Sovereign haircuts / SLV
El Salvador
6 concluded restructurings, between 1860 and 1946. The earliest default they settle began in 1828. The worst cost creditors 83.6% of the present value of their claim, in 1946. The longest gap between a default and its settlement was 32 years.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1828 | 1860 | 32 | 68.5% | 65.0% | $8M | Meyer, Reinhart and Trebesch (2022) |
| 1899 | 1899 | 0 | 25.9% | 0.0% | $95M | Meyer, Reinhart and Trebesch (2022) |
| 1921 | 1923 | 2 | 12.0% | 0.0% | $52M | Meyer, Reinhart and Trebesch (2022) |
| 1932 | 1932 | 0 | 29.2% | 0.0% | $246M | Meyer, Reinhart and Trebesch (2022) |
| 1935 | 1936 | 1 | 61.8% | 25.0% | $269M | Meyer, Reinhart and Trebesch (2022) |
| 1938 | 1946 | 8 | 83.6% | 29.4% | $117M | 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
5 of 6 El Salvador restructuring episodes have 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. 1 episode overlaps the panel but still has no non-null price observations in that window.| Bond | Currency | ISIN | Obs. | First | Last |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6% Loan of 1923 (Series B) | GBP | not recorded | 33 | Jan 1, 1937 | Sep 1, 1939 |
| 8% Customs Liens SF Gold Loan of 1923, due 1948 (series A) | USD | not recorded | 73 | Apr 1, 1937 | Apr 1, 1943 |
| External SF 3.5% of 1946, due 1976 | USD | not recorded | 10 | Mar 1, 1947 | Dec 1, 1947 |
| External SF 4% of 1946, due 1976 | USD | not recorded | 10 | Mar 1, 1947 | Dec 1, 1947 |
| External SF 3% of 1946, due 1976 | USD | not recorded | 9 | Mar 1, 1947 | Dec 1, 1947 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SLV_1828-1860 | 1828 | 1860 | 33 | 1 |
| SLV_1899-1899 | 1899 | 1899 | 1 | 1 |
| SLV_1921-1923 | 1921 | 1923 | 3 | 1 |
| SLV_1932-1932 | 1932 | 1932 | 1 | 1 |
| SLV_1935-1946 | 1935 | 1946 | 12 | 2 |
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 El Salvador 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