Sovereign Debt and Moral Hazard: The Role of Collective Action and Contractual Uncertainty
研究了主权债务合同中同等权利条款的模糊表述如何通过债权人之间的集体行动问题来减少主权国家的道德风险，并探讨了如何通过调整条款来优化违约成本与支付之间的权衡。
The ambiguous phrasing of pari passu (equal treatment) clauses in sovereign debt contracts has long baffled commentators. We show that in the presence of asymmetric information about a sovereign borrower’s ability to pay, an uncertain clause gives rise to a collective-action problem among creditors that can reduce the sovereign’s moral hazard. By varying the clause, parties can calibrate a sovereign’s expected default costs and payments to creditors and thereby optimally trade off the sovereign’s moral hazard and (deadweight) default costs. As information asymmetry decreases, a pari passu clause becomes a coarser instrument for configuring creditors’ incentives and mitigating moral hazard. So that the door might not be shut in the face of borrowers. (Babylonian Talmud)