Sovereign Debt Crisis in Portugal and Spain

In this working paper, António Afonso (EconPol Europe; ISEG – School of Economics and Management, Universidade de Lisboa; REM – Research in Economics and Mathematics, UECE) and Nuno Verdial (ISEG – School of Economics and Management, Universidade de Lisboa) analyze the events of the 2007/2008 financial crisis and European sovereign debt crisis with a focus on Portugal and Spain. They find that that the pricing of sovereign risk changed with the crisis and the “whatever it takes” speech of Mario Draghi. Specifically, market pricing of the Eurozone credit risk, liquidity risk and the risk appetite increased after the crisis and relaxed afterwards. However, there is no evidence of specific pricing regime changes after the speech in the case of Portugal and Spain.