I am a Professor of Economics at the University of Hamburg and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. My main research interests are in international finance, sovereign debt and financial development.
After obtaining my PhD in Economics from LMU Munich, I worked for three years as an advisor to the World Bank Chief Economist. You can find my full CV here and my Google Scholar profile here.
Feel free to get in touch at sebastian.horn@ifw-kiel.de
News:
The Economist has covered our new working paper on "Hidden Debt Revelations" (with D. Mihalyi, P. Nickol and C. Sosa-Padilla).
New working paper with Brad Parks, Carmen Reinhart and Christoph Trebesch on "China as an International Lender of Last Resort". Data is available here and here is a recording of my presentation of the paper at the AEA annual meetings (starting at 1:36 h).
Blog post on "Systematic Underreporting of Public Debt and Recent Progress" with David Mihalyi and Philipp Nickol: We analyse 50 years of ex-post data revisions to show that initial debt reporting is systematically downward biased. We also track recent advances in debt transparency and document how a wave of "hidden debt" revelations has contributed to today's record debt levels.
"Hidden Defaults": New working paper with Carmen Reinhart and Christoph Trebesch that analyzes debt restructurings with Chinese creditors. The Chinese response to debt distress has so far been reminiscent of Western creditors during the 1980s debt crisis. Multi-year debt workouts with serial restructurings lie in store. A key issue: We lack systematic data on payment defaults.
Congressional testimony: I was invited to testify in the U.S. House Financial Services Committee in a hearing on "The Lending Practices of the People's Republic of China and Impact on the International Debt Architecture". You can find my written testimony and a webcast of the hearing here.
I was interviewed by NZZ (in German) on Chinese lending practices and on debt distress in Montenegro.