Over the past decade, it has become common practice for rating agencies to assign a domestic currency rating to the debt of sovereign nationals in addition to a foreign currency one. Often the domestic rating is higher, reflecting the presumed greater ability and willingness of sovereigns to...

The market for credit derivatives, or financial contracts whose payoffs are linked to changes in the credit quality of a reference asset, has expanded dramatically in recent years. According to the 2002 Credit Derivatives Report of the British Bankers' Association, the credit derivatives market...

We examine in a unified framework three recent perspectives on country risk: debt intolerance, original sin, and currency mismatches. We find statistical evidence supporting aspects of all three, though the strength of that support varies considerably across hypotheses and a number of open...

During the 1930s, rating agencies took up a central role in regulatory supervision that they still have today. The proximate cause for this changeover was the economic shock of the Great Depression. Exploring the performance of rating agencies in assessing the risks of sovereign debt, an...