Sovereign haircuts / JPN
Japan
One concluded restructuring, settled in 1952. It cost creditors 26.8% of the present value of their claim, 11 years after the default that began in 1941.
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.
| Default | Settled | Years to settle | Present-value haircut | Face-value reduction | Debt treated (2020 $) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1941 | 1952 | 11 | 26.8% | 0.2% | $1.30B | Meyer, 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
1 of 1 Japan restructuring episode has Waterloo prices during the restructuring interval
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.| Bond | Currency | ISIN | Obs. | First | Last |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4% Bonds of 1910, due 1970 | GBP | not recorded | 168 | Jan 1, 1940 | Dec 1, 1953 |
| 5% Bonds of 1907, due 1947 | GBP | not recorded | 168 | Jan 1, 1940 | Dec 1, 1953 |
| 6% Bonds of 1924, due 1959 | GBP | not recorded | 168 | Jan 1, 1940 | Dec 1, 1953 |
| 4% Sterling Loan of 1899, due 1954 | GBP | not recorded | 155 | Jan 1, 1940 | Nov 1, 1952 |
| 5.5% Sterling Conversion Bonds of 1930, due 1965 | GBP | not recorded | 137 | Jan 1, 1940 | Nov 1, 1952 |
| 5.5% Loan of 1926, due 1961 (Tokyo) | GBP | not recorded | 128 | Jan 1, 1940 | Nov 1, 1950 |
| 5% Railway Bonds of 1923, due 1948 | GBP | not recorded | 100 | Sep 1, 1945 | Dec 1, 1953 |
| 5.5% Gold Bonds of 1930, due 1965 (assented) | GBP | not recorded | 75 | Jul 1, 1945 | Dec 1, 1953 |
| 4% Bonds of 1910, due 1970 (assented) | GBP | not recorded | 13 | Dec 1, 1952 | Dec 1, 1953 |
| 4% Loan of 1899, due 1964 (1954) (assented) | GBP | not recorded | 13 | Dec 1, 1952 | Dec 1, 1953 |
| 5% Bonds of 1907, due 1947 (assented) | GBP | not recorded | 13 | Dec 1, 1952 | Dec 1, 1953 |
| 6% Gold Bonds of 1924, due 1969 (1959) (assented) | GBP | not recorded | 13 | Dec 1, 1952 | Dec 1, 1953 |
| 5.5% Loan of 1926, due 1961 (Tokyo) (assented) | GBP | not recorded | 12 | Jan 1, 1953 | Dec 1, 1953 |
| 5% Railway Bonds of 1923, due 1948 (assented) | GBP | not recorded | 12 | Jan 1, 1953 | Dec 1, 1953 |
| 5.5% USD Gold Bonds of 1930, due 1965 | USD | not recorded | 62 | Jan 1, 1940 | Dec 1, 1953 |
| 6.5% USD Gold Bonds of 1924, due 1954 | USD | not recorded | 49 | Jan 1, 1940 | Dec 1, 1952 |
| 6.5% USD Gold Bonds of 1924, due 1964 (assented) | USD | not recorded | 12 | Jan 1, 1953 | Dec 1, 1953 |
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
| Spell | From | To | Years | Restructurings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| JPN_1941-1952 | 1941 | 1952 | 12 | 1 |
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 Japan 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