Credit ratings have contributed to the current financial crisis. Proposals to regulate credit rating agencies focus on micro-prudential issues and aim at reducing conflicts of interest and increasing transparency and competition. In contrast, this paper argues that macro-prudential regulation is...

This paper attempts to explain the recent rise and differentiation of sovereign spreads across the countries of the eurozone. Following the onset of the subprime crisis in July 2007, spreads rose but mainly on account of common global factors. The rescue of Bear Stearns in March 2008 marked a...

This paper examines empirically U.S. broad money demand emphasizing the role of financial market risk. We find that money demand rises with the liquidity risk of stock markets or the credit risk of corporate bond markets. After controlling for the effect of financial market risk, money demand...

We investigate the pricing of sovereign credit risk over the period 2008-2010 for selected advanced economies by examining two widely-used indicators: sovereign credit default swap (CDS) and relative asset swap (RAS) spreads. Cointegration analysis suggests the existence of an imperfect market...