Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Markets: The Credit Rating Agencies
Markets: The Credit Rating Agencies
Markets
The Credit Rating Agencies
Lawrence J. White
Introduction
In 1909, John Moody published the first publicly available bond ratings,
focused entirely on railroad bonds. Moody’s firm was followed by Poor’s Publishing
Company in 1916, the Standard Statistics Company in 1922, and the Fitch Publishing
Company in 1924. These firms’ bond ratings were sold to bond investors in thick
manuals. These firms evolved over time. Dun & Bradstreet bought Moody’s in 1962,
but then subsequently spun it off in 2000 as a free-standing corporation. Poor’s
and Standard merged in 1941; Standard & Poor’s was then absorbed by McGraw-
Hill in 1966. Fitch merged with IBCA (a British firm, which was a subsidiary of
FIMILAC, a French business services conglomerate) in 1997. At the end of the year
2000, at about the time that the market for structured securities that were based on
subprime residential mortgages began growing rapidly, the issuers of these securi-
ties had only these three credit-rating agencies to whom they could turn to obtain
their all-important ratings: Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s (S&P), and Fitch.
■ Lawrence J. White is Professor of Economics, Stern School of Business, New York University,
New York. His e-mail address is 〈Lwhite@stern.nyu.edu
Lwhite@stern.nyu.edu〉〉.
doi=10.1257/jep.24.2.211
212 Journal of Economic Perspectives
Favorable ratings from these three credit agencies were crucial for the successful
sale of the securities based on subprime residential mortgages and other debt obliga-
tions. The sales of these bonds, in turn, were an important underpinning for the
financing of the self-reinforcing price-rise bubble in the U.S. housing market. When
house prices ceased rising in mid 2006 and then began to decline, the default rates
on the mortgages underlying these securities rose sharply, and those initial ratings
proved to be excessively optimistic. The price declines and uncertainty surrounding
these widely-held securities then helped to turn a drop in housing prices into a wide-
spread crisis in the U.S. and global financial systems.
This paper will explore how the financial regulatory structure propelled these
three credit rating agencies to the center of the U.S. bond markets—and thereby
virtually guaranteed that when these rating agencies did make mistakes, those
mistakes would have serious consequences for the financial sector. We begin by
looking at some relevant history of the industry, including the series of events that
led financial regulators to outsource their judgments to the credit rating agen-
cies (by requiring financial institutions to use the specific bond creditworthiness
information that was provided by the major rating agencies) and when the credit
rating agencies shifted their business model from “investor pays” to “issuer pays.”1
We then look at how the credit rating industry evolved, and how its interaction
with regulatory authorities served as a barrier to entry. We then show how these
ingredients combined to contribute to the subprime mortgage debacle and associ-
ated financial crisis. Finally, we consider two possible routes for public policy with
respect to the credit rating industry: One route would tighten the regulation of the
rating agencies, while the other route would reduce the required centrality of the
rating agencies and thereby open up the bond information process in way that has
not been possible since the 1930s.
1
Overviews of the credit rating industry can be found in, for example, Cantor and Packer (1995),
Langohr and Langohr (2008), Partnoy (1999, 2002), Richardson and White (2009), Sinclair (2005),
Sylla (2002), and White (2002a, 2002b, 2006, 2007, 2009).
2
The rating agencies favor that term “opinion” because it supports their claim that they are “publishers.”
One implication is that the credit rating agencies thus enjoy the protections of the First Amendment
of the U.S. Constitution when they are sued by investors and by issuers who claim that they have been
injured by the actions of the agencies.
Lawrence J. White 213
the credit quality of bonds that are issued by corporations, U.S. state and local
governments, “sovereign” government issuers of bonds abroad, and (most recently)
mortgage securitizers.
In the early years of Moody’s, Standard, Poor’s, and Fitch, they earned revenue
by selling their assessments of creditworthiness to investors. This occurred in the
era before the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was created in 1934 and
began requiring corporations to issue standardized financial statements. These
judgments come in the form of “ratings,” which are usually a letter grade. The
best-known scale is that used by Standard & Poor’s and some other rating agencies:
AAA, AA, A, BBB, BB, and so on, with pluses and minuses as well.
