Suchergebnisse

The 2008 financial crisis has served as a catalyst for re-examining the forces of systemic financial crisis, the leading of which was perceived to be the inaccurate credit ratings. Although sovereign credit ratings constitute a small part of the credit rating industry, the impact of unexpected downgrades or upgrades has a huge potential to distort a well-functioning financial system. There appeared plenty of researches in the literature that discussed the inaccuracy of sovereign credit ratings and argued that these measurements are negative biased toward developing countries. By using ordered response models, this paper investigates whether this bias stems partially from cross country variations in the quality of institutions. Measured by six different governance indicators namely "Control of Corruption", "Voice and Accountability", "Political Stability and No Violence", "Government Effectiveness", "Regulatory Quality", and "Rule of Law", institutional quality was found to have positive impact on the rating decisions. Although the simulation of the estimation results revealed that all the governance indicators reduce prediction errors significantly, "Government Effectiveness" and "Regulatory Quality" were predominantly responsible for low sovereign credit ratings.

This paper investigates several aspects of the relationship between sovereign credit ratings and fiscal discipline. The analysis of over one thousand country–year observations for 93 countries during the 1999–2010 period reveals that a country's debt level is likely to increase with higher ratings, confirming the existence of pro–cyclicality and path dependence of ratings. In addition, the study finds no evidence to support the theory of Political Business Cycle, which implies that political ambitions may lead to fiscal worsening following a rating upgrade. The study findings further demonstrate that institutional quality is an important factor in the ratings–fiscal discipline nexus.

The rare earth elements (REE) are critical raw materials for much of modern technology, particularly renewable energy infrastructure and electric vehicles that are vital for the energy transition. Many of the world's largest REE deposits occur in alkaline rocks and carbonatites, which are found in intracontinental, rift-related settings, and also in syn- to post-collisional settings. Post-collisional settings host significant REE deposits, such as those of the Mianning-Dechang belt in China. This paper reviews REE mineralisation in syn- to post-collisional alkaline-carbonatite complexes worldwide, in order to demonstrate some of the key physical and chemical features of these deposits. We use three examples, in Scotland, Namibia, and Turkey, to illustrate the structure of these systems. We review published geochemical data and use these to build up a broad model for the REE mineral system in post-collisional alkaline-carbonatite complexes. It is evident that immiscibility of carbonate-rich magmas and fluids plays an important part in generating mineralisation in these settings, with REE, Ba and F partitioning into the carbonate-rich phase. The most significant REE mineralisation in post-collisional alkaline-carbonatite complexes occurs in shallow-level, carbothermal or carbonatite intrusions, but deeper carbonatite bodies and associated alteration zones may also have REE enrichment. ; European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme through the HiTech AlkCarb Project [689909]; Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Industrial Innovation FellowshipUK Research & Innovation (UKRI)Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) [NE/R013403/1] ; This research was supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme through the HiTech AlkCarb Project (No. 689909). Sam Broom-Fendley acknowledges a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Industrial Innovation Fellowship (No. NE/R013403/1). Kathryn M. Goodenough and Eimear A. Deady publish with the permission of the Director of the British Geological Survey. Martin Gillespie and two anonymous reviewers are greatly thanked for their constructive and thoughtful comments, which have greatly improved the manuscript. The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-021-1500-5.