The intensification of the European debt crisis can partly be attributed to the fact that there exist no standardized debt restructuring mechanisms. Even though several attempts to establish well-defined restructuring rules have been undertaken, there are still no such procedures today.    The debt crisis re-intensifies the discussion revolving around sovereign insolvencies. The example of Greece and the hard road it faces shows how complex the issue is. The procedural uncertainty is highly unsatisfactory. Furthermore, there is always the looming threat of contagion and the concern of banking sector as well as systemic stability, which potentially impact the sovereign bond market. Over the course of the negotiations of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the issue of standardized rules for sovereign debt restructurings has largely been neglected. At least Collective Action Clauses (CAC) for sovereign bonds with maturities of more than one year have been made compulsory. CACs constitute only one element of a reliable and predictable sovereign debt restructuring mechanism, though.   Based on these insights, this project aims at empirically investigating sovereign insolvency procedures in order to identify relevant characteristics that a potential European sovereign restructuring mechanism should include. There is a wealth of studies analyzing the topic from a legal, institutional economic or game theoretic point of view. Only few studies examine the economic consequences of specific characteristics of past restructurings empirically.   The project analyzes the short run as well as the long run consequences of specific types of debt restructurings and their characteristics. The results may relate to the extent of the debt reduction, the duration until the indebted country can re-access the capital market, the conditions at re-access and the consequences for financial markets as well as the real economy.