However, a major change in the relationship between the credit rating
agencies and the U.S. bond markets occurred in the 1930s. Bank regulators
were eager to encourage banks to invest only in safe bonds. They issued a set
of regulations that culminated in a 1936 decree that prohibited banks from
investing in “speculative investment securities” as determined by “recognized
rating manuals.” “Speculative” securities (which nowadays would be called
“ junk bonds”) were below “investment grade.” Thus, banks were restricted
to holding only bonds that were “investment grade”—in modern ratings, this
would be equivalent to bonds that were rated BBB– or better on the Standard
& Poor’s scale. With these regulations in place, banks were no longer free to act
on information about bonds from any source that they deemed reliable (albeit
within oversight by bank regulators). They were instead forced to use the judg-
ments of the publishers of the “recognized rating manuals”—which were only
Moody’s, Poor’s, Standard, and Fitch. Essentially, the creditworthiness judgments of
these third-party raters had attained the force of law..
In the following decades, the insurance regulators of the 48 (and eventually 50)
states followed a similar path. State insurance regulators established minimum
capital requirements that were geared to the ratings on the bonds in which the
insurance companies invested—the ratings, of course, coming from the same small
group of rating agencies. Once again, an important set of regulators had delegated
their safety decisions to the credit rating agencies. In the 1970s, federal pension
regulators pursued a similar strategy.3
The Securities and Exchange Commission crystallized the centrality of the
three rating agencies in 1975, when it decided to modify its minimum capital
requirements for broker-dealers, who include major investment banks and secu-
rities fi rms. Following the pattern of the other fi nancial regulators, the SEC
wanted those capital requirements to be sensitive to the riskiness of the broker-
dealers’ asset portfolios and hence wanted to use bond ratings as the indicators
3
Other countries have also incorporated ratings into their regulation of financial institutions, though
not as extensively as in the United States. For an overview, see Sinclair (2005, pp. 47–49), Langohr
and Langohr (2008, pp. 431–34), and Joint Forum (2009). The “New Basel Capital Accord” (often
described as “Basel II”), which is being adopted internationally (albeit with modifications due to the
financial crisis), uses ratings on the debt held by banks as one of three possible frameworks for deter-
mining those banks’ capital requirements.
214 Journal of Economic Perspectives
of risk. But it worried that references to “recognized rating manuals” were too
vague and that a bogus rating fi rm might arise that would promise AAA ratings
to those companies that would suitably reward it and “DDD” ratings to those that
would not.
To deal with this potential problem, the Securities and Exchange Commission
created a new category—“nationally recognized statistical rating organization”
(NRSRO)—and immediately grandfathered Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s, and
Fitch into the category. The SEC declared that only the ratings of NRSROs were
valid for the determination of the broker-dealers’ capital requirements. Other
financial regulators soon adopted the NRSRO category and the rating agencies
within it. In the early 1990s, the SEC again made use of the NRSROs’ ratings when
it established safety requirements for the commercial paper (short-term debt) held
by money market mutual funds.
Taken together, these regulatory rules meant that the judgments of credit
rating agencies became of central importance in bond markets. Banks and many
other financial institutions could satisfy the safety requirements of their regula-
tors by just heeding the ratings, rather than their own evaluations of the risks of
the bonds. Because these regulated financial institutions were such important
participants in the bond market, other players in the market—both buyers and
sellers—needed to pay particular attention to the bond raters’ pronouncements
as well. The irony of the regulators’ reliance on the judgments of credit rating
agencies is powerfully revealed by a line in Standard & Poor’s standard disclaimer
at the bottom of its credit ratings: “[A]ny user of the in formation contained herein
should not rely on any credit rating or other opinion contained herein in making
any investment decision.” (Moody’s ratings have a similar disclaimer.)
