Using annual EU-27 data for 1995-2024, we examine whether sovereign ratings mainly reflect common macro-fiscal fundamentals or whether agency-specific departures from that benchmark are also priced into sovereign funding conditions. Pooled ordered probits and a machine-learning diagnostic layer for nonlinearities and thresholds for Fitch, Moody’s, and S&P identify a stable set of core rating determinants centred on inflation, debt-to-GDP, current account balance, budget balance rule indicator, output gap, old-age dependency, and revenue capacity, while within-country variation is narrower and concentrated mainly in inflation, debt, and unemployment. The machine-learning analysis confirms that flexible models absorb nearly all systematic variation between fundamentals and ratings, validating the shadow-rating decomposition used in the market-pricing test. ECB-based bond-yield regressions show that both the fundamentals-implied shadow rating and the agency-specific deviation are priced in euro-area Bund spreads: a one-notch more favourable value of either component is associated with about 50 basis points lower spreads. Evidence indicates that this pricing effect strengthens as debt rises and intensifies further once debt exceeds 100% of GDP, while a shorter crisis-period interaction is directionally similar but less precise. Sovereign ratings therefore appear to combine a common fundamentals core with discretionary overlays that markets treat as economically relevant signals.
AbstractThis study aim to how bond yields, yield curves, exchange rates, stock indices, and market volatility impact on Credit Default Swap (CDS) spreads. This study tries to reach a larger sample size by using weekly data from 33 countries account for about 77% of the world’s GDP. CDS determinants are identified by country development level and the sample is divided into developed and emerging economies. The study also covers the effects of global and regional risk factors such as the European debt crisis, the US debt ceiling crisis, the oil shock, the US-China trade war, COVID-19, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the Israel-Hamas conflict. It uses weekly data from 33 countries (both advanced and emerging markets) covering the period from January 1, 2010, to August 30, 2024. The authors use to Pesaran’s (2006) Common Correlated Effects Mean Group estimator and Eberhardt and Bond’s (2009) Augmented Mean Group (AMG) method. Results show that bond yields have a positive effect on CDS spreads in both advanced and emerging economies. Stock market performance negatively affects CDS spreads, while exchange rates negatively impact CDS spreads in advanced economies but positively in emerging markets.
Z. Şenol, F. Zeren, Gökhan Konat et al.· Ekonomi Politika ve Finans A...· 0 citations
This paper examines the relationship between revenue diversification, profitability, and risk in European banks, with particular emphasis on the structural break induced by the COVID-19 shock. Using quarterly supervisory data from the European Banking Authority (EBA) over the period 2016Q1–2024Q4, we distinguish between pre- and post-pandemic regimes and estimate dynamic fixed-effects models that account for unobserved heterogeneity and persistence in bank performance. The results reveal a pattern consistent with regime dependence. Descriptive (quintile-based) comparisons suggest that banks with greater reliance on non-interest income tended to report higher profitability prior to COVID-19, although data limitations prevent us from confirming this pattern in a full multivariate regression for the pre-COVID subsample. In the post-COVID period, once bank and time fixed effects, persistence, and balance-sheet characteristics are properly controlled for, revenue diversification does not exert a statistically significant effect on either profitability or earnings volatility; this result is robust across bank fixed effects only, two-way (bank and time) clustered, and one-way (bank) clustered specifications. We show that diversification is systematically associated with differences in bank size, capitalization, and lending intensity, indicating that income structure is closely linked to underlying business model characteristics. These findings suggest that the observed diversification–performance relationship largely reflects cross-sectional heterogeneity rather than a stable causal effect. Overall, the evidence indicates that revenue diversification does not provide a consistent improvement in risk-adjusted performance in European banking. Instead, performance and risk dynamics are primarily driven by balance-sheet composition and persistence. The results highlight the importance of accounting for structural heterogeneity and macroeconomic regimes when evaluating the role of non-interest income in bank performance.
Ifigeneia Persaki, Fotios Siokis· Journal of Risk and Financia...· 0 citations
This study examines whether the accumulated stock of private credit provides early-warning information for subsequent deterioration in banking-sector asset quality. It combines annual Passport banking indicators with World Development Indicators for 58 countries over 2010–2024; the preferred sample contains 746 country–year observations. A second-order dynamic fixed-effects model links log(1 + NPL), where NPL denotes the non-performing loan ratio, to lagged private credit to gross domestic product (GDP), real credit growth, lending rates, bank capital, GDP growth, inflation, and unemployment. Its preferred credit-depth coefficient is 0.00377, implying that a 10-percentage-point increase is associated with approximately 0.15 percentage points more NPLs one year later at the sample median. To operationalize early-warning calibration without claiming a universal cutoff, the paper reports the sample credit-depth quartiles and estimates a country fixed-effects linear probability model using the European Banking Authority’s 5% gross-NPL supervisory trigger. In that alternative outcome, a 10-percentage-point increase in credit depth is associated with a 2.78-percentage-point higher conditional probability of NPLs reaching 5% or more (p = 0.002). On a strictly common 609-observation sample, the credit-depth coefficients at one-, two-, and three-year horizons are 0.00501, 0.00960, and 0.01266. Lending rates and unemployment are positive, whereas annual credit growth and capital ratios are not robust predictors. Pooled interactions do not reject equal slopes across broad country partitions. System generalized method of moments (GMM) passes conventional tests but violates a persistence-bound credibility check. The evidence supports an early-warning interpretation, not a causal claim.
