Determinants of Government Debt Rating

For many years financial literature has identified the government bond yield as the risk free rate. Consequently it has been used as a reference point for various investments. However historical data that the risk is not reflected on the price of these securities. The increased globalization and the vast amount of information in the market have expanded the flow of capital between countries. In this framework the pricing correctly of the government bonds is of vital importance. The novel of the study is that it adds two new variables which have been not included in previous literature, the history of defaults and the corruption index. Analyses include data for 77 advanced and emerging economies for the period 1998-2009. Results show that the history of defaults and the corruption index do really matter when evaluating a government¿s creditworthiness. The model is further used to estimate the default probabilities of default in the current Euro Sovereign Crisis.