One other piece of history is important: In the early 1970s, the basic busi-
ness model of the large rating agencies changed. In place of the “investor pays”
model that had been established by John Moody in 1909, the credit rating agencies
converted to an “issuer pays” model, whereby the entity issuing the bonds also pays
the rating firm to rate the bonds. The reasons for this change of business model
have not been established definitively. Several candidates have been proposed.
First, the rating firms may have feared that their sales of rating manuals would
suffer from the consequences of the high-speed photocopy machine (which was
just entering widespread use), which would allow too many investors to free ride by
obtaining photocopies from their friends.
Second, the bankruptcy of the Penn-Central Railroad in 1970 shocked the
bond markets and made debt issuers more conscious of the need to assure bond
investors that they (the issuers) really were low risk, and they were willing to pay the
credit rating firms for the opportunity to have the latter vouch for them (Fridson,
1999). However, this argument cuts both ways, because the same shock should have
The Credit Rating Agencies 215
also made investors more willing to pay to find out which bonds were really safer,
and which were not.
Third, the bond rating firms may have belatedly realized that the financial
regulations described above meant that bond issuers needed their bonds to have the
“blessing” of one or more rating agencies in order to get those bonds into the portfo-
lios of financial institutions, and the issuers should be willing to pay for the privilege.
Fourth, the bond rating business, like many information industries, involves a
“two-sided market,” where payments can come from one or both sides of the market
(as discussed in this journal by Rysman, 2009). For example, in the two-sided
markets of newspapers and magazines, business models range from “subscription
revenues only” (like Consumer Reports)) to “a mix of subscription revenues plus
advertising revenues” (most newspapers and magazines) to “advertising revenues
only” (like The Village Voice,, some metropolitan “giveaway” daily newspapers, and
some suburban weekly “shoppers”). Information markets for the quality of bonds
have a similar feature, in that the information can be paid for by issuers of debt,
buyers of debt, or some mix of the two4 —and the actual outcome may sometimes
shift in idiosyncratic ways.
Regardless of the reason, the change to the “issuer pays” business model opened
the door to potential conflicts of interest: A rating agency might shade its rating
upward so as to keep the issuer happy and forestall the issuer’s taking its rating busi-
ness to a different rating agency.5
However, the rating agencies’ concerns about their long-run reputations
apparently kept the actual conflicts in check for the first three decades of expe-
rience with the new business model (Smith and Walter, 2002; Caouette, Altman,
Narayanan, and Nimmo, 2008, chap. 6). There were two important and related
characteristics of the bond issuing market that helped: First, there were thousands
of corporate and government bond issuers, so that the threat by any single issuer
(if it was displeased by an agency’s rating) to take its business to a different rating
agency was not potent. Second, the corporations and governments whose “plain
vanilla” debt was being rated were relatively transparent, so that an obviously incor-
rect rating would quickly be spotted by others and would thus potentially tarnish
the rater’s reputation.
4
Or the information might be given away as a “loss leader” to attract customers to other paying services
of the information provider. For example, in December 2009, Morningstar, Inc. (which is primarily
a mutual fund information company) began issuing corporate bond ratings with no fees directly
charged to anyone.
5
Skreta and Veldkamp (2009) develop a model in which the ability of issuers to choose among poten-
tial raters leads to overly optimistic ratings, even if the raters are all trying honestly to estimate the
creditworthiness of the issuers. In their model, the raters can only make estimates of the creditworthi-
ness of the issuers, which means that their estimates will have errors. If the estimates are (on average)
correct and the errors are distributed symmetrically (that is, the raters are honest but less than perfect)
but the issuers can choose which rating to purchase, the issuers will systematically choose the most
optimistic. (This model thus has the same mechanism that underlies the operation of the “winner’s
curse” in auction markets.) In an important sense, it is the issuers’ ability to select the rater that creates
the conflict of interest.
216 Journal of Economic Perspectives
Indeed, the major complaint about the rating agencies during this era was not
that they were too compliant to issuers’ wishes but that they were too tough and
too powerful. This view was epitomized by the New York Times columnist Thomas L.
