Economic freedom and sovereign credit ratings and default risk

Saurav Roychoudhury and Robert Lawson

Journal of Financial Economic Policy, 2010, vol. 2, issue 2, 149-162

Abstract: Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to show that economic policy impacts sovereign debt risk in addition to economic performance. Design/methodology/approach - Regression analysis was employed to determine the factors that contribute to sovereign bond ratings and bond spreads for a sample of 93 countries from 2000 to 2006. Findings - After controlling for common factors like per capita gross domestic production, growth, and political regime, the results suggest that a two unit (or a 2.4 standard deviation) drop in the economic freedom index represents approximately a 50 percent higher cost of borrowing for a country. Originality/value - The paper contributes to the empirical literature on sovereign credit risk by identifying factors found to be the most significant in determining sovereign credit ratings and bond spreads.

Keywords: National economy; Risk analysis; Bonds; Borrowing; Fiscal policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:jfeppp:v:2:y:2010:i:2:p:149-162

DOI: 10.1108/17576381011070201

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Financial Economic Policy is currently edited by Prof Franklin Mixon

More articles in Journal of Financial Economic Policy from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().