This paper builds a new dataset with detailed information on the universe of foreign government bonds issued in New York in the 1920s and uses these data to describe the behavior of the financial intermediaries which operated in the New York market during the period leading to the interwar debt...

During the 1930s, rating agencies took up a central role in regulatory supervision that they still have today. We study the process through which they received this regulatory license. The proximate cause for this changeover was the economic shock of the Great Depression. Exploring the...

This article provides a new perspective on the interwar foreign debt crisis by analysing original data on the credit ratings, market yields and subsequent performance of government borrowers in the New York market. We focus on the four agencies that are known to have been operating at the time...

This paper builds a new dataset with detailed information on the universe of foreign government bonds issued in New York in the 1920s and uses these data to describe the behavior of the financial intermediaries which operated in the New York market during the period leading to the interwar debt...

How does sovereign debt emerge and become sustainable? This paper provides a new answer to this unsolved puzzle. Focusing on the early 19th century, we argue that intermediaries' market power served to overcome information asymmetries and sustained the development of sovereign debt. Relying on...

During the 1930s, rating agencies took up a central role in regulatory supervision that they still have today. The proximate cause for this changeover was the economic shock of the Great Depression. Exploring the performance of rating agencies in assessing the risks of sovereign debt, an...