Bond Spreads, EMU Design and the Run-up to the Crisis

Greece and Ireland were the first two countries to be hit by the EMU sovereign debt crisis: Greece was the first victim, in the first half of 2010, and Ireland followed in the second half of the same year. While the sovereign debt crises were dramatic events in both countries, their severity, length and final outcome were clearly different 1 : Greece restructured its debt in March 2012, 2 while Ireland returned to the markets for funding by July of the same year. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.