Negotiations to restructure sovereign debt are protracted affairs, and their outcomes, known as “haircuts,” range from 0 to 80 percent creditor losses. Haircuts impact states’ ability to borrow, cost of borrowing, and economic recovery; they also redistribute income—between states and creditors and between domestic interest groups. I conceptualize the interaction between governments and private creditors as a bargaining game where the government’s will to repay is private information. Creditors can make inferences about repayment based on the government’s political economy, but distributional signals are muddled when there are multiple veto players. Where additional uncertainty persists, governments can issue a public declaration of default, triggering costs in international financial markets. This costly signal separates governments that are willing to repay from those that are not and extorts greater concessions as a result. Using data on haircuts and public default declarations in market-based restructurings from 1980 to 2009, I find that governments are more likely to engage in costly signaling when they face heightened domestic constraints. When governments issue public declarations, they are subsequently rewarded with higher haircuts. Defaults do not all look the same, and the economic consequences are varied.

中文翻译：

---

不同的违约方式：主权债务重组谈判的政治经济学

重组主权债务的谈判是旷日持久的事情，其结果被称为“削减”，债权人损失从 0% 到 80% 不等。削减影响各州的借贷能力、借贷成本和经济复苏；它们还在国家和债权人之间以及国内利益集团之间重新分配收入。我将政府和私人债权人之间的互动概念化为讨价还价游戏，其中政府的偿还意愿是私人信息。债权人可以根据政府的政治经济来推断还款情况，但当有多个否决权时，分配信号就会变得混乱。如果存在额外的不确定性，政府可以公开宣布违约，从而引发国际金融市场的成本。这一代价高昂的信号将愿意偿还债务的政府与不愿意偿还债务的政府区分开来，并最终迫使政府做出更大的让步。通过使用 1980 年至 2009 年基于市场的重组中的削减和公开违约声明的数据，我发现，当政府面临加剧的国内约束时，它们更有可能发出代价高昂的信号。当政府发布公开声明时，他们随后会得到更高的折扣奖励。违约看起来并不都一样，其经济后果也各不相同。