This paper examines the implications for European investors of the recent EU expansion to encompass former Eastern block economies. What were the risk and return characteristics of these markets pre- and post-EU? What are the implications for investors within the Euro zone? Should investors...

We address credit cycle dependent sovereign credit risk determinants. In our model, the spread determinants' magnitude is conditional on an unobservable endogenous sovereign credit cycle as represented by the underlying state of a Markov regime switching process. Our explanatory variables are...