Competence behind sovereign ratings is crucial, given that the government bond market may be vulnerable to multiple equilibria and self-fulfilling prophecies. With this in mind, this paper reviews and scrutinises official Standard & Poor's publications that address key issues surrounding the...

Die Finanzmärkte reagieren in der gegenwärtigen Staatsschuldenkrise offensichtlich auf Meinungsäußerungen der marktbeherrschenden Ratingagenturen – selbst wenn diese in scheinbarem Widerspruch zur vorherigen Bewertung ökonomischer Fundamentaldaten stehen. Das führt dazu, dass private...

This paper asks whether rating agencies played a passive role or were an active driving force during Europe's sovereign debt crisis. We address this by estimating relationships between sovereign debt ratings and macroeconomic and structural variables. We then use these equ-ations to decompose...

This article narrates Ireland’s recent odyssey from the pride and envy of Europe to kneeling supplicant through the eyes of an econometric model of the government bond market. The exercise suggests that, in essence, two developments triggered and propelled Ireland’s drift towards sovereign...