We analyze the nature of sovereign credit risk for selected Asian and European countries through a set of sovereign CDS data for an eighty-year period that includes the episode of the 2008-2009 financial crisis. Our principal component analysis results suggest that there is strong commonality in sovereign credit risk across countries after the crisis. The regression tests show that the commonality is linked to both local and global financial and economic variables. Besides, we also notice intriguing differences in the sovereign credit risk behavior of Asian and European countries. Specifically, we find that some variables, including foreign reserve, global stock market, and volatility risk premium, affect the of Asian and European sovereign credit risks in the opposite direction. Further, we assume that the arrival rates of credit events follow a square-root diffusion from which we build our pricing model. The resulting model is used to decompose credit spreads into risk premium and credit-event components.

Since its inception, international aid has been premised on the existence of stable and sovereign recipient states. Official aid relies upon such states for its legitimacy and implementation, and aims to consolidate statehood. In the 1990s, this organising pillar of the international aid system was shaken. The ability of governments to fulfil the basic functions of a sovereign power is now widely questioned. The principle of sovereignty is no longer absolute; rather, it is increasingly contingent upon states' adherence to international, largely Western-defined, norms of behaviour. Where these norms are violated systematically, as in conflict-affected countries, sanctions including trade, political and military measures are deployed. In these 'quasi-states', where sovereignty is contested or weak empirically and juridically, development aid relations are usually suspended and relief the only form of aid available. However, the ability of relief aid to respond to these chronic political emergencies is increasingly questioned. There are increasing demands to make relief more developmental, and for aid to be used to address the cause of crisis - conflict. This thesis examines how aid has worked in a particular type of 'quasi-state': situations of 'post'-conflict transition, and asks whether the new demands on aid in these environments can be met. Examining the cases of rehabilitation assistance to the health sector in Cambodia, Ethiopia and Uganda, it draws three primary conclusions. First, the political meaning, objectives and instruments of relief and development aid are categorically distinct; linking them is ethically and technically problematic. Ethically it implies compromising principles of impartiality and neutrality. Technically, political conditions prevent the transition to more developmental aid instruments. Second, the empirical weakness and juridical ambiguity of statehood in these environments mean that there is no clearly accepted and competent authority to make public policy - no one and everyone owns it. This leads to highly fragmented aid investments that do not provide a basis for the development of public health systems. Third, the absolute scarcity of public resources means that the developmental goal of sustainability is not compatible with that of maximising coverage of health services, level of coverage summary, it suggests that conceptually and operationally the international aid system remains fundamentally ill-equipped to respond to the challenges of chronic political emergencies and their aftermath. 4

Thesis advisor: Philip E. Strahan / In the first essay of this dissertation I examine the bank credit supply and industry growth effects stemming from the introduction of bank account debit (BAD) taxes using a sample of Latin American countries between 1986 and 2005. I first show that the introduction of BAD taxes is followed by a reduction in the provision of bank credit to the private sector. I identify that a key channel through which these taxes affect credit is by creating a strong incentive to hold cash and reduce the use of bank deposits. I also provide evidence that their implementation ultimately affects economic growth, mainly by reducing the growth prospects of industries that are more susceptible to distortions in the supply of credit. In the second chapter I use a large sample of private firms in Colombia to investigate the impact of the introduction and changes of BAD taxes on the financing and investment decisions of firms. I first document that bank leverage decreases from an average of 23% in the years before the tax to 18% in the post-tax years. Furthermore, using a differences-in-differences empirical strategy, I find that small-risky firms reduce more their leverage and capital expenditures relative to large-high credit quality firms, even after controlling for firms' demand characteristics. In the last essay, written jointly with Heitor Almeida, Miguel A. Ferreira and Igor Cunha, we exploit the sovereign ceiling policy by credit rating agencies to show that sovereign rating downgrades have a real impact on firm investment and financial policy. We identify these causal effects by exploring the effect of sovereign downgrades on corporate ratings that are due to the rating agencies' sovereign ceiling rules. We find that sovereign downgrades lead to greater reduction in investment and leverage at firms that are at the sovereign rating bound than at otherwise similar firms that are below the bound. Consistent with a contraction in capital supply, bond yields of firms at the bound increase more than yields of firms below the bound. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Finance.

The development of human civilization has not caused the world to be stable under the anarchy, and there are still many states jeopardize humanity safety seriously. If the states still just go there own way, it will certainly cause the risks in human¡¦s development and the damage to the human¡¦s survival right. Since peace will not arrive naturally, we should seek the construction of norms which will keep the human historical development on the track. In March 1999, the humanitarian intervention event in Kosovo has shown the universal human rights value, and challenged the existent paradigm of world order. Humanitarian intervention showed that states without supreme authority can do things along with justice principle and the moral reason, more than just chasing the interest and power. It also emphasized the universal identity of sovereign states under the human rights totem, as well as promoted the will and the right of individuals. It was a significant progress when humanitarian intervention accentuate universal human rights value and put it into effect, nevertheless, it is still challenged and criticized in the real world. The conflicts of interest among sovereign states must be reconciled gradually. Besides, whether the individuals or the political communities (sovereign states) should be the subject of rights and obligations in the world, as well as how should we define the hegemony are still the controversial issues. This article will takes the dialogs among parties that hold different opinions to humanitarian intervention, and try to reach the mutual recognition. It will also point out the differences of human being will be assimilated eventually in consideration of the globalization tendency. Global community which take root on the universal human rights value will be the foundation of norms which lead the world to ideal.

