Afonso, AntónioGomes, PedroRother, Philipp2010-06-142010-06-142007-01Afonso, António, Pedro Gomes e Philipp Rother. 2007. "What "hides" behind sovereign debt ratings?". European Central Bank working paper series nº 711-20071725-2806http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/2134In this paper we study the determinants of sovereign debt credit ratings using rating notations from the three main international rating agencies, for the period 1995-2005. We employ panel estimation and random effects ordered probit approaches to assess the explanatory power of several macroeconomic and public governance variables. Our results point to a good performance of the estimated models, across agencies and across the time dimension, as well as a good overall prediction power. Relevant explanatory variables for a country's credit rating are: GDP per capita, GDP growth, government debt, government effectiveness indicators, external debt, external reserves, and default history.engcredit ratingssovereign debtrating agenciespanel datarandom effects ordered probitworking paper