The paper analyzes and quantifies the importance of sovereign risk in determining corporate default premia (yield spreads). It also investigates the extent to which the practice by rating agencies and banks of not rating companies higher than their sovereign (""country or sovereign ceiling"") is...

This paper examines how capital controls affect FDI decisions and how the impact of these restrictive measures varies with different levels of country risk. We construct a model of firms'' FDI decisions, broadly in Dunning''s ""eclectic theory"" framework, using ""real options"" to emphasize...

The IMF Working Papers series is designed to make IMF staff research available to a wide audience. Almost 300 Working Papers are released each year, covering a wide range of theoretical and analytical topics, including balance of payments, monetary and fiscal issues, global liquidity, and...

Country practices towards managing financial risks on a sovereign balance sheet continue to evolve. Each crisis period, and its legacy on sovereign balance sheets, reaffirms the need for strengthening financial risk management. This paper discusses some salient features embedded in in the...

This paper investigates the effect of fiscal transparency on market assessments of sovereign risk, as measured by credit ratings. It measures this effect through a direct channel (uncertainty reduction) and an indirect channel (better fiscal policies and outcomes), and it differentiates between...