Deadly Debt Crises: COVID-19 in Emerging Markets
将流行病学动态纳入主权违约模型，研究新冠疫情对新兴市场经济和健康的影响，发现违约风险使疫情福利成本增加约三分之一，并论证债务减免计划的必要性。
Abstract Emerging markets have experienced large human and economic costs from coronavirus disease 2019, and their tight fiscal space has limited the support extended to their citizens. We study the impact of an epidemic on economic and health outcomes by integrating epidemiological dynamics into a sovereign default model. The sovereign’s option to default tightens fiscal space and results in an epidemic with limited mitigation and depressed consumption. A quantitative analysis of our model accounts well for the dynamics of fatalities, social distancing, consumption, sovereign debt, and spreads in Latin America. We find that because of default risk, the welfare cost of the pandemic is about a third higher than it is in a version of the model with perfect financial markets. We study debt relief programs and find a compelling case for their implementation. These programs deliver large social gains, improving health and economic outcomes for the country at no cost to international lenders or financial institutions.