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This paper sets the background for the Special Issue of the Journal of Empirical Finance on the European Sovereign Debt Crisis. It identifies the channel through which risks in the financial industry leaked into the public sector. It discusses the role of the bank rescues in igniting the sovereign debt crisis and reviews approaches to detect early warning signals to anticipate the buildup of crises. It concludes with a discussion of potential implications of sovereign distress for financial markets.

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Using an optimal changepoint approach, we find a structural change in the relation between hedge funds' stock market exposure and aggregate stock market liquidity that takes place in the period 2000 to 2002. Before the structural break, market betas have no relation to liquidity and only a few style categories of hedge funds show increased market presence when liquidity is low. After the break, the relationship is inverted, pointing towards an increased liquidity timing ability of hedge funds, as users of liquidity. We relate our findings to best execution rules and decimalization in the US stock market that were introduced in that period and impacted aggregate liquidity conditions. Furthermore, the returns to a momentum strategy display a similar structural break and momentum-loading funds constitute a sizeable proportion of hedge funds that manifest a distinct beta-liquidity evolution with a structural break in that period.