IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/eibwps/202205.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How much is too much? Assessing the non-linear relationship between debt and sovereign creditworthiness

Author

Listed:
  • Zwart, Sanne

Abstract

Public debt is a very weak predictor of a country's credit rating if a country's other features are not taken into account. However, everything else equal, more public debt is associated with worse ratings. This paper explores the relationship between debt and sovereign creditworthiness by explicitly modelling the debt thresholds associated with rating changes. It finds that the impact of an increase in public debt is highly non-linear and crucially depends on a country's economic situation. In particular, low levels of GDP per capita are associated with a smaller range of possible ratings than higher levels. Hence, for countries with a higher GDP per capita, a change in debt levels is thus more likely to result in a rating change. Overall, the non-linear relationship between debt and creditworthiness is substantial, and accounting for it improves the performance of sovereign credit rating models significantly.

Suggested Citation

  • Zwart, Sanne, 2022. "How much is too much? Assessing the non-linear relationship between debt and sovereign creditworthiness," EIB Working Papers 2022/05, European Investment Bank (EIB).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:eibwps:202205
    DOI: 10.2867/961968
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/251830/1/1798085283.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2867/961968?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dilek Teker & Aynur Pala & Oya Kent, 2013. "Determination of Sovereign Rating: Factor Based Ordered Probit Models for Panel Data Analysis Modelling Framework," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 3(1), pages 122-132.
    2. Antonio Afonso & Pedro Gomes & Philipp Rother, 2009. "Ordered response models for sovereign debt ratings," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(8), pages 769-773.
    3. Metodij Hadzi-Vaskov & Mr. Luca A Ricci, 2019. "The Nonlinear Relationship Between Public Debt and Sovereign Credit Ratings," IMF Working Papers 2019/162, International Monetary Fund.
    4. Reusens, Peter & Croux, Christophe, 2017. "Sovereign credit rating determinants: A comparison before and after the European debt crisis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 108-121.
    5. Tran, Yen & Vu, Huong & Klusak, Patrycja & Kraemer, Moritz & Hoang, Tri, 2021. "Sovereign credit ratings during the COVID-19 pandemic," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sami Ben Mim & Ridha Nouira & Fatma Mabrouk, 2023. "Non-Linear Determinants of Developing Countries’ Sovereign Ratings: Evidence from a Panel Threshold Regression (PTR) Model," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-23, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Šergo Zdravko & Gržinić Jasmina, 2018. "Does the International Tourism Industry Relax Sovereign Credit Ratings: The Case of Countries Most Reliant on Tourism," South East European Journal of Economics and Business, Sciendo, vol. 13(2), pages 100-111, December.
    2. Abdulkerim Karaaslan & Kürşat Özgür Özden, 2017. "Forecasting Turkey’s Credit Ratings with Multivariate Grey Model and Grey Relational Analysis," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 15(3), pages 583-610, September.
    3. Srđan Jelinek & Pavle Milošević & Aleksandar Rakićević & Ana Poledica & Bratislav Petrović, 2022. "A Novel IBA-DE Hybrid Approach for Modeling Sovereign Credit Ratings," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 10(15), pages 1-21, July.
    4. Cuadros-Solas, Pedro J. & Salvador, Carlos & Suárez, Nuria, 2021. "Am I riskier if I rescue my banks? Beyond the effects of bailouts," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    5. Hirk, Rainer & Vana, Laura & Hornik, Kurt, 2022. "A corporate credit rating model with autoregressive errors," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 224-240.
    6. Slapnik, Ursula & Lončarski, Igor, 2023. "Understanding sovereign credit ratings: Text-based evidence from the credit rating reports," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    7. Gabriel Caldas Montes & Diego Silveira Pacheco Oliveira, 2019. "Central bank transparency and sovereign risk ratings: a panel data approach," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 417-433, April.
    8. Pineau, Edouard & Le, Phuong & Estran, Rémy, 2022. "Importance of ESG factors in sovereign credit ratings," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    9. Slapnik, Ursula & Lončarski, Igor, 2021. "On the information content of sovereign credit rating reports: Improving the predictability of rating transitions☆," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    10. De Moor, Lieven & Luitel, Prabesh & Sercu, Piet & Vanpée, Rosanne, 2018. "Subjectivity in sovereign credit ratings," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 366-392.
    11. Cuadros-Solas, Pedro Jesús & Salvador Muñoz, Carlos, 2022. "Disentangling the sources of sovereign rating adjustments: An examination of changes in rating policies following the GFC," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    12. Regina Stéphanie Seri, 2021. "How giant discoveries of natural resources impact sovereign debt ratings in developing and emerging countries ?," Working Papers hal-03144330, HAL.
    13. Regina Stéphanie Seri, 2021. "How giant discoveries of natural resources impact sovereign debt ratings in developing and emerging countries ?," CERDI Working papers hal-03144330, HAL.
    14. William H. Greene & Mark N. Harris & Rachel J. Knott & Nigel Rice, 2021. "Specification and testing of hierarchical ordered response models with anchoring vignettes," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 184(1), pages 31-64, January.
    15. Sahibzada, Irfan Ullah, 2023. "To what extent do sovereign rating actions affect global equity market sectors?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 240-261.
    16. Patrycja Klusak & Matthew Agarwala & Matt Burke & Moritz Kraemer & Kamiar Mohaddes, 2023. "Rising Temperatures, Falling Ratings: The Effect of Climate Change on Sovereign Creditworthiness," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(12), pages 7468-7491, December.
    17. Li, Yibei & Wang, Ximei & Djehiche, Boualem & Hu, Xiaoming, 2020. "Credit scoring by incorporating dynamic networked information," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 286(3), pages 1103-1112.
    18. Lennart Freitag, 2015. "Procyclicality and Path Dependence of Sovereign Credit Ratings: The Example of Europe," Economic Notes, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, vol. 44(2), pages 309-332, July.
    19. T. Lakshmanasamy, 2022. "Money and Happiness in India: Is Relative Comparison Cardinal or Ordinal and Same for All?," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 20(4), pages 931-957, December.
    20. Sami Ben Mim & Ridha Nouira & Fatma Mabrouk, 2023. "Non-Linear Determinants of Developing Countries’ Sovereign Ratings: Evidence from a Panel Threshold Regression (PTR) Model," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-23, February.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:eibwps:202205. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ceeiblu.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.