How financial judgement acquires institutional authority in global economic governance — and how that authority is structured, interpreted, and engaged with by states — is the governing question across this research programme.
The work examines the production, operation, and interface of creditworthiness assessment as a system of governance, from the internal formation of rating decisions through to the institutional environments in which those decisions function as instruments of coordination, constraint, and state strategy.
Domains of Enquiry
Institutional Judgement
The formation of credit rating decisions within organisational settings. This domain examines collective decision processes, evidentiary standards, organisational interpretation, and the production of credibility inside formally rule-based systems. The focus is on how judgement enters and operates within the institutional structures that produce sovereign credit ratings.
Sovereign Credit Governance
The operation of credit ratings as infrastructure within the international financial system. This domain examines credit ratings not as assessments but as coordination devices — mechanisms of constraint, belief stabilisation, and informational authority that shape how sovereign creditworthiness functions within global economic governance.
State Engagement and Capacity
How governments and public institutions interact with credit rating authority. This domain examines the translation of institutional judgement into state strategy — the frameworks through which sovereign borrowers, development institutions, and multilateral actors prepare for, interpret, and respond to credit rating processes.
Selected Outputs by Domain
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Institutional Judgement
Governance and Judgment in Credit Rating Agencies: Perception, Procedure, and the Rating Committee (Edward Elgar 2027).
‘ESG Ratings and the Social License to Operate: The Potential for the Misallocation of Trust’ in Jedrzej Gorski, The Palgrave Handbook of Social License to Operate and Energy Transitions (2025).
ESG Rating Agencies and Financial Regulation: A Signalling Theory Approach (Edward Elgar 2024).
The Modern Credit Rating Agency: The Story of Moody’s (Routledge 2023).
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Sovereign Credit Governance
Sovereign Debt Sustainability: Multilateral Debt Treatment and the Credit Rating Impasse (Routledge 2022) [Open Access].
Rating the Globe: Rating the Globe: Reforming Credit Rating Agencies for an Equitable Financial Architecture (UN University 2024).
Sovereign Credit Formation Infrastructure:
Strengthening Governance Evidence in Sovereign Debt Markets (UNU Discussion Paper - Forthcoming). -
State Engagement and Capacity
Building Credit Rating Capacity in Africa: From Training to Governance (AGOSS Forthcoming).
UNDP Credit Ratings Initiative - development of a sovereign-facing engagement platform (designer).
Research Environment
United Nations University Center for Policy Research / UN Financing for Development Processes
Multilateral Policy Processes
Development Finance Dialogue
Government Debt Management Offices and Finance Ministries / Central and Multilateral Development Bank Advisory Workshops
Sovereign Advisory Environments
UN Development Programme / African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM)