We discuss the origins of the Greek financial crisis as manifested in the growing fiscal and current-account deficits since euro-area entry in 2001. We then provide an investigation of spreads on Greek relative to German long-term government debt. Using monthly data over the period 2000 to 2010,...

We investigate the impact of the economic fundamentals, sovereign credit ratings, political uncertainty, and the ECB’s Securities Markets Program (SMP) on Greek sovereign spreads. Our findings show that sovereign downgrades and political uncertainty appear to have been drivers of the sharp...

With the outbreak of the Greek financial crisis in late 2009, spreads on Greek (and other) sovereigns reached unprecedented levels. Using a panel data of euro-area countries, we test whether the markets treated all euro-area countries in an equal manner over the period 1998:m1 to 2012:m6. In a...

During the euro-area financial crisis, interactions between sovereign spreads and credit ratings appeared to have led to self-generating feedback loops. To examine the interaction between spreads and ratings, we estimate a simultaneous two-equation model in which spreads and ratings are...

We quantify the linkages among banks’ equity performance and indicators of sovereign stress by using panel GMM to estimate a three-equation system that examines the impact of sovereign stress, as reflected in both sovereign spreads and sovereign ratings, on bank share prices. We use data for a...