Search results for "Contingent debt"

Contingent convertible bonds for sovereign debt risk management

2015

We consider convertible bonds that contractually stipulate payment standstill, contingent on a market indicator of a sovereign's creditworthiness breaching a distress threshold. This financial innovation limits ex-ante the likelihood of debt crises and imposes ex-post risk sharing between creditors and the debtor. Drawing from literature on contingent contracts, neglected risks, and bank CoCo, we extend prevailing arguments in favor of sovereign CoCo (S-CoCo). We discuss issues relating to their design: which market trigger, market discipline and sovereign incentives, and errors of false alarms or missed crises, and provide supporting evidence with eurozone data and a simple simulation on t…