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We study the occurrence of holdout litigation in the context of sovereign defaults. The number of creditor lawsuits against foreign governments has strongly increased over the past decades, but there is a large variation across crisis events. Why are some defaults followed by litigation and others not? What explains the general increase in lawsuits? We address these questions using an economic model of litigation and a new data set capturing the near universe of cases filed against defaulting sovereigns. We find that creditors are more likely to litigate when debt restructurings are large, when governments impose high losses (haircuts), and when the defaulting country is more vulnerable to litigation (open economies and those with a low legal capacity). We conclude that sovereign debt lawsuits can be predicted reasonably well with a simple framework from the law and economics literature.
This paper measures “debt disputes” between governments and foreign private creditors in periods of sovereign debt crises. We construct an index of government coerciveness, consisting of 9 objective sub-indicators. Each of these sub-indicators captures unilateral government actions imposed on foreign banks and bondholders. The results provide the first systematic account of debt crises that goes beyond a binary categorization of default versus non-default. Overall, government behavior and rhetoric show a strong variability, ranging from highly confrontational to very smooth crisis resolution processes. In a preliminary analysis on the determinants of coercive behavior, we find political institutions to be significant, while economic and financial factors play a lesser role. These results open up an agenda for future research.