Friedman’s remarks in a PBS “News Hour” interview on February 13, 1996: “There
are two superpowers in the world today in my opinion. There’s the United States, and
there’s Moody’s Bond Rating Service. The United States can destroy you by dropping
bombs, and Moody’s can destroy you by downgrading your bonds. And believe me,
it’s not clear sometimes who’s more powerful.” In October 1995, a Colorado school
district sued Moody’s, claiming that the rating agency deliberately underrated the
school district’s bonds, in retaliation for the district’s decision not to solicit a rating
from Moody’s;6 and other issuers apparently were also fearful of arbitrarily low ratings
(Partnoy, 2002, p. 79; Fridson, 2002, p. 82; Sinclair, 2005, pp. 152–54, 172).
Although there appear to be roughly 150 local and international credit rating
agencies worldwide (Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, 2000; Langohr
and Langohr, 2008, p. 384), Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s, and Fitch are clearly the
dominant entities. All three operate on a worldwide basis, with offices on six conti-
nents; each has ratings outstanding on tens of trillions of dollars of securities. Only
Moody’s is a free-standing company, so the most information is known about that
firm: Its 2008 annual report listed the company’s total revenues at $1.8 billion, its
net revenues at $458 million, and its total assets at year-end at $1.8 billion (Moody’s,
2009). Fifty-two percent of its total revenue came from the United States; as recently
as 2006 that fraction was two-thirds. Sixty-nine percent of the company’s revenues
comes from ratings; the rest comes from related services. At year-end 2008, the
company had approximately 3,900 employees, with slightly more than half located
in the United States.
Because Standard & Poor’s and Fitch’s ratings operations are components of
larger enterprises that report on a consolidated basis, comparable revenue and asset
figures are not possible. But Standard & Poor’s rating operations are roughly the
same size as Moody’s, while Fitch is somewhat smaller. Table 1 provides a set of roughly
comparable data on each company’s analytical employees and numbers of issues
rated. All three companies employ about the same numbers of analysts; however,
Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s rate appreciably more corporate and asset-backed
securities than does Fitch. The market shares (based on revenues or issues rated) of
the three firms are commonly estimated to be approximately 40, 40, and 15 percent
6
The suit was eventually dismissed. See Jefferson County School District No. R-1 v. Moody’s Investor’s Services,
Inc., 175 F.3d 848 (1999). After the suit was filed, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Divi-
sion opened an investigation to determine whether Moody’s alleged threats of low unsolicited ratings
constituted an illegal exercise of market power; the investigation was eventually closed, with no charges
filed (Partnoy, 2002, p. 79).
Lawrence J. White 217
Table 1
Data from Form NRSRO for 2009 for Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s,
and Fitch
Sources: Form NRSRO 2009, for each company, as found on each company’s website.
Note: Table 1 provides a set of roughly comparable data on each company’s analytical
employees and numbers of issues rated. The large numbers of bonds that are rated
partly derive from the fact that many bonds represent multiple issues from the same
issuer, which usually involve little marginal effort from the rating agency.
for Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s, and Fitch, respectively (Smith and Walter, 2002,
p. 290; Caouette, Altman, Narayanan, and Nimmo, 2008, p. 82).
During the 25 years that followed the Securities and Exchange Commission’s
1975 creation of the “nationally recognized statistical rating organization” category,
the SEC designated only four additional firms as NRSROs: Duff & Phelps in 1982;
McCarthy, Crisanti & Maffei in 1983; IBCA in 1991; and Thomson BankWatch in
1992. However, mergers among the entrants and with Fitch caused the number of
NRSROs to return to the original three by year-end 2000.
Of course, the credit rating industry was never going to be a commodity busi-
ness with hundreds of small-scale producers. The market for bond information
is one where potential barriers to entry like economies of scale, the advantages
of experience, and brand name reputation are important features. Nevertheless,
in creating the NRSRO designation, the Securities and Exchange Commission
had become a significant barrier to entry into the bond rating business in its own
right. Without the benefit of the NRSRO designation, any would-be bond rater
would likely remain small-scale. New rating firms would risk being ignored by most
financial institutions (the “buy side” of the bond markets); and since the finan-
cial institutions would ignore the would-be bond rater, so would bond issuers (the
“sell side” of the markets).
