Essays in International Finance and Macroeconomics

The way in which governments borrow has changed dramatically over the last decade. The first two chapters of this dissertation study the implications of the rise of local currency sovereign borrowing in emerging markets. Chapter 1 presents a method to measure the credit risk on local currency sovereign debt. Chapter 2 argues that private sector balance sheet mismatch explains why nominal sovereign debt risk is not free from default risk. Chapter 3 studies the costs of sovereign default by exploiting the timing of legal rulings in the case of Republic of Argentina v. NML Capital to identify the causal effect of increases in sovereign default risk on firm performance.