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Sovereign debts are often subject to payment suspension. Default, i.e. the financial incapacity to fulfil the debt service, and repudiation, i.e. the denial by a sovereign to recognize its legal obligations, are normally used to explain these payment suspensions. Intuitively, for bondholders, defaults should incur the smallest financial losses. In this case, bondholders may indeed hope for either a negotiated solution (leading only to a partial loss), or for a resumption of the debt service if the defaulting state manages to overcome its financial troubles. In the case of repudiations, these two elements are not relevant as repudiations usually go with a complete stop of the negotiation process. Furthermore, when a country repudiates its debt, its pay-back ability does not matter as the debtor government refuses to fulfil its financial obligations. This paper shows, by using two series of bonds (Romanian bonds in default during the 1930' and Russian bonds repudiated in 1918), that there are some situations when the market prices of repudiated bonds may stay above those of defaulted bonds. This counter-intuitive observation is explained by market anticipation of possible events having a strong influence on the repudiated bond prices (bail out of the Russian debt by the French Government or by a country created following the decline of the Tsarist Empire). ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published

The literature has pointed out the negative aspects of political dynasties. But can political dynasties help prevent autocratic reversals? We argue that political dynasties differ according to their ideological origin and that those whose founder was a defender of democratic ideals, for simplicity labeled "pro-democratic dynasties," show stronger support for democracy. We analyze the vote by the French parliament on 10 July 1940 of an enabling act that granted full power to Marshall Philippe Pétain, thereby ending the Third French Republic and aligning France with Nazi Germany. Using data collected from the biographies of parliamentarians and information on their voting behavior, we find that members of a pro-democratic dynasty were 9.6 to 15.1 percentage points more likely to oppose the act than other parliamentarians. We report evidence that socialization inside and outside parliament shaped the vote of parliamentarians.

Belle Époque Belgium recorded an unprecedented trade boom. Exploiting a new granular trade dataset, we find that the number of products delivered abroad and destinations serviced more than doubled in less than 40 years. To explain this remarkable achievement, we study the relationship between trade costs and the intensive and extensive margins of trade. The establishment of a foreign diplomatic network that lowered beachhead costs and enabled the entry of new products was an essential fact of the trade boom. Interestingly, the expansion in trade in certain sectors did not translate into faster productivity growth. We offer some explanations.

Occupation charges paid by France to Nazi Germany represent one of the largest international transfers and contributed significantly to the German war effort. We employ a neoclassical growth model that incorporates essential features of the occupied economy to assess the welfare costs of the policies that managed the payments to Germany. Our lower bound estimates show that occupation payments required a severe cut in consumption. A draft of labor to Germany and a reduction of real wages added to this burden. Management of the accumulated domestic debt required large budget surpluses; but post-Liberation inflation slashed the real debt."Ils ne nous ont rien enlevé de vive force; ils ont toujours tout acheté correctement; mais ils nous ont tout payé avec de l'argent qu'ils nous avaient volé."1