Do stronger political ties with a global superpower improve sovereign borrowing conditions? We use data on voting at the United Nations General Assembly along with foreign aid flows to construct an index of political ties and find evidence that suggests stronger political ties leads to both better sovereign credit ratings and lower yields on sovereign bonds. We use heads-of-state official visits and coalition forces troop contributions as additional measures of the strength of political ties to further reinforce our findings. 

Keywords: Political economy, Sovereign borrowing, Foreign aid, UN voting
JEL Codes: F35;F50;G24;H63​