The three major credit rating agencies have reassessed sovereign credit risks in the light of the Great Financial Crisis, increasing the transparency of their methodologies. This has resulted in material shifts in the rank-ordering of risks. Simple statistical models explain the lion's share of...

We challenge the narrative that climate change transition risk is not being priced into sovereign bond markets. Climate change transition risk, as measured by carbon dioxide emissions, natural resources rents and renewable energy consumption, are factored into sovereign bond yields (and spreads)...

We study a model of equilibrium sovereign default in which the government issues cocos (contingent convertible bonds) that stipulate a suspension of debt payments when the government faces liquidity shocks in the form of an increase of the bondholders' risk aversion. We find that in spite of...

We consider convertible bonds that contractually stipulate payment standstill, contingent on a market indicator of a sovereign's creditworthiness breaching a distress threshold. This financial innovation limits ex-ante the likelihood of debt crises and imposes ex-post risk sharing between...

We develop models for portfolio diversification in the sovereign credit default swap (CDS) markets and show that, despite literature findings that sovereign CDS spreads are affected by global factors, there is sufficient idiosyncratic risk to be diversified away. However, we identify regime...

Credit rating agencies are frequently criticized for producing biased sovereign ratings. This article discusses how the home country of rating agencies could affect rating decisions as a result of political economy influences and cultural distance. Using data from nine agencies based in six...

Credit rating agencies are frequently criticized for producing sovereign ratings that do not accurately reflect the economic and political fundamentals of rated countries. This article discusses how the home country of rating agencies could affect rating decisions as a result of political...

Credit rating agencies are frequently criticized for producing sovereign ratings that do not accurately reflect the economic and political fundamentals of rated countries. This article discusses how the home country of rating agencies could affect rating decisions as a result of political...

This paper estimates the cost of sovereign default by using novel econometric methods - dynamic local projections applied to a sample that is re-randomised using inverse propensity score weights. We find that the impact of default on output is negative, significant and persistent - around 2.8%...

Remittances are transfers of money by foreign workers to their home countries. These remittance flows have been considered a very important source of finance for many developing countries accounting between 5-40% of the recipient country's GDP. This paper empirically examines whether remittance...