Sovereign Debt Default, Empire, and Trade During the Gold Standard

金本位制下的主权债务违约、帝国和贸易

• 批准号: 0518661
• 负责人: Kris Mitchener
• 金额: $ 26.84万
• 依托单位: Santa Clara University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2005
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2005-08-01 至 2009-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0518661&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Sovereign; Debt; Default; Empire; Trade

The resurgence in global trade and capital flows over the past three decades has important implications for the growth trajectories of developing countries. The widespread incidence of financial crises and sovereign debt default over this period has led some policymakers to call for a reform of the global financial architecture that buttresses these factor flows. Drawing on data from an earlier era of economic integration, this project aims to enhance our understanding of the role that institutions play in facilitating trade and capital flows by examining the relationship between debt default, trade, and the classical gold standard from 1870-1913. This project applies new data sets and rigorous empirical research methods to test several hypotheses that are central to research in international trade and finance, and economic history. Drawing on earlier work of the investigators, part one of the project tests whether sanctions have been used to enforce sovereign debt repayment. It aims to broaden the empirical literature on sanctions by examining an earlier era of sovereign default (1870-1913), and by testing a broader range of sanctions than what has been studied for modern debt crises. An augmented gravity model of trade is used to test whether trade sanctions or "supersanctions" - instances where external military pressure or political control was imposed on defaulting nations - were effective ways of enforcing sovereign debt repayment from 1870-1913. Since previous research by economists has not attempted to quantify the effects of direct intervention, this project will also test whether ex ante and ex post default probabilities of bonds were affected by supersanctions. The second component of the project examines the importance of institutions on trade flows. Using an expanded version of the trade database developed for the first study, this part quantifies whether membership in an empire or belonging to a currency union (in this case the gold standard) boosted bilateral trade from 1870-1913. The project aims to fill a void in the existing literature by testing the relative importance of these two channels on trade. The third part of the project assembles a database of weekly bond prices for sovereign borrowers and examines whether financial market contagion took place during the Baring Crisis of 1890. Although previous research has recognized the impact of the Baring Crisis on the Argentine economy, relatively little research has been conducted on whether it spilled over to neighboring countries or other sovereign borrowers. The final component of the project uses the bond price database and event-study methodology to test whether country risk premia decreased in the months leading up to the adoption of the gold standard. Results from these time series tests will improve researchers' understanding of whether financial markets interpreted the adoption of the gold standard as a signal of a borrowing country's commitment to maintain prudent fiscal and monetary policy. The four data-intensive pieces of this project will have broader impacts on research on financial crises and sovereign debt default and provide insights from history for policymakers. The project calls for assembling several new, large databases, which will have a broad impact on researchers' ability to study the gold standard era and carry out empirical tests for longer sample periods. The first two parts of the project will create more than 15,000 observations on bilateral trade from 1870-1913 - roughly twice the size of existing databases. The third and fourth projects create a database of approximately one million observations on weekly bond prices, and provide additional weekly data on exchange rates for a sample of Latin American countries during the classical gold standard era. The project will also construct bond indices for different samples of countries including core, emerging market, empire, and non-empire during the gold standard period. All series will be available for others to use and disseminated broadly through online networks and publications by the project investigators. The serial nature of sovereign debt default over the last 150 years has raised awareness about the broader impact of debt default on long-run economic growth and on the stability of societies. Argentina's recent, sizable default has only underscored the importance of effective institutions for debt workouts. This project's findings will offer a historical lens for policymakers to assess whether sanctions or other third-party enforcement mechanisms are effective measures for enforcing debt repayment, and whether sovereign debt defaults are a source of contagion. It also provides insights as to whether there are benefits to trade from joining currency unions or political unions, and whether fixed-exchange-rate regimes encourage countries to pursue time-consistent policies

过去30年来，全球贸易和资本流动的复苏对发展中国家的增长轨迹产生了重要影响。在此期间，金融危机和主权债务违约的普遍发生，导致一些决策者呼吁对全球金融架构进行改革，以支持这些要素流动。本项目利用早期经济一体化时代的数据，旨在通过考察1870-1913年债务违约、贸易和古典金本位之间的关系，加深我们对制度在促进贸易和资本流动方面所起作用的理解。该项目采用新的数据集和严格的实证研究方法，以测试在国际贸易和金融以及经济史研究中至关重要的几个假设。 该项目第一部分利用调查人员早先的工作，检验制裁是否被用来强制偿还主权债务。 它的目的是通过审查主权违约的早期时代（1870-1913年），并通过测试比现代债务危机所研究的更广泛的制裁，来扩大关于制裁的经验文献。 贸易的增强引力模型被用来测试是否贸易制裁或“supersanctions”-外部军事压力或政治控制施加在违约国家的情况下-是有效的方式，强制执行主权债务偿还从1870年至1913年。 由于经济学家以前的研究没有试图量化直接干预的效果，本项目还将测试债券的事前和事后违约概率是否受到超级干预的影响。该项目的第二个组成部分审查机构对贸易流动的重要性。 这一部分使用了为第一项研究开发的贸易数据库的扩展版本，量化了帝国成员国身份或货币联盟（在本例中为金本位制）是否促进了1870-1913年的双边贸易。 该项目旨在通过测试这两个贸易渠道的相对重要性来填补现有文献中的空白。 项目的第三部分收集了主权借款人每周债券价格的数据库，并研究了1890年巴林危机期间是否发生了金融市场传染。 虽然先前的研究已经认识到巴林危机对阿根廷经济的影响，但相对较少的研究已经进行了是否蔓延到邻国或其他主权借款人。 该项目的最后一个组成部分使用债券价格数据库和事件研究方法来测试在采用金本位之前的几个月里，国家风险溢价是否下降。这些时间序列测试的结果将有助于研究人员更好地理解金融市场是否将金本位的采用解读为借款国承诺维持审慎财政和货币政策的信号。该项目的四个数据密集型部分将对金融危机和主权债务违约的研究产生更广泛的影响，并为政策制定者提供历史见解。该项目要求组装几个新的大型数据库，这将对研究人员研究金本位时代和进行更长样本期实证检验的能力产生广泛影响。该项目的前两部分将创建1870-1913年双边贸易的15，000多个观测数据-大约是现有数据库的两倍。第三和第四个项目创建了一个数据库，其中包含大约100万份关于每周债券价格的观察数据，并提供了关于古典金本位时代拉丁美洲国家汇率抽样的额外每周数据。该项目还将为不同的国家样本构建债券指数，包括金本位时期的核心国家、新兴市场国家、帝国国家和非帝国国家。 所有系列都将提供给其他人使用，并通过项目调查员的在线网络和出版物广泛传播。 过去150年来主权债务违约的连续性提高了人们对债务违约对长期经济增长和社会稳定的更广泛影响的认识。 阿根廷最近发生的大规模违约事件更是凸显了有效的债务解决机制的重要性。该项目的研究结果将为决策者提供一个历史透镜，以评估制裁或其他第三方执行机制是否是强制偿还债务的有效措施，以及主权债务违约是否是蔓延的根源。 它还提供了关于加入货币联盟或政治联盟是否对贸易有益的见解，以及固定汇率制度是否鼓励各国追求时间一致的政策