Fathom’s Sovereign Fragility Index (SFI) gauges sovereign risk based on fundamental economic drivers of sovereign yield spreads. Besides government debt, this includes domestic bank assets, for which the government may ultimately become liable in the event of a banking crisis. It does not consider market pricing, and therefore provides an independent assessment of what government yield spreads ought to be, irrespective of the market’s perception of sovereign risk. We have recently updated the Index for 2018 Q4:  the biggest movers were Argentina and Turkey. Both their SFI scores shot up, and Argentina again reached the maximum reading of 10. An

The World Cup kicks off this week, with Russia hosting FIFA’s quadrennial footballing spectacle. An estimated 3.4 billion viewers are set to tune in to watch some of sport’s biggest stars vie for international glory. On the surface, that type of exposure would appear to be invaluable to the host nation. However, most studies do not find any material economic benefit to hosts of large international events such as the World Cup. Asset prices are a slightly different story. Hosts’ equity markets tend to rally ahead of the event. Of the five previous hosts, only one, Brazil, did not experience

Soccer is a simple game, the England striker Gary Lineker once remarked. “Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end the Germans win.” The quip was on the mark four years ago, when Germany beat Argentina to lift the World Cup in Brazil. If hard numbers have any predictive power, it will once again prove correct when the battle for the sport’s ultimate trophy reaches its climax in Russia this summer. The Breakingviews Soccernomics calculator ranks the 32 contenders according to four metrics, and uses these to predict which country will come out on top. In