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It’s an efficient way to make sure everyone is informed. When you put out an employee handbook, you can ensure that all employees are receiving the exact same information, in a clear and concise manner.
Could you use a hand with your human resources department? Click here to learn about how Best Business Services can assist you! Like us on FaceBook.2010 European Curling Championships – Women's tournament

The women's tournament of the 2010 European Curling Championships took place from December 4 – 11, 2010. Winners of the Group C tournament in Howwood, Scotland will move on to the Group B tournament in Monthey. The top 6 women's teams at the 2010 ECC (aside from defending world champion Germany and host country Denmark), will represent their respective nations at the 2011 Capital One World Women's Curling Championship in Esbjerg, Denmark.
Group A.
Results.
Draw 1.
"Saturday, December 4, 8:00"
Draw 2.
"Saturday, December 4, 16:00"
Draw 3.
"Sunday, December 5, 11:00"
Draw 4.
"Sunday, December 5, 20:00"
Draw 5.
"Monday, December 6, 12:00"
Draw 6.
"Monday, December 6, 20:00"
Draw 7.
"Tuesday, December 7, 15:00"
Draw 8.
"Wednesday, December 8, 10:00"
Draw 9.
"Wednesday, December 8, 20:00"
World Challenge.
Challenge 1.
"Friday, December 10, 20:00"
Challenge 2.
"Saturday, December 11, 09:30"
Challenge 3.
"Saturday, December 11, 13:00"
Playoffs.
1 vs. 2.
"Thursday, December 9, 20:00"
3 vs. 4.
"Thursday, December 9, 20:00"
Semifinal.
"Friday, December 10, 20:00"
Bronze-medal game.
"Saturday, December 11, 8:00"
Gold-medal game.
"Saturday, December 11, 12:00"
Group B.
Results.
Draw 1.
"Saturday, December 4, 12:00"
Draw 2.
"Saturday, December 4, 20:00"
Draw 3.
"Sunday, December 5, 12:00"
Draw 4.
"Sunday, December 5, 20:00"
Draw 5.
"Monday, December 6, 12:00"
Draw 6.
"Monday, December 6, 20:00"
Draw 7.
"Tuesday, December 7, 12:00"
Draw 8.
"Tuesday, December 7, 20:00"
Draw 9.
"Wednesday, December 8, 12:00"
Tiebreaker.
"Thursday, December 9, 9:00 &lt;br&gt;"
"placement tiebreaker, decides relegated team
Playoffs.
1 vs. 2.
"Thursday, December 9, 18:00"
3 vs. 4.
"Thursday, December 9, 18:00"
Semifinal.
"Friday, December 10, 18:00"
Bronze-medal game.
"Saturday, December 11, 9:30"
Gold-medal game.
"Friday, December 10, 13:00"
Group C.
Results.
Draw 1.
"Friday, 24 September, 21:00"
" receives bye this round."
Draw 2.
"Saturday, 25 September, 12:00"
" receives bye this round."
Draw 3.
"Saturday, 25 September, 19:00"
" receives bye this round."
Draw 4.
"Sunday, 26 September, 10:00"
" receives bye this round."
Draw 5.
"Sunday, 26 September, 15:00"
" receives bye this round."
Final.
"Monday, 27 September, 18:00"
' and'advance to the Group B competition in Monthey.Sovereign bond issuances in emerging and developing markets have increased rapidly since the 2008–09 global financial crisis, with annual issuances of at least $100 billion between 2012 and 2018. Issuances have increased not only in traditional emerging markets, but also among several frontier developing economies which have recently started to tap international capital markets, seeking to diversify their sources of external finance. Over the past decade, about 20 low-income countries have issued external sovereign bonds, including 16 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, where total issuances reached a record of $17.2 billion in 2018 alone (IMF, 2019b; Coulibaly et al., 2019).
