We investigate the impact of the economic fundamentals, sovereign credit ratings, political uncertainty, and the ECB’s Securities Markets Program (SMP) on Greek sovereign spreads. Our findings show that sovereign downgrades and political uncertainty appear to have been drivers of the sharp...

With the outbreak of the Greek financial crisis in late 2009, spreads on Greek (and other) sovereigns reached unprecedented levels. Using a panel data of euro-area countries, we test whether the markets treated all euro-area countries in an equal manner over the period 1998:m1 to 2012:m6. In a...

During the euro-area financial crisis, interactions between sovereign spreads and credit ratings appeared to have led to self-generating feedback loops. To examine the interaction between spreads and ratings, we estimate a simultaneous two-equation model in which spreads and ratings are...