Studies have shown that markets may underprice sub-national governments' risk on the implicit assumption that these entities would be bailed out by their central government in case of financial difficulties. However, the question of whether sovereigns pay a premium on their own borrowing as a...

We investigate the political determinants of risk premiums which sub-national governments in Switzerland have to pay for their sovereign bond emissions. For this purpose we make use of financial market data from 288 tradable cantonal bonds in the period from 1981 to 2007. Our main focus is on...

This paper uses recent legislation in Austria to establish a link between sovereign reputation and yield spreads. In 2009, Hypo Alpe Adria International, a bank previously co-owned by the regional government of Carinthia, had been nationalized by Austria's central government in order to avoid a...

This paper studies the impact of income inequality on sovereign spreads under elastic labor and endogenous taxation. We first document that high pre-tax income inequality is associated with high spreads both across countries and across U.S. states. We then develop a sovereign default model with...

With a unique data set summarizing the quality of rules-based fiscal governance in EU member states, we show that stronger fiscal rules in euro area members reduce sovereign risk premia, in particular in times of market stress. To do so, we develop a model of sovereign spreads that are...

Chengtou bond is the soli asset with market prices that can capture the funding cost of Chinese local government debt. In contrast to the U.S. municipal bonds, Chengtou bonds are issued by private corporations but implicitly guaranteed by the local hence central governments, which are reflected...

Chengtou bond is the only asset with market prices that can capture the funding cost of Chinese local government debt. In contrast to the U.S. municipal bonds, Chengtou bonds are issued by private corporations but implicitly guaranteed by local and the central governments, which are reflected by...

In the absence of a judicial mechanism to reduce the debt burden of a sovereign member of our Union, the resolution process can be quick but perhaps too indifferent to the health, safety, and welfare of the affected residents. In this paper, I use evidence from the Arkansas state archives to...

The euro is widely believed to be a currency without a sovereign state. To make the euro a stable currency, many commentators recommend a move to a federal fiscal Europe by issuing eurobonds or levying European taxes. By contrast, we argue in this paper that the EU and the euro area member...

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...