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FinObservatory

Sovereign haircuts / CZK

Czechoslovakia

2 concluded restructurings, between 1946 and 1964. The earliest default they settle began in 1939. The worst cost creditors 92.9% of the present value of their claim, in 1964. The longest gap between a default and its settlement was 12 years.

2
Restructurings
71.5%
Median present-value haircut
92.9%
Worst present-value haircut
1 of 2
Cut face value by zero
$287M
Debt treated (2020 $)

Every restructuring

Two measures of the same deals, never combined. The present-value haircut discounts what creditors got against what they were owed; the face-value reduction counts only principal written off.

02040608010019461964Year the restructuring concluded
Present-value haircutFace-value reduction
DefaultSettledYears to settlePresent-value haircutFace-value reductionDebt treated (2020 $)Source
19391946750.2%0.0%$126MMeyer, Reinhart and Trebesch (2022)
195219641292.9%91.1%$161MMeyer, Reinhart and Trebesch (2022)

Source: Meyer, Reinhart & Trebesch (2022), Sovereign Bonds since Waterloo | Cruces & Trebesch (2013), Sovereign Defaults: The Price of Haircuts | Asonuma & Trebesch (2016) Debt treated is the amount restructured, deflated to constant 2020 US dollars in the source file. A negative haircut means the new instruments were worth more than the old claim. Methodology

Bond prices

2 of 2 Czechoslovakia restructuring episodes have Waterloo prices during the restructuring interval

The haircut file dates episodes by year. Waterloo matches them by country code and plots a padded window from one year before default through one year after settlement.
The public Waterloo bond panel in this repo runs from Jan 1, 1822 to Dec 1, 1980. This selector uses price only, never pbid or pask, and shows one line per bond from one year before default to one year after settlement. The author README defines price as “bond price in GBP and USD”; it does not document normalization to face value. Across all 329 haircut episodes, 111 have no Waterloo country-code match and 177 start after Dec 1, 1980. Those two counts overlap.
Selected episode: default 1952, settled 1964, case 30, spell CZK_1952-1964. Window: Jan 1, 1951 to Dec 31, 1965.
GBP bond prices
Independent GBP y-axis; values are not scaled against another currency.
40608010012019511956196119658% Bonds of 1922/1924, due 1960 (GBP): 120 monthly observations from Jan 1, 1951 to Dec 1, 19608% Bonds of 1922, due 1951 (series A) (GBP): 108 monthly observations from Jan 1, 1951 to Dec 1, 1959Observation monthBond price (GBP)
Bond legend (GBP)
8% Bonds of 1922/1924, due 1960 (GBP)
8% Bonds of 1922, due 1951 (series A) (GBP)
USD bond prices
Independent USD y-axis; values are not scaled against another currency.
02040601951195619611965External SF 6% (8) Gold Loan of 1924, due 1960 (series B) (assented) (USD): 155 monthly observations from Jan 1, 1951 to Dec 1, 1965External SF 6% (8) Gold Loan of 1924, due 1960 (series B) (assented) (USD), Jul 1, 1962: 30Observation monthBond price (USD)
Bond legend (USD)
External SF 6% (8) Gold Loan of 1924, due 1960 (series B) (assented) (USD)
383 monthly observations across 3 bonds. 335 of those observations fall inside the shaded restructuring interval. Earliest point in this window: Jan 1, 1951. Latest: Dec 1, 1965. One line equals one bond; no cross-bond average is computed.
BondCurrencyISINObs.FirstLast
8% Bonds of 1922/1924, due 1960GBPnot recorded120Jan 1, 1951Dec 1, 1960
8% Bonds of 1922, due 1951 (series A)GBPnot recorded108Jan 1, 1951Dec 1, 1959
External SF 6% (8) Gold Loan of 1924, due 1960 (series B) (assented)USDnot recorded155Jan 1, 1951Dec 1, 1965
Each option includes its case id and default-spell id. The chart includes every priced bond for that country in the window, so it does not identify bonds belonging to the selected restructuring. The one-year padding is a display window, one year either side; an editorial choice rather than a source-defined threshold. It uses waterloo_bonds.price only; pbid and pask are not averaged into it. The author README defines price as “bond price in GBP and USD” and does not document face-value normalization. GBP and USD observations use separate labelled panels and y-axes. Of the 329 episodes in the haircut file, 111 have no Waterloo country-code match and 177 start after 1980-12-01; these counts overlap. Later episodes show an absence message rather than an implied zero.

Source: Meyer, Reinhart & Trebesch, Sovereign Bonds since Waterloo (bond-price panel) | Harvard Dataverse, Sovereign Bonds since Waterloo Methodology

Default spells

SpellFromToYearsRestructurings
CZK_1939-19461939194681
CZK_1952-196419521964131

Source: Meyer, Reinhart & Trebesch (2022), Sovereign Bonds since Waterloo | Cruces & Trebesch (2013), Sovereign Defaults: The Price of Haircuts | Asonuma & Trebesch (2016) Duration counts both endpoints. The spells table also carries a cumulative-haircut column; it is not published here because it does not reconcile with the per-episode haircuts, see the methodology. Methodology

Debt still in default

The Bank of Canada-Bank of England default database records no debt in default for Czechoslovakia in its latest year.

Source: Bank of Canada-Bank of England Sovereign Default Database (CRAG) Bank of Canada terms (attribution). Includes domestic arrears, so it is not comparable with the debt-treated column above. Methodology

Methodology, the measures, and what this data cannot tell you