The demand for sovereign ratings has increased throughout last decades. Until the1990's, credit rating agencies (CRAs) did not rate most of the emerging markets and the focus was almost only on developed countries, however, during this decade the number of sovereigns rated increased dramatically...

This book offers a comprehensive guide to the on-going Greek debt crisis. It identifies and explains Greece’s idiosyncratic weaknesses, and highlights the existing rigidities in the EU architecture that make the recovery prospects of the Greek economy challenging. Chapters from expert...

A primary cause of the recent credit market turmoil was overdependence on credit ratings and credit rating agencies. Without such overdependence, the complex financial instruments, particularly Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) and Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs), which were at the...

The first part of the paper describes how over time credit rating agencies ceased to play the role of information intermediaries. Rating agencies did not provide information about the risk associated with the securitized instruments, but they simply enabled structurers to create and maintain...

Objective: The objective of the article is to identify the determinants of the EU countries’ sovereign credit ratings with a particular focus on the impact of the euro area crisis. Research Design & Methods: The study is conducted for the 28 EU countries for the years 2004-2018. The research...