The design of both tuition fees and their accompanying loan systems determines their effect on the goals of investment in higher education, equal access to higher education, free choice between universities as well as cost-effective provision of the loans. Under a law-and-economics approach,...

We model EU countries? bank ratings using financial variables and allowing for intercept and slope heterogeneity. We find that country-specific factors (in the form of heterogeneous intercepts) are a crucial determinant of ratings. Whilst ?new? EU countries typically have lower ratings than...