In addition, the Securities and Exchange Commission was remarkably opaque
in its designation process. It never established formal criteria for a firm to be desig-
nated as a “nationally recognized statistical rating organization,” never established
a formal application and review process, and never provided any justification or
explanation for why it “anointed” some firms with the designation and refused to
do so for others.
218 Journal of Economic Perspectives
However, it is important to note that while the major credit rating agencies
are a major source of creditworthiness for bond investors, they are far from the
only potential source. A few smaller rating firms—notably KMV, Egan-Jones, and
Lace Financial, all of which had “investor pays” business models—were able to
survive, despite the absence of NRSRO designations (although KMV was absorbed
by Moody’s in 2002). Some bond mutual funds do their own research, as do some
hedge funds. “Fixed income analysts” at many financial services firms offer recom-
mendations to those firms’ clients with respect to bond investments.7
7
There is a professional society for fi xed income analysts—the Fixed Income Analysts Society, Inc.
(FIASI)—and even a Fixed Income Analysts Society Hall of Fame! Johnston, Markov, and Ramnath
(2009) document the importance of fi xed income analysts for the bond markets.
The Credit Rating Agencies 219
ratings that the market believes to be inflated, since those bonds will carry higher
yields relative to the rating and the institution’s bond manager can thereby obtain
higher yields (by taking greater risks) and yet still appear to be within regulatory
safety limits (Calomiris, 2009). In addition, issuers of securities, who pay the fees
of credit rating agencies, would certainly prefer not to be downgraded. However,
as Flandreau, Gaillard, and Packer (2009) document, the rating agencies’ slug-
gishness extends back at least to the 1930s, long before the switch to the “issuer
pays” business model. Also, the absence of frequent changes allows the agencies to
maintain smaller staffs.
The sluggishness of these changes raises an even more central question:
whether the three major credit rating agencies actually provide useful informa-
tion about default probabilities to the fi nancial markets (and, indeed, whether
they have done so since the 1930s). As evidence of their value, the rating agencies
themselves point to the generally tight relationship over the decades between
their rankings and the likelihoods of defaults. Moody’s (2009, p. 13) annual
report, for example, states: “The quality of Moody’s long-term performance is
illustrated by a simple measure: over the past 80 years across a broad range of
asset classes, obligations with lower Moody’s ratings have consistently defaulted
at greater rates than those with higher ratings.” But this correlation could equally
well arise if the rating agencies arrived at their ratings by, say, observing the
financial markets’ separately determined spreads on the relevant bonds (over
comparable Treasury bonds), in which case the agencies would not be providing
useful information to the markets.
More sophisticated empirical approaches, summarized in Jewell and Livingston
(1999) and Creighton, Gower, and Richards (2007), have noted that when a major
rating agency changes its rating on a bond, the markets react. But this reaction
by the financial markets might be due to the concomitant change in the implied
regulatory status of the bond. For example, if a rating moves a bond from “invest-
ment grade” to “speculative,” or vice-versa—or even if it just moves the bond closer
to, or farther away from, that regulatory “cliff”—many financial institutions must
then reassess their holdings of that bond, rather than reacting to any truly new
information about the default probability of the bond. The question of what true
value the major credit rating agencies bring to the financial markets remains open
and difficult to resolve.8
Finally, the post-Enron notoriety for the credit rating agencies exposed their
“issuer pays” business model—and its potential conflicts—to a wider public view.
8
It is difficult for research concerning the effects of ratings changes on the securities markets to avoid
this ambiguity. Creighton, Gower, and Richards (2007) claim that bond rating changes provide new
information to the securities markets in Australia, where the regulatory reliance on ratings is substan-
tially less than in the United States; but there is nevertheless some regulatory reliance in Australia,
and U.S. investors in Australian bonds may be affected by the rating changes. Jorion, Liu, and Shi
(2005) find that the consequences of rating downgrades were larger after a SEC regulatory change
in 2000 (“Regulation Fair Disclosure”) that placed the rating agencies in a favored position vis-à-vis
other potential sources of information about companies; but Jorion et al. do not adequately control for
a possible increase in the severity of the downgrades after the regulatory change.
