Sovereign Ratings in the Post-Crisis World: An Analysis of Actual, Shadow and Relative Risk Ratings

This paper analyses the evolution of sovereign credit ratings in the wake of the global financial crisis by studying changes in actual, shadow, and relative ratings between 2008 and 2012. The paper also develops a new rating scale called the "relative risk rating," which ranks countries according to their actual or shadow ratings after controlling for changes in the world weighted average rating.