We empirically evaluate the importance of two sources of public information affecting pricing of global corporate bonds: bond ratings provided by rating agencies and sovereign yields of the issuer's country. We find that both in the cross section of firms and over time more variation in corporate bond yields is explained by sovereign yields than by corporate bond ratings. When sovereign yields are high, their importance in pricing corporate bonds declines. In these states, for advanced economies' borrowers, the importance of corporate ratings increases. There is a small upward trend in the importance of corporate ratings over time.

Why was recovery from the euro area crisis delayed for a decade? The explanation lies in the absence of credible and timely policies to backstop financial intermediaries and sovereign debt markets. In this paper we add light and color to this analysis, contrasting recent experience with the 1992–3 crisis in the European Monetary System, when national central banks and treasuries more successfully provided this backstop. In the more recent episode, the incomplete development of the euro area constrained the ability of the ECB and other European institutions to do likewise.