Credit Rating Agencies play a key role in European capital markets today, publishing ratings on the creditworthiness of issuers/issues of debt securities. Independent, objective and internationally consistent credit ratings raise the integrity, transparency and competitiveness of capital...

We model EU countries' bank ratings using financial variables and allowing for intercept and slope heterogeneity. Our aim is to assess whether "old" and "new" EU countries are rated differently and to determine whether "new" ones are assigned lower ratings, ceteris paribus, than "old" ones. We...