220 Journal of Economic Perspectives
Although the rating agencies’ reputational concerns had kept the potential conflicts
in check, the possibility that the conflicts might get out of hand loomed (Smith and
Walter, 2002; Caouette, Altman, Narayanan, and Nimmo, 2008, chap. 6).
9
The debacle is discussed extensively in Gorton (2008), Acharya and Richardson (2009), Brunner-
meier (2009), Coval, Jurak, and Stafford (2009), and Mayer, Pence, and Sherlund (2009).
10
For banks and savings institutions, mortgage-backed securities—including collateralized debt obli-
gations—that were issued by nongovernmental entities and rated AA or better qualified for the same
reduced capital requirements (1.6 percent of asset value) that applied to the mortgage-backed securi-
ties issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, instead of the higher (4 percent) capital requirements that
applied to mortgages and lower-rated mortgage securities.
Lawrence J. White 221
securities on what kinds of mortgages (and other kinds of debt) would earn what
levels of ratings for what sizes of tranches of these securities (Mason and Rosner,
2007). For any given package of underlying mortgages to be securitized, the securi-
tizers made higher profits if they attained higher ratings on a larger percentage of
the tranches of securities that were issued against those mortgages.
It is not surprising, then, that the securitizers would be prepared to pressure the
rating agencies to deliver favorable ratings. Unlike the market for rating corporate
and government debt, where there were thousands of issuers, the market for rating
mortgage-related securities involved only a relatively small number of investment banks
as securitizers with high volumes (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2008,
p. 32); and the profit margins on these mortgage-related securities were substantially
larger as well. An investment bank that was displeased with an agency’s rating on any
specific security had a more powerful threat—to move all of its securitization business
to a different rating agency—than would any individual corporate or government
issuer.11 In addition, these mortgage-related securities were far more complex and
opaque than were the traditional “plain vanilla” corporate and government bonds, so
rating errors were less likely to be quickly spotted by critics (or arbitragers).
Thus, in calculating appropriate ratings on the tranches of securities backed
by subprime mortgages, the credit rating agencies were operating in a situation
where they had essentially no prior experience, where they were intimately involved
in the design of the securities, and where they were under considerable financial
pressure to give the answers that issuers wanted to hear. Furthermore, it is not
surprising that the members of a tight, protected oligopoly might become compla-
cent and less worried about the problems of protecting their long-run reputations
(Mathis, McAndrews, and Rochet, 2009).
The credit ratings for the securities backed by subprime mortgages turned
out to be wildly optimistic—especially for the securities that were issued and rated
in 2005–2007. Then, in keeping with past practice, the credit rating agencies
were slow to downgrade those securities as their losses became apparent. Here is
one stark indicator of the extent of the initial overoptimism: As of June 30, 2009,
90 percent of the collateralized debt obligation tranches that were issued between
2005 and 2007 and that were originally rated AAA by Standard & Poor’s had been
downgraded, with 80 percent downgraded below investment grade; even of the
simpler residential mortgage-backed securities that were issued during these years
and originally rated AAA, 63 percent had been downgraded, with 52 percent below
investment grade (International Monetary Fund, 2009, pp. 88, 93).
11
Informed commentary at the time acknowledged that rating shopping was occurring (Adelson,
1997). Econometric evidence that supports the likelihood of ratings shopping can be found in
Benmelech and Dlugosz (2009), He, Qian, and Strahan (2009), and Morkotter and Westerfeld (2009).
When some of the downgraded tranches were resecuritized in 2009, the securitizers shunned Moody’s,
because of its more stringent rating methodology for these securitizations (IMF, 2009, pp. 86–87).
