The authors thank the department editor Ranjani Krishnan, the associate editor, and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and guidance. They acknowledge helpful interviews with officers from the European Commission, Eurostat, credit rating agencies, and a large sovereign debt investor, and they respect their requests for anonymity. They are grateful for helpful comments from Mary Barth, Anne Beatty, Yuri Biondi, James L. Chan, François Lequiller, James Naughton, and seminar participants at the University of Cambridge as well as discussants and participants at the Nova School of Business and Economics, University of Cambridge, University of Calgary/Temple University, and Tel Aviv University Conferences.