Macroeconomic and global factors, including accommodating monetary policy in advanced economies, have been key drivers of easier access to international capital markets in recent years. However, even if these increases in external debt issuance are driven primarily by global factors, it is important to establish whether there are factors that could help explain and sustain the observed trend in market access, especially since market conditions may eventually reverse.
Governance is one factor that appears to have a less cyclical and more systematic impact on a country’s ability to tap capital markets. Governance scores are known to be an important input in the assessment methodologies of credit rating agencies and multilateral lenders such as the IMF and the World Bank, and governance improvements such as central bank independence (Bodea and Hicks, 2018), control of corruption (Panizza, 2017), and rule of law (Biglaiser and Staats, 2012), have been associated with stronger sovereign ratings.1 In addition, a government’s capacity to effectively manage public finances is a key determinant of its fiscal performance and sustainability (e.g., Alesina and Perotti, 1999; Persson and Tabellini, 2004), and countries with strong fiscal governance have been found to be more likely to issue sovereign bonds and at lower spreads (Gelos et al., 2011; Presbitero et al., 2016). This suggests that stronger fiscal governance can lead to persistent improvements in a country’s ability to access international capital markets, impact its credit rating, and influence the terms and cost of its external debt.
We start our analysis by using a large panel dataset covering most countries in the world over the twenty-year period 1996–2016 to document the relation between fiscal governance and different indicators of market access. We find that stronger fiscal governance is associated with improved access to international capital markets, including a higher likelihood of having a sovereign rating and issuing sovereign bonds, better sovereign credit ratings, lower spreads on sovereign bonds, and a higher share of market-based external debt. Next, we leverage the granular detail on fiscal governance available in the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) assessments for several developing and emerging economies to identify which public financial management practices matter most for improving access to external capital markets. We find that improving practices related to transparency of public finances, debt management, and fiscal strategy are key in obtaining better credit ratings, issuing bonds, and obtaining lower cost of external financing.
The literature on financial market access for emerging and developing countries focuses on three key determinants of external debt issuance.2 First, macroeconomic fundamentals matter (Gelos et al., 2011). Sovereign issuances are more likely in countries with larger economies, higher per capita GDP, and a lower public debt; and countries with stronger external and fiscal positions, and robust economic growth, tend to obtain better borrowing terms.3 Second, global financial market conditions are important. Issuances are more likely during periods of higher global liquidity and stronger commodity prices, especially in Sub-Saharan African countries (Presbitero et al., 2016), while the cross-country correlation of spreads increases during high-volatility periods, implying that countries cannot fully decouple from developments in other emerging markets during periods of distress (Csontó, 2014). Third, investors discriminate among issuers according to risk. Issuers with higher (perceived) credit quality are more likely to issue and to obtain lower spreads (Eichengreen and Mody, 1998), while investor risk aversion may explain why first-time issuers face higher spreads than those implied by their credit profiles, even after accounting for poorer secondary market liquidity and lack of capital market track record (Guscina et al., 2014).4 Our paper contributes to this debate on the link between risk and financial market access by exploring how fiscal governance affects countries’ ability to access international capital markets.
The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 presents stylized facts on the link between fiscal governance and financial market access, while section 3 reexamines those links using detailed information from PEFA assessments. Section 4 concludes and discusses policy implications.
Our analysis in this section focuses on 173 countries over the period 1996 to 2016. The dataset includes information on market access indicators, the quality of fiscal governance, and fiscal and macroeconomic variables.
Market access indicators We focus on a broad set of indicators of access to market-based external finance, including credit ratings and external sovereign bonds. We obtain ratings data from DataStream – Thomson Reuters, focusing on the three main rating agencies: Fitch, Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s. We convert these ratings into a common numeric scale (see Table B.1 in the appendix) and take the average across agencies when a country is rated by more than one agency. As ratings tend to be strongly correlated across agencies, this averaging has little impact. Similarly, we take the average if there were rating changes during the year.
Information on bond issuances, including option-adjusted spreads, is also taken from DataS-tream – Thomson Reuters. We identify 51 emerging or