Is inflation default? The role of information in debt crises
Bassetto, Marco
Galli, Carlo

Data: 2017
Resum: We consider a two-period Bayesian trading game where in each period informed agents decide whether to buy an asset ("government debt") after observing an idiosyncratic signal about the prospects of default. While second-period buyers only need to forecast default, first-period buyers pass the asset to the new agents in the secondary market, and thus need to form beliefs about the price that will prevail at that stage. We provide conditions such that coarser information in the hands of second-period agents makes the price of debt more resilient to bad shocks not only in the last period, but in the first one as well. We use this model to study the consequiences of issuing debt denominated in domestic vs. foreign currency: we interpret the former as a subject to inflation risk and the latter as subject to default risk, with inflation driven by the information of a less-sophisticated group of agents endowed with less precise information, and default by the information of sophisticated bond traders. Our results can be used to account for the behavior of debt prices across countries following the 2008 financial crisis, and also provide a theory of "original sin".
Resum: The ADEMU Working Paper Series is being supported by the European Commission Horizon 2020 European Union funding for Research & Innovation, grant agreement No 649396.
Ajuts: European Commission 649396
Drets: Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original. Creative Commons
Llengua: Anglès
Col·lecció: Barcelona Graduate School of Economics. ADEMU working paper series
Col·lecció: ADEMU Working Paper Series ; 59
Document: Working paper
Matèria: Government debt ; Currency denomination ; Original sin ; Global games ; Dispersed information

Adreça alternativa: https://hdl.handle.net/10230/30928


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 Registre creat el 2018-10-23, darrera modificació el 2022-07-09



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