This study examines the effects of national culture and institutional characteristics on the rating migration dynamics of countries rated by Standard & Poor’s (S&P) during the period January 1985 - October 2011. The study finds that national culture and institutional charac-teristics have...

We compare the out-of-sample forecasting accuracy of the time-varying hazard model developed by Shumway (2001) and the one-period probit model used by Cole and Gunther (1998). Using data on U.S. bank failures from 1985 – 1992, we find that, from an econometric perspective, the hazard model is...