Sovereign debt and sovereign risk: a systematic review and meta-analysis

This paper presents a panoramic overview of sovereign risk research. Based on 143 top papers and 2343 mainstream papers retrieved, bibliometric analysis and content analysis are combined to provide insight into the authors, papers, and research themes from 1991 to 2022. First, we identify the leading authors in sovereign risk research and examine their research field by analysing their cooperation networks and representative papers. By drawing upon the citation network, we identify important papers with high degrees, which means they are cited in more articles, and analyse their content. Then, by drawing keyword co-occurrence network and word cloud and analysing theme structure, four research streams are identified, including the pricing of sovereign debt, sovereign debt default, contagion between sovereign debt and the financial market, and sovereign ratings and their impacts. Based on the existing research trends and streams and considering the demand-driven characteristics of sovereign risk research, this study provides directions for future research.