This paper aims to test whether the average sovereign bond spread was statistically different from the average provincial spread in Argentina during 1997-2001, that is if investors perceived that Argentina’s default risk being a federal country should have decoupled from provincial default risk or not. Second it estimates the (joint) determinants of Argentine sovereign bond spreads and sub sovereign provincial bond spreads over the period 1997-2001 in which Argentina was on a currency board. Third, the paper tests for the significance of provincial bond spreads in explaining sovereign default risk, by including the former in a time-series cointegrating equation where the dependent variable is the latter and examines the question of which is the true measure of country risk in a fuzzy fiscal federal nation like Argentina. Finally, it offers some insight into the relationship between default risk, public debt and fiscal federalism using Argentina as a case study.

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