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Emerging market debt (EMD) is a term used to encompass bonds issued by Less Developed Countries. It does not include borrowing from government, supranational organizations such as the IMF or private sources, though loans that are securitized and issued to the markets would be included. A broader discussion of all types of borrowing by developing countries exists at Developing countries' debt.
Emerging market debt is primarily issued by sovereign issuers. Corporate debt does exist in this category, but corporations in developing countries generally tend to borrow from banks and other sources, as public debt issuance requires both sufficiently developed markets and large borrowing needs. Sovereign issuance has historically been primarily issued in foreign currencies (external debt), either US Dollars or Euros (hard currency versus local currency). In recent years the development of pension systems in certain countries has led to increasing issuance in local currencies.
EMD tends to have a lower credit rating than other sovereign debt because of the increased economic and political risks - where most developed countries are either AAA or AA-rated, most EMD issuance is rated below investment grade, though a few countries that have seen significant improvements have been upgraded to BBB or A ratings, and a handful of lower income countries have reached ratings levels equivalent to more profligate developed countries. In the wake of the credit crunch and the 2010 European sovereign debt crisis, certain emerging market countries have emerged as possibly less prone to default than developed markets. [1]
Emerging market debt was historically a small part of bond markets, as primary issuance was limited, data quality was poor, markets were illiquid and crises were a regular occurrence. Since the advent of the Brady Plan in the early 1990s, however, issuance has increased dramatically. The market has continued to be more prone to crises than other debt markets, including the Tequila Crisis in 1994-95, East Asian financial crisis in 1997, 1998 Russian financial crisis and 1998–2002 Argentine great depression.
Investors tend to use mutual funds to invest in EMD, as many individual securities become more illiquid in secondary markets and bid/offer spreads are too wide to actively trade. The dominant market indexes for US-Dollar denominated investments are the JPMorgan EMBI+ Index, JPMorgan EMBI Global Index and JPMorgan EMBI Global Diversified Index. Other banks also provide indexes.
Countries needing to borrow generally do not do so publicly unless the borrowing is sufficiently large to justify the costs involved. As a result, most small and poor countries are not actually counted as belonging in the EMD universe. Countries currently listed as EMD issuers include
A handful of countries have stopped issuing debt considered to be 'EMD' due to lesser borrowing needs, improved credit quality, or becoming increasingly developed. These include the Czech Republic, India, Kazakhstan, Poland, South Korea and Thailand, among others.
A government bond or sovereign bond is a form of bond issued by a government to support public spending. It generally includes a commitment to pay periodic interest, called coupon payments, and to repay the face value on the maturity date.
A country's gross government debt is the financial liabilities of the government sector. Changes in government debt over time reflect primarily borrowing due to past government deficits. A deficit occurs when a government's expenditures exceed revenues. Government debt may be owed to domestic residents, as well as to foreign residents. If owed to foreign residents, that quantity is included in the country's external debt.
Foreign exchange reserves are cash and other reserve assets such as gold held by a central bank or other monetary authority that are primarily available to balance payments of the country, influence the foreign exchange rate of its currency, and to maintain confidence in financial markets. Reserves are held in one or more reserve currencies, nowadays mostly the United States dollar and to a lesser extent the euro.
Brady bonds are dollar-denominated bonds, issued mostly by Latin American countries in the late 1980s. The bonds were named after U.S. Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady, who proposed a novel debt-reduction agreement for developing countries.
An emerging market is a market that has some characteristics of a developed market, but does not fully meet its standards. This includes markets that may become developed markets in the future or were in the past. The term "frontier market" is used for developing countries with smaller, riskier, or more illiquid capital markets than "emerging". As of 2006, the economies of China and India are considered to be the largest emerging markets. According to The Economist, many people find the term outdated, but no new term has gained traction. Emerging market hedge fund capital reached a record new level in the first quarter of 2011 of $121 billion. Emerging market economies’ share of global PPP-adjusted GDP has risen from 27 percent in 1960 to around 53 percent by 2013. The 10 largest emerging and developing economies by either nominal or PPP-adjusted GDP are 4 of the 5 BRICS countries along with Egypt, Indonesia, Mexico, Poland, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
A currency crisis is a type of financial crisis, and is often associated with a real economic crisis. A currency crisis raises the probability of a banking crisis or a default crisis. During a currency crisis the value of foreign denominated debt will rise drastically relative to the declining value of the home currency. Generally doubt exists as to whether a country's central bank has sufficient foreign exchange reserves to maintain the country's fixed exchange rate, if it has any. The crisis is often accompanied by a speculative attack in the foreign exchange market. A currency crisis results from chronic balance of payments deficits, and thus is also called a balance of payments crisis. Often such a crisis culminates in a devaluation of the currency. Financial institutions and the government will struggle to meet debt obligations and economic crisis may ensue. Causation also runs the other way. The probability of a currency crisis rises when a country is experiencing a banking or default crisis, while this probability is lower when an economy registers strong GDP growth and high levels of foreign exchange reserves. To offset the damage resulting from a banking or default crisis, a central bank will often increase currency issuance, which can decrease reserves to a point where a fixed exchange rate breaks. The linkage between currency, banking, and default crises increases the chance of twin crises or even triple crises, outcomes in which the economic cost of each individual crisis is enlarged.
