Financial crises and political crises2005

"This paper is an analysis of the simultaneous determination of financial default and political crises and its consequences. It focuses on a small open economy that faces a debt default decision. Crucially, this decision is made by a government that has superior information than the public about the social costs of default. Citizens can dismiss the government, and overrule its default decision, at the cost of a political crisis. If there is a divergence between the objectives of the government and its people, a political crisis may emerge in equilibrium. For this to be the case, the foreign debt must be large enough, and international reserves low. When this political equilibrium is seen as a part of a larger investment problem, there are equilibria in which crises are "only...