According to the model based on macroeconomic information described in the Predicting country ratings using macroeconomic information section, decision trees can be considered a good alternative approach to predicting sovereign ratings.
Nevertheless, qualitative information represents an important and low transparent part of the rating assignment. In this section, we propose a model using only qualitative information based on the so-called country reports, published by the European Commission.
These reports, mainly published at the end of February, contain an annual analysis of the economic and social challenges for the EU member states.
For example, at the following link, we can download the country reports published in 2018, https://ec.europa.eu/info/publications/2018-european-semester-country-reports_en. For all...