Summary

The research question in this paper concerns the default by sovereign borrowers on international lending. Plan of the work is to shortly review in an historical perspective the financial cycles of international debt, emphasizing the current trend giving relevance to the bonds markets. It will be pointed out that the main legal issue affecting international debt is default. In particular, default of debt obligations by sovereign borrowers implies sovereign risk deriving from: sovereign law-making, sovereign immunity, and state insolvency (Ch. 2). Preliminarily it would be useful ...