The global financial crisis saw many Eurozone countries bearing excessive public debt. This led the government bond yields of some peripheral countries to rise sharply, resulting in the outbreak of the European sovereign debt crisis. The debt crisis is characterized by its immediate spread from Greece, the country of origin, to its neighbouring countries and the connection between the Eurozone banking sector and the public sector debt. Addressing these interesting features, this book sheds light on the impacts of the crisis on various financial markets in Europe. This book is among the first to conduct a thorough empirical analysis of the European sovereign debt crisis. It analyses, using advanced econometric methodologies, why the crisis escalated so prominently, having significant impacts on a wide range of financial markets, and was not just limited to government bond markets. The book also allows one to understand the consequences and the overall impact of such a debt crisis, enabling investors and policymakers to formulate diversification strategies, and create suitable regulatory frameworks.

We take advantage of the historical onetime event of the European sovereign debt crisis and investigate the impact of European sovereign downgrades and negative watches on the European government bond and stock market including the partial default of Greece in March 2012. Results are based on an unprecedented large sample of 159 rating events on industrial countries covering 10 years of data from 2002 to 2012. While European government bond and stock markets react significantly negative upon bad rating news, it is especially government bonds with longer times to maturity that suffer the most. This implies that the current European sovereign debt crisis is considered a long term crisis. Analyzing each country separately, we find no reaction on the respective government bond markets for any country, but significantly negative effects on the national stock indices of Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Slovenia. The partial default of Greece does not create negative spillover effects on bond and stock markets of the whole Eurozone or the group of troubled southern economies, but rather positive spillover effects on the northern European countries.

This paper examines the spillover effects of sovereign rating news on European financial markets during the period 2007-2010. Our main finding is that sovereign rating downgrades have statistically and economically significant spillover effects both across countries and financial markets. The sign and magnitude of the spillover effects depend both on the type of announcements, the source country experiencing the downgrade and the rating agency from which the announcements originates. However, we also find evidence that downgrades to near speculative grade ratings for relatively large economies such as Greece have a systematic spillover effects across Euro zone countries. Rating-based triggers used in banking regulation, CDS contracts, and investment mandates may help explain these results.

This paper examines the European sovereign debt crisis that began in 2009; it mostly considers Greece and then Italy and Portugal since they were affected by the crisis. It gives the emergence and the causes of the crisis as well as its effect on their debt as a percentage to Gross Domestic Product and their Real Gross Domestic Product. It also analyses the impact on sovereign bond and its yields, the stock, gold, derivatives and forex markets, including the impact on financial institutions, it uses graphical illustrations from Bloomberg to back the analysis. It further assesses the measures taken so far by policy makers and financial institutions to curb the situation. It finally considers the impact of the crisis on financial landscape and lessons learnt from it.

"The World Scientific Handbook of Futures Markets serves as a definitive source for comprehensive and accessible information in futures markets. The emphasis is on the unique characteristics of futures markets that make them worthy of a special volume. In our judgment, futures markets are currently undergoing remarkable changes as trading is shifting from open outcry to electronic and as the traditional functions of hedging and speculation are extended to include futures as an alternative investment vehicle in traditional portfolios. The unique feature of this volume is the selection of five classic papers that lay the foundations of the futures markets and the invitation to the leading academics who do work in the area to write critical surveys in a dozen important topics."--$cProvided by publisher.

"The Sovereign Debt Crisis," 2012 edition, looked at how governments ran up substantial deficits in order to avert a worldwide depression and their subsequent attempts to rebalance their budgets. This updated edition concentrates on the delicate balancing act the economies of the United States, Japan, and the eurozone face between the present need to boost sluggish economic growth by providing sufficiently cheap, low-risk credit and the longer-term challenges of cutting massive debt and returning to a sustainable fiscal policy. The authors argue that many of the euro area economies, having noticeable difficulty paying their international debts, are in a sovereign debt crisis, while America and Japan are, for now, holding steady but in real danger of slipping into crisis. The book shows how the process has evolved in these three major developed economies and how their policy choices impact global financial markets.

The objective of this paper is to review and critically analyze the situation of different euro area member states (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain), commonly referred to as PIGS, the different proposals put forward and ultimately develop and structure a tailored proposal as how to cope with the crisis. Additional analysis will concentrate on the way and the timing the German government reacted to the crisis. A concise conclusion sums up the crucial points of this paper and also gives an outlook, respectively a prognosis, of the future based on decisions taken or agreed to be taken.