There are now increasing concerns about the need to upgrade public infrastructure, improve the delivery of public services, and explore new options for partnering with the private sector. This book looks at ways of strengthening the efficiency of public investment and managing the fiscal risks...

Since the onset of the eurozone sovereign debt crisis, credit risk spreads in Europe have diverged. Despite this divergence, credit risk comoves strongly within certain country groups such as the eurozone periphery. We seek to answer what the determinants of the observed pattern of credit risk...

This paper studies spillovers across sovereign debt markets in the wake of sovereign rating changes. To this end, we use an extensive dataset covering all announcements by the three major agencies (Standard & Poor's, Moody's, Fitch) and daily sovereign bond market movements of up to 74 developed...

There is a growing empirical literature studying whether fiscal rules reduce borrowing costs. Nevertheless, it remains an open question whether these rules are effective genuinely or just because they mirror fiscal preferences of politicians and voters. In our analysis of European bond spreads,...

Using the contingent claim approach and market data on sovereign credit default swaps we assess the drivers of a country s risk perception. Deriving market-based asset values for a set of advanced economies we gain insights into the capital markets perspectives on sovereign creditworthiness. We...