A financial crisis is any of a broad variety of situations in which some financial assets suddenly lose a large part of their nominal value. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and many recessions coincided with these panics. Other situations that are often called financial crises include stock market crashes and the bursting of other financial bubbles, currency crises, and sovereign defaults. Financial crises directly result in a loss of paper wealth but do not necessarily result in significant changes in the real economy.
The JPMorgan Emerging Market Bond Index (EMBI) are a set of three bond indices to track bonds in emerging markets operated by J P Morgan. The indices are the Emerging Markets Bond Index Plus, the Emerging Markets Bond Index Global and the Emerging Markets Bond Global Diversified Index.
Asian bond markets are growing rapidly as Asian borrowers switch away from short term bank loans towards longer term debt financing. Although Asia also includes countries of the Middle East, some CIS countries and the vast majority of the land mass of Russia and Turkey, in financial markets it is often only East Asia and South Asia that are included in the term.
In finance, an asset–liability mismatch occurs when the financial terms of an institution's assets and liabilities do not correspond. Several types of mismatches are possible. An asset-liability mismatch presents a material risk at institutions with significant debt exposure, such as banks or sovereign governments. A significant mismatch may lead to insolvency or illiquidity, which can cause financial failure. Such risks were among the principal causes of economic crises such as the 1980s Latin American Debt Crisis, the 2007 Subprime Mortgage Crisis, the U.S. Savings and Loan Crisis, and the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in 2023.
Eurobonds or stability bonds were proposed government bonds to be issued in euros jointly by the European Union's 19 eurozone states. The idea was first raised by the Barroso European Commission in 2011 during the 2009–2012 European sovereign debt crisis. Eurobonds would be debt investments whereby an investor loans a certain amount of money, for a certain amount of time, with a certain interest rate, to the eurozone bloc altogether, which then forwards the money to individual governments. The proposal was floated again in 2020 as a potential response to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe, leading such debt issue to be dubbed "corona bonds".
In financial economics, a liquidity crisis is an acute shortage of liquidity. Liquidity may refer to market liquidity, funding liquidity, or accounting liquidity. Additionally, some economists define a market to be liquid if it can absorb "liquidity trades" without large changes in price. This shortage of liquidity could reflect a fall in asset prices below their long run fundamental price, deterioration in external financing conditions, reduction in the number of market participants, or simply difficulty in trading assets.
A sovereign default is the failure or refusal of the government of a sovereign state to pay back its debt in full when due. Cessation of due payments may either be accompanied by that government's formal declaration that it will not pay its debts (repudiation), or it may be unannounced. A credit rating agency will take into account in its gradings capital, interest, extraneous and procedural defaults, and failures to abide by the terms of bonds or other debt instruments.
A sudden stop in capital flows is defined as a sudden slowdown in private capital inflows into emerging market economies, and a corresponding sharp reversal from large current account deficits into smaller deficits or small surpluses. Sudden stops are usually followed by a sharp decrease in output, private spending and credit to the private sector, and real exchange rate depreciation. The term “sudden stop” was inspired by a banker’s comment on a paper by Rüdiger Dornbusch and Alejandro Werner about Mexico, that “it is not speed that kills, it is the sudden stop”.
Original sin is a term in economics literature, proposed by Barry Eichengreen, Ricardo Hausmann, and Ugo Panizza in a series of papers to refer to a situation in which "most countries are not able to borrow abroad in their domestic currency."
The Australian government debt is the amount owed by the Australian federal government. The Australian Office of Financial Management, which is part of the Treasury Portfolio, is the agency which manages the government debt and does all the borrowing on behalf of the Australian government. Australian government borrowings are subject to limits and regulation by the Loan Council, unless the borrowing is for defence purposes or is a 'temporary' borrowing. Government debt and borrowings have national macroeconomic implications, and are also used as one of the tools available to the national government in the macroeconomic management of the national economy, enabling the government to create or dampen liquidity in financial markets, with flow on effects on the wider economy.
Domestic liability dollarization (DLD) refers to the denomination of banking system deposits and lending in a currency other than that of the country in which they are held. DLD does not refer exclusively to denomination in US dollars, as DLD encompasses accounts denominated in internationally traded "hard" currencies such as the British pound sterling, the Swiss franc, the Japanese yen, and the Euro.
In finance, a GDP-linked bond is a debt security or derivative security in which the authorized issuer promises to pay a return, in addition to amortization, that varies with the behavior of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This type of security can be thought as a “stock on a country” in the sense that it has “equity-like” features. It pays more/less when the performance of the country is better/worse than expected. Nevertheless, it is substantially different from a stock because there are no ownership-rights over the country.
Debt intolerance is a term coined by Carmen Reinhart, Kenneth Rogoff and Miguel Savastano referring to the inability of emerging markets to manage levels of external debt that, under the same circumstances, would be manageable for developed countries, making a direct analogy to lactose-intolerant individuals.
Graciela Kaminsky is a professor of economics and international affairs at George Washington University and a faculty research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Kaminsky studied economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she received her Ph.D. In 1984 she did a brief research stay at the Argentine Central Bank, later in 1985 she moved to San Diego as an assistant professor at the University of California. In 1992 she worked on the board of governors of the US Federal Reserve System, later in 1998 she was appointed a full professor at George Washington University, where she works at the Elliot School of International Affairs. Kaminsky has been a visiting scholar at the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Spain, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, and the Central Bank of France.
