Credit to the Private Sector
This paper investigates the impact of sovereign defaults on the ability of the corporate sector in emerging nations to finance itself abroad. The hypothesis here is that defaults have a negative spillover effect on the private sector through credit rationing. We explore a novel dataset covering the vast majority of corporates and municipals in emerging nations that received foreign capital between 1880 and 1913. The detailed nature of the data allows us to explore variation between countries and economic sectors. The results confirm that rationing existed, was very large, and persisted long beyond the solution of the original default problem. Therefore, the private sector in emerging countries paid a severe reputational cost for the debt intolerance of their governments, with possible implications for the growth prospects of these nations.

Rui Esteves is a University Lecturer in Economics and a Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford. He was educated in the Universities of Porto and California, Berkeley. Before coming to Oxford, Rui held an academic appointment at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. His research focuses on topics of international finance, institutional economics, and public finance in a historical perspective. Recent projects deal with the nature of governance in the sovereign debt market, the determinants of capital flows to developing nations, infrastructure investment, emigrants remittances, and rent-seeking in public office.

Coordenação: Anne Cova e Filipa Vicente