Living with Debt

<i>Living with Debt</i> focuses on how to manage sovereign debt safely and effectively. The report traces the history of sovereign borrowing in Latin America, releases a new data set on public debt, and analyzes the evolution of debt, highlighting the recent trend toward higher levels of domestic debt and lower external borrowing. The report also includes a detailed study of the costs of sovereign defaults such as those that have affected some Latin American countries in recent years.

Drawing from in-depth country studies, the report notes the development of domestic debt markets, which have the potential to increase the availability of finance for the private sector and enhance financial markets' stability more generally. However, the report concludes that safely managing domestic debt presents somewhat different--but not necessarily simpler--challenges. In particular, the broader range of debt instruments interacts with the variety of shocks to which economies are exposed, requiring a more comprehensive approach to debt sustainability analysis, which the report outlines.