Rating Agencies and Sovereign Debt Rollover

In order to explore how credit ratings may affect financial markets, we analyze a global game model of debt roll-over in which heterogeneous investors act strategically. We find that the addition of the rating agency has a non-monotonic effect on the probability of default and the magnitude of the response of capital flows to changes in fundamentals. We also establish that introducing a rating agency can bring multiple equilibria to a market that otherwise would have a unique equilibrium.