The Nagging Problem of State Insolvency
Historically, states have indebted themselves to finance military campaigns. They do so nowadays for other reasons such as financing productive investment.
The state is not a debtor like any other: in the instance of payment default, their creditors may have great difficulty recovering funds. The measure of sovereign risk is therefore a crucial issue with necessitates political, economic and financial expertise.
Article published in Politique étrangère, Vol. 79, No. 2, Summer 2014
This paper is published in French only: Le lancinant problème de l’insolvabilité des Etats