Sovereign debt in a post-war period: endogenous opportunities and exogenous challenges for Ukraine

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to present possible scenarios for assessing the levels of Ukraine’s sovereign debt burden in the context of the cumulative effect of Ukraine’s pre-war and post-war debt accumulation to avoid sovereign debt overload or even sovereign default and achieve debt relief. The methodology of the article is based on the theory of international finance using the scientific method of system dynamics as an applied method of analysis. The main purpose of the article was to find the way out of the concession debt trap, but the Russian military aggression against Ukraine in February 2022 significantly changed the purpose of the analysis. As a result, as far as possible, an element of military economics was added to the article. The dynamic interpretation of the research problem is formulated as: “What are the possible dynamics of falling into a sovereign debt trap and, ultimately, into political dependence through external infrastructure financing before and after the war, and how can such a trap be avoided?” It is necessary to recognize such a trap in advance, because, fortunately, Ukraine has not yet fully got there. The results of the study are important in the application of the national debt policy model.

Keywords

• predatory economics
• concessional loans
• geopolitics of sovereign debt
• debt overhang
• system dynamics
• post-war national debt and debt relief
• debt sustainability
• post-war debt
• war
• ukraine