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This paper analyses the determimants of emerging market sovereign bond spreads by examining the short and long-run effects of fundamental (macroeconomic) and temporary (financial market) factors on these spreads. During the current global financial and economic crisis, sovereign bond spreads widened dramatically for both developed and emerging market economies. This deterioration has widely been attributed to rapidly growing public debts and balance sheet risks. Our results indicate that in the long run, fundamentals are significant determinants of emerging market sovereign bond spreads, while in the short run, financial volatility is a more important determinant of sperads than fundamentals indicators.
We analyze the relationship between global and country-specific factors and emerging market debt spreads from three different angles. First, we aim to disentangle the effect of global and country-specific developments, and find that while both country-specific and global developments are important in the long-run, global factors are main determinants of spreads in the short-run. Second, we investigate whether and how the strength of fundamentals is related to the sensitivity of spreads to global factors. Countries with stronger fundamentals tend to have lower sensitivity to changes in global risk aversion. Third, we decompose changes in spreads and analyze the behavior of explained and unexplained components over different periods. To do so, we break down fitted changes in spreads into the contribution of country-specific and global factors, as well as decompose changes in the residual into the correction of initial misalignment and an increase/decrease in misalignment. We find that changes in spreads follow periods of tightening/widening, which are well-explained by the model; and the dynamics of the components of the unexplained residual follow all the major developments that impact market sentiment. In particular, we find that in the periods of severe marketstress, such as during the intensive phase of the Eurozone debt crisis, global factors tend to drive changes in the spreads and the misalignment tends to increase in magnitude and its relative share in actual spreads.
Changes in sovereign ratings affect country risk and stock returns. And these changes are transmitted across countries, with neighbor-country effects being more significant.
This paper examines the spillover effects of sovereign rating news on European financial markets during the period 2007-2010. Our main finding is that sovereign rating downgrades have statistically and economically significant spillover effects both across countries and financial markets. The sign and magnitude of the spillover effects depend both on the type of announcements, the source country experiencing the downgrade and the rating agency from which the announcements originates. However, we also find evidence that downgrades to near speculative grade ratings for relatively large economies such as Greece have a systematic spillover effects across Euro zone countries. Rating-based triggers used in banking regulation, CDS contracts, and investment mandates may help explain these results.
The 1990s witnessed several acute currency crises among developing nations that invariably spread to other nearby at-risk countries. These episodes—in Mexico, Thailand, South Korea, Russia, and Brazil—were all exacerbated by speculative foreign investments and high-volume movements of capital in and out of those countries. Insufficient domestic controls and a sluggish international response further undermined these economies, as well as the credibility of external oversight agencies like the International Monetary Fund. This timely volume examines the correlation between volatile capital mobility, currency instability, and the threat of regional contagion, focusing particular attention on the emergent economies of Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe. Together these studies offer a new understanding of the empirical relationship between capital flows, international trade, and economic performance, and also afford key insights into realms of major policy concern.
The financial difficulties experienced by Greece since 2009 serve as a reminder that countries (i.e., sovereigns) may default on their debt. Many observers considered the financial turmoil was behind us because major advanced countries had adopted stimulus packages to prevent banks from going bankrupt. However, there are rising doubts about the creditworthiness of several advanced countries that participated in the bailouts. In this uncertain context, it is particularly crucial to be knowledgeable about sovereign ratings. This book provides the necessary broad overview, which will be of interest to both economists and investors alike. Chapter 1 presents the main issues that are addressed in this book. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 provide the key notions to understand sovereign ratings. Chapter 2 presents an overview of sovereign rating activity since the first such ratings were assigned in 1918. Chapter 3 analyzes the meaning of sovereign ratings and the significance of rating scales; it also describes the refinement of credit rating policies and tools. Chapter 4 focuses on the sovereign rating process. Chapters 5 and 6 open the black box of sovereign ratings. Chapter 5 compares sovereign rating methodologies in the interwar years with those in the modern era. After examining how rating agencies have amended their methodologies since the 1990s, Chapter 6 scrutinizes rating disagreements between credit rating agencies (CRAs). Chapters 7 and 8 measure the performances of sovereign ratings by computing default rates and accuracy ratios: Chapter 7 looks at the interwar years and Chapter 8 at the modern era. The two chapters assess which CRA assigns the most accurate ratings during the respective periods. Chapters 9 and 10 compare the perception of sovereign risk by the CRAs and market participants. Chapter 9 focuses on the relation between JP Morgan Emerging Markets Bond Index Global spreads and emerging countries’ sovereign ratings for the period 1993–2007. Chapter 10 compares the eurozone members’ sovereign ratings with Credit Default Swap-Implied Ratings (CDS-IRs) during the Greek debt crisis of November 2009–May 2010.
This paper uses a panel data estimation of a simple univariate model of sovereign spreads on ratings to analyze statistically significant deviations from the estimated relationship. We find evidence of an asymmetric adjustment of spreads and ratings when such deviations are significant. In addition, the paper illustrates how significant disagreements between market and rating agencies' views can be used as a signal that further technical and sovereign analysis is warranted. For instance, we find that spreads were "excessively low" for most emerging markets before the Asian crisis. More recently, spreads were "excessively high" for a number of emerging markets.
What determines the ability of low-income developing countries to issue bonds in international capital and what explains the spreads on these bonds? This paper examines these questions using a dataset that includes emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) that issued sovereign bonds at least once during the period 1995-2013 as well as those that did not. We find that an EMDE is more likely to issue a bond when, in comparison with non-issuing peers, it is larger in economic size, has higher per capita GDP, and has stronger macroeconomic fundamentals and government. Spreads on sovereign bonds are lower for countries with strong external and fiscal positions, as well as robust economic growth and government effectiveness. With regard to global factors, the results show that sovereign bond spreads are reduced in periods of lower market volatility.
This paper proposes an approach to track US$1 trillion of emerging market government debt held by foreign investors in local and hard currency, based on a similar approach that was used for advanced economies (Arslanalp and Tsuda, 2012). The estimates are constructed on a quarterly basis from 2004 to mid-2013 and are available along with the paper in an online dataset. We estimate that about half a trillion dollars of foreign flows went into emerging market government debt during 2010–12, mostly coming from foreign asset managers. Foreign central bank holdings have risen as well, but remain concentrated in a few countries: Brazil, China, Indonesia, Poland, Malaysia, Mexico, and South Africa. We also find that foreign investor flows to emerging markets were less differentiated during 2010–12 against the background of near-zero interest rates in advanced economies. The paper extends some of the indicators proposed in our earlier paper to show how the investor base data can be used to assess countries’ sensitivity to external funding shocks and to track foreign investors’ exposures to different markets within a global benchmark portfolio.
Sovereign investment grade status is often associated with lower spreads in international markets. Using a panel framework for 35 emerging markets between 1997 and 2010, thispaper finds that investment grade status reduces spreads by 36 percent, above and beyond what is implied by macroeconomic fundamentals. This compares to a 5-10 percent reduction in spreads following upgrades within the investment grade asset class, and no impact formovements within the speculative grade asset class, ceteris paribus. While global financial conditions play a central role in determining spreads, market sentiment improves with lower external public debt to GDP levels and higher domestic growth rates.