While telecommunications costs are a common topic of public comment in SouthAfrica, the provision of services to those areas and communities which have beenhistorically neglected also is a focus for commentators in the industry. This researchaimed to investigate the effectiveness of the...

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...