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Purpose -We investigate if financial development benefits from financial globalisation are questionable until certain thresholds of financial globalisation are attained.

PurposeSince 2005, Belgian housing prices have strongly increased. As the timing coincides with the implementation of a new fiscal package in order to stimulate homeownership, our study attempts to provide an understanding whether the mortgage interest and capital deduction (MICPD) policy has had the side-effect of increasing housing prices while, at the same time, controlling for key housing price determinants.Design/methodology/approachA fixed-effects regression model is used on a panel dataset of the three Belgian regions over the period 1995–2015.FindingsEstimations are carried out separately for different house types, being useful as our empirical analysis ascertains a significant price-increasing effect for ordinary houses and apartments but a significant price-reducing effect for villas. In addition, we find, among other things, that interest rates' influence has been less substantial than commonly thought.Originality/valueThese results are relevant for all governments willing to stimulate homeownership through fiscal stimuli.

A sovereign credit rating is a function of hard and soft information that should reect the creditworthiness and the probability of default of a country. We propose an alternative characterisation for the subjective component of a sovereign credit rating the parts related to the ratee's lobbying eort or its familiarity from a United States point of view and apply it to S&P, Moody's and Fitch ratings, using both traditional ordered-logit panel models and machine learning techniques. This subjective component turns out to be large, especially for the low-rated countries. Countries that are rated as investment grade tend to be positively inuenced by it, and vice versa. Subjective judgment in credit ratings does have predictive value: it helps in identifying chances of sovereign defaults in the short-term. Still, the impact of subjectivity in sovereign ratings on borrowing costs is very limited on average.