And in a similar market—rating commercial mortgage-backed securities—Moody’s found that it lost
market share in 2007 after it tightened its ratings standards (Dunham, 2007).
222 Journal of Economic Perspectives
Policy Responses
The main policy responses to the growing criticism of the three large bond
raters—over the sluggishness in downgrading Enron and WorldCom debt, on
through the recent errors in their initial, excessively optimistic ratings of the
complex mortgage-related securities—have involved attempts to increase entry, to
limit conflicts of interest, and to increase transparency.
The Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 included a provision that required the Securities
and Exchange Commission to send a report to Congress on the credit rating industry
and the “nationally recognized statistical rating organization” system. The SEC duly
did so (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2003); but the report only raised a
series of questions rather than directly addressing the issues of the SEC as a barrier to
entry and the enhanced role of the three incumbent credit rating agencies.
However, the Securities and Exchange Commission did begin to allow more
entry. In early 2003 the SEC designated a fourth “nationally recognized statistical
rating organization”: Dominion Bond Rating Services, a Canadian credit rating
firm. In early 2005 the SEC designated a fi fth NRSRO: A.M. Best, an insurance
company rating specialist. The SEC’s procedures remained opaque, however, and
there were still no announced criteria for the designation of a NRSRO.
Tiring of this situation, Congress passed the Credit Rating Agency Reform
Act, which was signed into law in September 2006. The Act instructed the SEC
to cease being a barrier to entry, specified the criteria that the SEC should use in
designating new “nationally recognized statistical rating organizations,” insisted
on transparency and due process in these SEC’s decisions, and provided the SEC
with limited powers to oversee the incumbent NRSROs—but specifically forbade
the SEC from influencing the ratings or the business models of the NRSROs. The
SEC responded by designating three new NRSROs in 2007: Japan Credit Rating
Agency; Rating and Information, Inc. (of Japan); and Egan-Jones—and another
two in 2008, Lace Financial and Realpoint. Thus by early 2010, the total number
of NRSROs has reached ten. However, to this point the SEC’s belated efforts to
allow wider entry during the current decade have had little substantial effect. The
inherent advantages of the “Big Three’s” incumbency could not quickly be over-
come by the subsequent NRSRO entrants—three of which were headquartered
outside the United States, one of which was a U.S. insurance company specialist,
and three of which were small U.S.-based firms.
To address issues of conflict of interest and transparency, the Securities and
Exchange Commission in December 2008 and again in November 2009 promul-
gated regulations on the “nationally recognized statistical rating organizations”
that placed restrictions on the conflicts of interest that can arise under their “issuer
pays” business model. For example, these rules require that the credit rating agen-
cies not rate complex structured debt issues that they have also helped to design,
they require that analysts for credit rating agencies not be involved in fee nego-
tiations, and so on. These rules also require greater transparency, for example,
by requiring that the rating agencies reveal details on their methodologies,
The Credit Rating Agencies 223
assumptions, and track records in the construction of ratings ((Federal Register,, vol.
74, February 9, 2009, pp. 6456–84; and Federal F Register,, vol. 74, December 4, 2009,
pp. 63832–65). Similarly, in April 2009 the European Union adopted a set of rules
that address the conflict-of-interest and transparency issues (European Central
Bank, 2009). Political pressures to require further, more stringent efforts on the
part of the rating agencies to deal with agency conflicts and enhance transpar-
ency—and possibly even to ban the “issuer pays” model—have remained strong.
This regulatory response—the credit rating agencies made mistakes; let’s try
to make sure that they don’t make such mistakes in the future—is understandable.
But it would not alter the rules that have pushed the judgments of the credit rating
agencies into the center of the bond information process. Moreover, regulatory
efforts to fi x problems, by prescribing specified structures and processes, unavoid-
ably restrict flexibility, raise costs, and discourage entry and innovation in the
development and assessment of information for judging the creditworthiness of
bonds. Ironically, such efforts are likely to increase the importance of the three
large incumbent rating agencies. Finally, although efforts to increase transparency
of credit rating agencies may help reduce problems of asymmetric information,
they also have the potential for eroding a rating firm’s intellectual property and,
over the longer run, discouraging the creation of future intellectual property.
