César Sosa-Padilla

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of Notre Dame

China's lending to developing nations has surged since the mid-2000s, making it these nations' largest official creditor. Contracts frequently feature unique terms, indicating China's substantial privileges as a lender. However, other lenders are also involved. We examine how these lending relationships with China affect access to credit from inter...

Nations vary widely in how often they are governed by left-wing governments. Using data from 56 nations over 45 years, we find that the propensity of a nation to elect the left is positively correlated with both the average level and volatility of their sovereign spreads. To explain these facts, we build a quantitative sovereign default model in wh...

In the past three decades, governments in emerging markets have accumulated large amounts of international reserves, especially those with fixed exchange rates. This paper proposes a theory of reserve accumulation that can account for these facts. Using a model of endogenous sovereign default with nominal rigidities, we argue that the interaction b...

Financial sanctions have emerged as powerful weapons in the current geopolitical landscape. In this paper, we use a graphical framework to trace their macroeconomic implications, highlighting lessons for the status of the US dollar as a reserve currency, sovereign debt crises, and the fragmentation of capital flows.

There has been substantial research on the benefits of accumulating foreign reserves, but less on the relative merits of how these reserves are accumulated. In this paper we explore whether the form of accumulation affects country risk. We first present a model of endogenous sovereign debt defaults, where we show that reserve accumulation through t...

Empirical studies suggest that fluctuations in the level and volatility of the world interest rate affect sovereign spreads in emerging economies. We incorporate an estimated time-varying process for the world interest rate (with both level and volatility shocks) into a model of sovereign default calibrated to a panel of emerging economies. Time va...

As a response to economic crises triggered by COVID-19, sovereign debt standstill proposals emphasize debt payment suspensions without haircuts on the face value of debt obligations. We quantify the effects of standstills using a standard default model. We find that a one-year standstill generates welfare gains for the sovereign equivalent to a per...

In this paper, we show that the relationship between trade liberalization and firm productivity is sensitive to the method used to estimate the production function. We estimate the productivity of Colombian manufacturing plants using the methods of Levinsohn and Petrin, Ackerberg et al., and Gandhi et al. and at times come to surprisingly different...

Using data from 40 nations, we obtain new stylized facts regarding the impact of political leanings of the ruling government on sovereign debt yields and fiscal policy. Left-wing governments' yields are 166 basis points higher and 23% more volatile than yields of right-wing governments. Moreover, left-wing governments face more counter-cyclical yie...

Sovereign defaults feature three key empirical regularities regarding the domestic banking systems: (i) defaults and banking crises happen together, (ii) banks are largely exposed to government debt, (iii) defaults trigger major contractions in bank credit and production. We rationalize these phenomena by extending a traditional default framework t...

In this paper, we show that the relationship between trade liberalization and firm productivity is sensitive to the method used to estimate the production function. We estimate the productivity of Colombian manufacturing plants using the methods of Levinsohn and Petrin, Ackerberg et al., and Gandhi et al. and at times come to surprisingly different...

We measure the effects of debt dilution on sovereign default risk and study debt covenants that could mitigate these effects. We calibrate a baseline model with endogenous debt duration and default risk (in which debt can be diluted) using data from Spain. We find that debt dilution accounts for 78 percent of the default risk in the baseline econom...

We measure the effects of debt dilution on sovereign default risk and show how these effects can be mitigated with debt contracts promising borrowing-contingent payments. First, we calibrate a baseline model a la Eaton and Gersovitz (1981) to match features of the data. In this model, bonds' values can be diluted. Second, we present a model in whic...

In this study, we measure the effects of debt dilution on sovereign default risk and consider debt covenants that could mitigate these effects. First, we calibrate a baseline model of defaultable debt (in which debt can be diluted) with endogenous debt duration, using data from Spain. Secondly, we present a model in which sovereign bonds contain a...

We show that some recent sovereign debt restructurings were characterized by (i) the absence of missed debt payments prior to the restructurings, (ii) reductions in the government's debt burden, and (iii) increases in the market value of debt claims for holders of the restructured debt. Since both the government and its creditors are likely to bene...

We propose a sovereign default framework that allows us to quantify the importance of the debt dilution problem in accounting for overborrowing and sovereign default risk. We find that debt dilution accounts for 12% of the mean debt level and almost 100% of the sovereign default risk in the simulations of a baseline model. Even without commitment t...

This paper analyzes how the presence of liability dollarization, different degrees of contract enforcement, and the possibility to default on debts affect firms’ financing decisions. The framework is a dynamic model of heterogeneous firms. They finance their capital acquisitions using their own income and borrowing from foreign lenders. The set of...