Financial market instability has been the focus of attention of both academic and policy circles. Rating agencies have been under particular scrutiny lately as promoters of financial excesses, upgrading countries in good times and downgrading them in bad times. Using a panel of emerging...

Foreign investors are increasingly important participants in the local currency sovereign bond markets of developing countries. This note provides context on the overall growth of local currency sovereign debt markets in emerging markets and the growth of foreign investor participation in these...

This paper examines the current stage of development of government securities markets in the non-GCC MENA region focusing in five countries that have government bond markets with a minimum size and greater potential for market development: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia. The...

The standard measures of distress risk ignore the fact that firm defaults are correlated and that some defaults are more likely to occur in bad times. The paper uses risk premium computed from corporate credit spreads to measure a firm's exposure to systematic variation in default risk. Unlike...

This paper explores factors that affect the distance between sovereign credit ratings and the ratings assigned to new foreign-currency bonds issued by sub-sovereign entities (such as private non-financial corporations, financial firms, and public sector enterprises) in 47 emerging markets and...

Controlling for bond and issuer characteristics, bond spreads are expected to be equal across different legal jurisdictions, and differences are expected to disappear through arbitrage. However, an analysis of 435 U.S. dollar?denominated bonds issued by 53 emerging market sovereigns during...

Emerging market and developing economies have experienced recurrent episodes of rapid debt accumulation over the past fifty years. This paper examines the consequences of debt accumulation using a three-pronged approach: an event study of debt accumulation episodes in 100 emerging market and...