore Lithuania does not appear in the list of OECD Members and is not included in the OECD zone aggregates.On 25 May 2018, the OECD Council invited Colombia to become a Member. At the time of preparation, the deposit of Colombia's instrument of accession to the OECD Convention was pending and therefore Colombia does not appear in the list of OECD Members and is not included in the OECD zone aggregates.This document and any map included herein are without prejudice to the status of or sovereignty over any territory, to the delimitation of international frontiers and boundaries and to the name of any territory, city or area. © OECD (2018) _____________________________________________________________________________________You can copy, download or print OECD content for your own use, and you can include excerpts from OECD publications, databases and multimedia products in your own documents, presentations, blogs, websites and teaching materials, provided that suitable acknowledgment of OECD as source and copyright owner is given. All requests for commercial use and translation rights should be submitted to rights@oecd.org This paper provides robust empirical evidence that government effectiveness is a key determinant of sovereign defaults. Government effectiveness is measured by a broad-based perception index of the Worldwide Governance Indicators database (WGI) disseminated by the World Bank. Public debt and sovereign default data cover both external and internal government debt. In a systematic and demanding robustness check with any possible sub-sample of a large set of control variables, the effect of government effectiveness is almost always robust. In addition, the effects of the five other main indicators of the WGI database on default risk are also investigated, showing that the rule of law, regulatory quality, control of corruption and voice and accountability are also robustly lin...