China’s development model faces an external constraint that could cause an economic hard landing. China has become a global manufacturing powerhouse, and its size now renders its export-led growth strategy unsustainable. China relies on the U.S. market, but the scale of its exports is...

We model EU countries? bank ratings using financial variables and allowing for intercept and slope heterogeneity. We find that country-specific factors (in the form of heterogeneous intercepts) are a crucial determinant of ratings. Whilst ?new? EU countries typically have lower ratings than...