Dr Daniel Cash

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Economic Governance

The Hierarchy of Evaluative Authority: Credit Rating Agencies and the Limits of Evaluative Autonomy

The Hierarchy of Evaluative Authority: Credit Rating Agencies and the Limits of Evaluative Autonomy

Executive Summary In the spring and summer of 2026, three of the world’s most consequential financial institutions found themselves on the receiving end of a contest usually reserved for the governments and companies they evaluate. On 22 April, twenty-three Republican state attorneys general wrote to Fitch, Moody’s

Who Decides What Creditworthiness Means?

Who Decides What Creditworthiness Means?

Executive Summary Pedro Lange Machado’s 2026 paper argues that sovereign credit rating agencies embed a market-liberal theory of the state into the technical apparatus of creditworthiness, rewarding fiscal restraint and creditor protection while penalising the debt restructuring and public investment that climate adaptation requires. This essay accepts that

Senegal’s Credit Story Changes Shape: What the debt treatment means for the sovereign’s ratings, creditors, and path back to market access

Senegal’s Credit Story Changes Shape: What the debt treatment means for the sovereign’s ratings, creditors, and path back to market access

On the afternoon of 1 September 2026, Senegal’s finance ministry and the IMF released, within hours of each other, two statements that might look, on a first read, like they were pulling apart. The first announced that IMF staff and Senegalese authorities had reached agreement on the policies underpinning

When Does Development Assistance Succeed? Toward a Capability Doctrine for UK Development Policy

When Does Development Assistance Succeed? Toward a Capability Doctrine for UK Development Policy

Executive Summary The issue. UK aid spending is falling to its lowest level in decades, and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has recast its strategy around four shifts: from donor to investor, from service delivery to system support, from grants to expertise, and from international intervention to local

The Desk Between: Syndicate Judgement and the Making of Sovereign Borrowing Costs

The Desk Between: Syndicate Judgement and the Making of Sovereign Borrowing Costs

Executive Summary Recent commentary on the return of expensive sovereign Eurobond borrowing has focused on the factors associated with high borrowing costs, including macroeconomic fundamentals, global liquidity conditions, investor sentiment and climate vulnerability. This literature has generated important insights into the determinants of sovereign bond yields, yet it typically begins

The Discipline of Saying No: China’s Credit Rating Crackdown and the Historical Limits of Evaluative Authority

The Discipline of Saying No: China’s Credit Rating Crackdown and the Historical Limits of Evaluative Authority

Development finance has built a vocabulary for mobilising capital. It has not yet built one for the institutions that increasingly govern the conditions under which that capital moves. Official development assistance from advanced economies contracted by twenty-three per cent in a single year, falling as a share of donor

When Evaluation Governs Development Finance

When Evaluation Governs Development Finance

Development finance has built a vocabulary for mobilising capital. It has not yet built one for the institutions that increasingly govern the conditions under which that capital moves. Official development assistance from advanced economies contracted by twenty-three per cent in a single year, falling as a share of donor