Practically none of the current research that analyzes sovereign debt restructurings
distinguishes adequately between cases where creditors and debtors preemptively
renegotiate debt in advance of outright repayment and cases in which there is a
prolonged period of nonrepayment and negotiation. In “Sovereign Debt Restructurings,
Preemptive or Post-Default”, Tamon Asonuma and Christoph Trebesch (2016) code
a new data set that covers all sovereign debt restructurings between 1978 and 2010.
A somewhat surprising result is the large share (38%) of restructurings that can be
coded as preemptive. The authors introduce amodel that embeds a renegotiation period
within the conventional sovereign default model; then they use this model to predict
the circumstances under which default will be preemptive versus “outright”. Their
analysis endogenizes both the restructuring decision and the haircut size, although
they assume exogenously that output costs are higher in the outright default case. The
Asunuma and Trebesch model helps explain the empirical finding that GDP per capita
tends to decline more markedly when there is eventually preemptive default (than when
there is outright default) yet thereafter recovers its pre-crisis peak comparatively more
rapidly. In the model, preemptive default is more likely when the country anticipates
a greater risk of default in the coming period. Their analysis incorporates the data set
on defaults developed by Cruces and Trebesch