We analyse whether different levels of country ties to Europe among the rating agencies Moody’s, S&P, and Fitch affect the assignment of sovereign credit ratings, using the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis of 2009-2012 as a natural laboratory. We find that Fitch, the rating agency among the "Big...

Sovereign ratings have frequently failed to predict crises. However, the literature has focused on explaining rating levels rather than the timing of rating announcements. We fill this gap by explicitly differentiating between a decision to assess a country and the actual rating decision....

Although there is a wide consensus that rating agencies have frequently failed to predict major crises, the literature on sovereign ratings has so far mostly focused on explaining the rating level rather than explaining the timing of the rating decision. In this paper we aim to fill this gap in...