Abstract

How do indebted governments restructure their debts with private creditors? What explains variation in indebted states’ negotiating behavior? Existing explanations of debt restructuring have largely treated creditors as a profit-maximizing monolith; Yet creditors have different exposures, ties to borrowers, and roles in the international banking system. Inter-creditor disputes are common. In this paper, I argue that because institutional norms dictate burden sharing, the makeup of the creditor group matters for indebted states’ negotiating behavior. The requirement of near-consensus decision-making allows almost any creditor to hold up negotiations. It limits the outcome to what the most reluctant creditors will agree to. Debtor governments are aware of compositional issues and where coordination is most difficult ex-ante, they can use more coercive behaviors to bring reluctant creditors into the fold. I focus on publicly issued declarations of default as one such tool. Using existing data on public moratoriums alongside original data on creditor composition, I find that governments are more likely to publicly announce default as the number of creditors involved in a restructuring increases. The findings imply that who the government is bargaining against matters to how they choose to bargain.

摘要

负债累累的政府如何重组与私人债权人的债务？如何解释负债国谈判行为的变化？现有的债务重组解释在很大程度上将债权人视为利润最大化的巨石；然而，债权人有不同的风险敞口、与借款人的关系以及在国际银行体系中的角色。债权人之间的纠纷很常见。在本文中，我认为由于制度规范决定了责任分担，债权人团体的构成对负债国的谈判行为很重要。近乎一致的决策要求几乎允许任何债权人推迟谈判。它将结果限制在最不情愿的债权人同意的范围内。债务国政府意识到组成问题以及事前协调最困难的地方，他们可以使用更具强制性的行为将不情愿的债权人纳入其中。我专注于将公开发布的违约声明作为此类工具之一。使用关于公共暂停的现有数据以及关于债权人构成的原始数据，我发现随着参与重组的债权人数量增加，政府更有可能公开宣布违约。调查结果表明，政府与谁讨价还价对他们选择如何讨价还价很重要。