ABSTRACT
In papers using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, little attention has been paid to the determinants of sovereign debt ratings. We propose a reduced set of variables regarding the economic performance of a country that are consistent with the idea of debt sustainability. The robustness of this set is supported by the results obtained with different well-known AI techniques using data from EU-15 countries during the 2002–2017 period as the experimental setting. The variables are publicly available, allowing a quick and reliable assessment of the creditworthiness of a sovereign and providing useful information for decision-makers and investors.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.