Spreads Soberanos: ¿Diferencian los Inversionistas Internacionales entre Economías Emergentes?

This paper examines the global investors’ behavior related to emerging markets assets, controlling by credit rating. Hence, a particular interest is set on reviewing whether these global agents do differentiate between investment grade and non-investment grade emerging economies once they face shocks to international financial markets. It is interesting to explore how these investors look at Chile in comparison to other emerging economies both ranked in a similar credit rating notch and neighbor ones. Thus, this study aim at analyzing the main hypotheses raised on investment differentiation by credit rating and inter-regional contagion based upon the performance of the sovereign spread volatility of emerging markets economies. The main results support the hypothesis that a clear differentiation from global investors about emerging markets cannot be observed during tranquil periods. However, a higher preference can be observed for better credit rating assets under periods of turbulence in the international financial markets.