This paper compares the importance of different sovereign credit rating determinants over time, using a sample of 90 countries for the years 2002-2015. Applying the composite marginal likelihood approach, we estimate a multi-year ordered probit model for each of the three major credit rating agencies. After the start of the European debt crisis in 2009, the importance of the financial balance, the economic development and the external debt increased substantially and the effect of eurozone membership switched from positive to negative. In addition, GDP growth gained a lot of importance for highly indebted sovereigns and government debt became much more important for countries with a low GDP growth rate. These findings provide empirical evidence that the credit rating agencies changed their sovereign credit rating assessment after the start of the European debt crisis.

This paper investigates the predictive power for future domestic economic activity included in domestic stock prices, using a Granger causality analysis in the frequency domain. We are able to evaluate whether the predictive power is concentrated at the slowly fluctuating components or at the quickly fluctuating components. Using quarterly data for the G-7 countries, we found that the slowly fluctuating components of the stock prices have large predictive power for the future GDP, while this is not the case for the quickly fluctuating components. This finding holds both in a single-country setting and in a multi-country setting. Therefore, macro-economic policy makers could use the slowly fluctuating components of the stock prices to improve their predictions of the future GDP.

This paper investigates the predictive power for future domestic economic activity included in domestic stock prices, using a Granger causality analysis in the frequency domain. We are able to evaluate whether the predictive power is concentrated at the slowly fluctuating components or at the quickly fluctuating components. Using quarterly data for the G-7 countries, we found that the slowly fluctuating components of the stock prices have large predictive power for the future GDP, while this is not the case for the quickly fluctuating components. This finding holds both in a single-country setting and in a multi-country setting. Therefore, macro-economic policy makers could use the slowly fluctuating components of the stock prices to improve their predictions of the future GDP.

This paper compares Bayesian estimators with different prior choices for the time variation of the coefficients of Time Varying Parameter Vector Autoregression models using Monte Carlo simulations. Since the commonly used prior choice only allows for a tiny amount of time variation, less informative priors are proposed. Additional empirical evidence on the time varying response of inflation to an interest rate shock is provided for USA. While a ‘price puzzle’ is detected for the period 1972–1979, the estimated response of inflation to an interest rate shock is negative for most other time periods.

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