Rating the Rating Agencies

Rating agencies remain in the spotlight and they seemingly can never make anyone happy: when they junk or downgrade countries, it obviously hurts, when they fail to do just that, they get blamed for not warning the world to the looming economic crisis. A recent commentary in the Financial Times (and the above illustration) is clearly pointing the finger at them.

PERG, however, had the privilege to listen to a more nuanced take: Zsofia Barta (EUI) presented her research on how rating agencies determine the creditworthiness of a country. More details on the PERG website.