DETERMINANTS OF CEE GOVERNMENT BOND SPREADS AND CONTAGION BETWEEN 2001-2014

This paper analyses the pricing of sovereign risk and contagion during the crises in the Central and Eastern European countries. Panel data are used to estimate the determinants of government bond spreads in three different time periods: before the crisis, during the global financial crisis, and during the European debt crisis. The econometric model includes interactions between the explanatory variables and the crisis dummies. This specification enables the coefficients to change during the crises. The empirical analysis confirms a statistically significant relationship between sovereign risk and macroeconomic fundamental variables. Additionally, the results suggest an increase in the importance of macroeconomic fundamentals during the financial crisis. The analysis also supports that sovereign credit ratings and exchange rate risk have a significant impact on government bond spreads.