Using discourse analysis, this study will apply a critical theoretical framework and discuss how perceptions of the Tanzanian national borders compares to problematized understandings of the socially constructed concepts of borders, sovereignty, and power. For example, the Tanzanian borders will be reassessed into something creating a safe ‘inside’ opposing an unsafe ‘outside, and into something dividing territories, thus, giving birth to the identities of ‘nationality’. Furthermore, the presence of biopolitical interventions will be discussed in order to see how biopower can help increase security in Tanzania. More substantially, the phenomena of roadblocks will be analysed as something potentially functioning as ‘extended arms’ of the national border. The analysis showed how the so called ‘geopolitical imaginary’, where borders are defined as the outer reaches of a sovereign state, is a well-established idea in Tanzania; the national borders were perceived as important and worthy of protection. However, they can also be seen as something ultimately creating non-coherent ‘insides’ and an ‘outsides’, where outside ‘threats’, often perceived as illegal immigrants, are dependent on the existence of territories. The analysis further showed that biopower in Tanzania is something which can create ‘social’ borders wherever there is authority. This form of exercised power does although suffer severely from corruption, and this leads to a conclusion that Tanzanian ‘security’, to a great extent, is being evaluated in terms of money.

This paper investigates the determinants of sovereign debt crises by using cross-country data from 1977 to 2010. In particular, I focus on the structure of sovereign debt by analysing the debt composition (domestic versus external), maturity structure (short-term versus long-term), composition type (bank loans versus bond) and currency denomination (domestic currency versus foreign currency) of debts. I also assess whether the previous history of banking and currency crises affect the likelihood of a sovereign debt crisis. The results suggest that both the structures of debt and the past history of other financial crises are important determinants of debt crises. The results are robust when using alternative measures to understand the risks of sovereign debt. I also investigate the impacts of debt structure and past financial crises history on the levels and changes of foreign and local currency long-term debt credit ratings.

No description available.

Cette thèse sur travaux empiriques en quatre articles s’intéresse aux déterminants de risque de défaut souverain. Le premier chapitre résume l’état de l’art du risque de défaut souverain et trois principales approches des déterminants du risque de défaut souverain: le modèle structurel, le modèle dynamique stochastique et les modèles économétriques. Le deuxième chapitre étudie la probabilité de défaut de l’Argentine (2002) en utilisant un modèle structurel proposé par Gray and Malone 2008. Le troisième chapitre propose un modèle stochastique afin de calculer le spread du crédit souverain journalier. Les deux derniers chapitres économétriques déterminent deux proxies du risque de défaut souverain: Sovereign CDS spread et Emerging Market Bond Index Plus (EMBI+). Le quatrième chapitre essaye de déterminer le sovereign CDS spread à longterme et court-terme en utilisant trois estimations: Pooled Mean Group, Mean Group et Dynamic Fixed Effect. Dans le dernier chapitre, on applique un modèle non-linéaire asymétrique Autorégressif à retards échelonnés pour étudier l’effet d’asymétrie à longterme de compte courant sur l’EMBI+ y compris les variables explicatives telles que la dette extérieure et les réserves internationales pour deux pays émergents: la Turquie et le Brésil. / This thesis on empirical results in four articles focused on the determinants of the sovereign default risk. The first chapter summarizes the state of the art of sovereign default risk and the three main approaches of determinants of sovereign default risk: the structure model, the dynamic stochastic model and the econometric models. The second chapter studies the default probability in Argentina (2002) by using a structural model proposed by Gray and Malone 2008. The third chapter provides a stochastic model to calculate the daily sovereign credit spread. Last two econometric chapters determine two sovereign default risk proxies: Sovereign CDS spread and Emerging Market Bond Index Plus. The fourth chapter focuses on the sovereign CDS spread in long-run and short-run by using three estimations of Pooled Mean Group, Mean Group and Dynamic Fixed Effect. The last chapter applies a nonliear Autoregressive Distributed Lag asymmetry model to study the long-run asymmetric effect of the current account to the EMBI+ including the explanatory variables such as the external debt and international reserves for the two typical emerging countries Turkey and Brazil.

Despite rational thinking suggesting that a country rich in resources should have higher socioeconomic growth and development,the results of many resource rich countries have not been encouraging. This phenomenon has been studied widely and has been termed the resource curse and denotes how a country with abundant natural resources tends to have lower economic growth and generally display poorer development levels than countries with fewer natural resources. The Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) has been proposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a tool to curb the resource curse and many resource rich countries have recently started SWFs. The recent activity of SWFs has sparked a lot of interest in this topic but most of the studies conducted to date have failed to determine the effect of the SWF on a country’s socioeconomic development and on its ability to mitigate the resource curse. This research is unique in that it establishes the impact of the creation of a SWF on the socioeconomic performance of resource rich countries by examining the Human Development Index of these countries. In addition,the research examines the key success factors of a SWF and establishes a framework that can be used to ensure that the SWF is effective. The study has found that the establishment of a SWF is not a guarantee of success and that governance is the most significant success factor in a SWFs effectiveness. As a result, the SWF is proposed as one solution to the resource curse and a SWF framework is presented with governance as a key success factor. This research is particularly relevant to the resource dependent economies of Africa that have lagged the rest of the world in many socioeconomic measures such as the Human Development Index and income inequality. The effective deployment of a SWF is one option that these economies can utilise to!ensure that their resource riches are translated into socioeconomic development. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / zkgibs2014 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

No description available.