Sovereign Debt Crises and International Financial Contagion: Estimating Effects in an Endogenous Network

In an integrated global financial system, a sovereign default raises concerns of financial contagion to other countries. We develop and estimate an equilibrium model featuring a network of international borrowing and lending. In the model, the network structure of borrowing-lending relationships arises endogenously and results in the propagation of financial shocks across countries. We estimate the model using data on foreign claims among a network of 20 countries over six years. Simulating counterfactual experiments from the estimated model, we find a non-trivial role for financial contagion. The default of a sovereign in the network has a noticeable effect on the borrowing costs and default probabilities of other network members. ∗E-mail: [email protected] †E-mail: [email protected]