Download This PaperIn Sickness and in Debt: The COVID-19 Impact on Sovereign Credit Risk
Journal of Financial Economics, volume 143, issue 3, 2022[10.1016/j.jfineco.2021.05.009]
56 Pages Posted: 29 May 2020 Last revised: 21 Feb 2025
Date Written: July 17, 2020
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic provides a unique setting in which to evaluate the importance of a country's fiscal capacity in explaining the relation between economic growth shocks and sovereign default risk. For a sample of 30 developed countries, we find a positive and significant sensitivity of sovereign default risk to the intensity of the virus' spread for fiscally constrained governments. Supporting the fiscal channel, we confirm the results for Eurozone countries and U.S. states, for which monetary policy can be held constant. Our analysis suggests that financial markets penalize sovereigns with low fiscal space, thereby impairing their resilience to external shocks.
Keywords: COVID-19, coronavirus, credit risk, debt, fiscal capacity, pandemic, sovereign
JEL Classification: C3, F34, E44, G12, G15, H63
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Valeri Sokolovski
University of Alberta - School of Business ( email )
2-43 Business Building
Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2C7
Canada
Marti G. Subrahmanyam
New York University (NYU) - Leonard N. Stern School of Business ( email )
44 West 4th Street
Suite 9-160
New York, NY NY 10012
United States