Default by sovereign governments depends upon their willingness to default and the nation's capacity to pay. These are major factors considered by rating analysts and both may be affected by national culture. We hypothesise that ratings are related to culture and empirically examine the relation...

This paper explores the economic determinants of market-assessed sovereign risk of members of the European monetary union. The empirical work is innovative in its Merton structural specification of appropriate inputs. It provides a theoretical background for the empirical investigation of...