Marco Antonio Ledesma Munive, Alejandro Anibal Aguirre-Rojas, Graciela Soledad Verastegui Velasquez et al.· Journal of Risk and Financia...· 0 citations
We examine market entry and post-entry debt dynamics in Frontier Economies by grouping countries based on durability of market access using a two-step framework combining first Eurobond issuance with the reliance on private external creditors, validated through an unsupervised K-mean clustering. A discrete-time event LOGIT model finds that favorable global liquidity conditions and investor appetite open issuance windows for countries, but domestic pull factors—income, institutions, growth, and reserve buffers—ultimately determine success of market entry. Post-entry, Frontier Economies shift rapidly toward market borrowing, with looser fiscal stance as new financing source is unlocked. Along increased exposure to rollover and global financial cycle risks, debt decomposition exercise shows a worsening interest–growth differential and rising debt, driven mainly by primary deficits and higher interest burdens. Results underscore the need for credible medium-term fiscal frameworks, stronger debt management, and reserve buffers to manage the transition to market financing.
Hasan Cetin, Sanan Mirzayev· IMF Working Papers· 0 citations
This paper examines how economic downturns and currency movements affect the quality of bank loans in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe, using annual data for 14 national banking systems over 2008–2023. We estimate a bias-corrected dynamic fixed-effects model, verify inference with Driscoll–Kraay, cluster-robust, and wild cluster bootstrap procedures, run formal threshold tests, and conduct scenario simulations. Credit risk is highly persistent. The bias-corrected autoregressive coefficient of 0.944 implies a half-life of 12.0 years, although the bootstrap confidence interval of 0.601 to 1.048 does not rule out near-unit-root behavior. Exchange-rate depreciation predicts higher non-performing loan (NPL) ratios and survives both the strictest few-cluster test (p = 0.028) and a correction for euro-adoption breaks, while lower real GDP per capita growth is marginal under the same test (p = 0.060). Threshold tests that re-estimate the threshold in every bootstrap replication do not reject linearity in any of 14 configurations (minimum p-value of 0.071). Institutional quality does not measurably moderate the exchange-rate channel. A severe combined adverse scenario raises the projected NPL ratio from 6.54 to 12.32 percent over five years (90 percent interval: 8.2 to 24.6 percent). Together, the surviving channels and the disciplined null results delimit nonlinear transmission in emerging Europe.
Ivana Miklošević, Andreja Todorović, Andrija Popović· Journal of Risk and Financia...· 0 citations
The sharp rise in nominal interest rates after 2022 constitutes a substantial test for European non-financial corporations after a prolonged period of exceptionally cheap debt. This paper examines how the cost of debt financing—proxied by the lagged, ex post real long-term sovereign yield, interpreted throughout as an indicator of economy-wide financing conditions rather than a direct corporate borrowing rate—is associated with the gross investment rate of non-financial corporations in the EU-27 over 2000–2025, using harmonised annual sector accounts and two-way fixed-effects panel models, interaction designs and local projections. Three findings emerge. First, the conditional association is stronger for the real than for the nominal cost of debt: a one percentage point increase in the lagged real yield is associated with a decline of roughly 0.3–0.4 percentage points in the investment rate, and a formal test does not reject treating the nominal yield and inflation as components of the real rate. Second, this association is not stable over time: it weakens markedly after 2020, and the weakening is robust to an alternative 2022 breakpoint and to wild cluster bootstrap inference. Third, direct tests with predetermined leverage and profit shares do not account for this weakening, so stronger corporate balance sheets—including the pronounced deleveraging from around 477% to around 226% of income—remain only one candidate explanation among several. The profit-share interaction is positive, but the evidence of attenuation is weak and specification-dependent: it is not statistically significant with the one-year-lagged measure and reaches only marginal significance under two alternative measures.
Vanya Georgieva, Radosveta Krasteva-Hristova· Journal of Risk and Financia...· 0 citations