For emerging market governments, why is it safer to issue bonds in local currencies than in foreign currencies to raise money? Given that both are invested in by foreign investors, couldn't both potentially lead to exchange rate risk and currency fluctuations, say if there is a sell-off?
I was confused about this while reading 'Pragmatic Approaches to Capital Market Liberalization' (2008), a paper by Raghuram Rajan and Eswar Prasad. It comes up on page 13.
I tried looking at Investopedia and a Financial Times article on the topic of emerging market bonds, but they seemed to look at it from the perspective of investors and not public policy (I'm not suggesting its a tradeoff but maybe there's different perspectives, I thought).
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/03/073003.asp https://www.ft.com/content/56cb690e-c6a8-11e1-963a-00144feabdc0
Thank you for your help! I would really appreciate if to the extent possible, the answer is in layman(ish) terms.