Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/56182 
Year of Publication: 
2005
Series/Report no.: 
SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance No. 585
Publisher: 
Stockholm School of Economics, The Economic Research Institute (EFI), Stockholm
Abstract: 
This paper shows that geographical investor heterogeneity strongly influences sovereign risk. While standard sovereign debt models mainly attribute the absence of sovereign defaults to foreign creditor retaliation, a new theoretical literature argues that domestic creditors also affect borrowing governments' default decisions through channels of domestic politics. This paper examines this controversy using a newly assembled dataset on cross-listed Scandinavian sovereign yields traded at markets that abruptly went from integration to segmentation by capital controls and World War II. The results strongly suggest that domestic and foreign bond investors assessed different sovereign risks whereas more standard explanations based on macroeconomic factors, portfolio choice or risk aversion added little explanatory value. The study also documents large effects on recorded asset prices from institutional trading constraints (e.g., price limits), an issue largely neglected by previous research in historical long-run asset returns.
Subjects: 
Sovereign risk
Investor heterogeneity
Market segmentation
Domestic debt
Political economy
Historical finance
Cliometrics
JEL: 
F34
G15
G18
N20
N24
N44
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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