Alternatively, public policy with regard to credit rating agencies could proceed
in a quite different direction. This approach would begin with the withdrawal of
all of those delegations of safety judgments by financial regulators to the rating
agencies. Indeed, the Securities and Exchange Commission has withdrawn some
of its delegations (Federal
( Register,, vol. 74, October 9, 2009, pp. 52358–81) and has
proposed withdrawing more (Federal
( Register,, vol. 74, October 9, 2009, pp. 52374–81).
Under such rules, the rating agencies’ judgments would no longer have the force of
law. However, no other financial regulator has similarly withdrawn its delegations.12
And even the SEC appears to be two-minded about this matter, since the SEC has
also proposed regulations that would increase money market mutual funds’ reli-
ance on ratings (Federal
( Reserve,, vol. 74, July 8, 2009, pp. 32688–32741).
The withdrawal of these delegations need not mean an “anything goes”
attitude toward the safety of the bonds that are held by prudentially regulated
financial institutions. Instead, financial regulators should persist in their goals
of having safe bonds in the portfolios of their regulated institutions (or that, as
in the case of insurance companies and broker-dealers, an institution’s capital
requirement would be geared to the riskiness of the bonds that it holds); but those
12
In October 2009, the Federal Reserve announced that it would be more selective with respect to
which ratings it would accept in connection with the collateral provided by borrowers under the
Fed’s “Term Asset-Backed Securities Lending Facility” (TALF) and would also conduct its own risk
assessments of proposed collateral; and in November 2009, the National Association of Insurance
Commissioners (NAIC) announced that it had asked the Pacific Investment Management Company
(PIMCO) to provide a separate risk assessment of residential mortgage-backed securities that were
held by insurance companies that are regulated by the 50 state insurance regulators.
224 Journal of Economic Perspectives
Conclusion
Those who are interested or involved in this public policy debate concerning
the credit rating agencies should ask themselves the following questions: Is a
regulatory system that delegates important safety judgments about bonds to third
parties in the best interests of the regulated financial institutions and of financial
markets more generally? To what extent will more extensive regulation of the rating
agencies succeed in pressing the rating agencies to make better judgments in the
future? To what extent would such regulation limit flexibility, innovation, and entry
in the bond information market? Can financial institutions instead be trusted to
seek their own sources of information about the creditworthiness of bonds, so long
as financial regulators oversee the safety of those bond portfolios?
■ I am grateful to David Autor, James Hines, Charles Jones, and Timothy Taylor for helpful
comments.
Lawrence J. White 225
References
Bounce: Why Rating Agencies Are Slow to React the Politics of Creditworthiness. Ithaca: Cornell
to New Information.” Journal of Economic Behavior University Press.
& Organization, 56(3): 365–81. Skreta, Vasiliki, and Laura Veldkamp. 2009.
Mason, Joseph, and Joshua Rosner. 2007. “Ratings Shopping and Asset Complexity: A
“Where Did the Risk Go? How Misapplied Bond Theory of Ratings Inflation.” Journal of Monetary
Ratings Cause Mortgage Backed Securities Economics, 56 (5): 678–95.
and Collateralized Debt Obligation Market Smith, Roy C., and Ingo Walter. 2002. “Rating
Disruptions.” Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com Agencies: Is There an Agency Issue?” In Ratings,
/abstract=1027475. Rating Agencies, and the Global Financial System,
Mathis, Jerome, James McAndrews, and ed. Richard M. Levich, Carmen Reinhart, and
Jean-Charles Rochet. 2009. “Rating the Raters: Giovanni Majnoni, 289–318. Boston: Kluwer.
Are Reputation Concerns Powerful Enough to Sylla, Richard. 2002. “An Historical Primer
Discipline Rating Agencies?” Journal of Monetary on the Business of Credit Ratings.” In Ratings,
Economics, 56(5): 657–74. Rating Agencies, and the Global Financial System,
Mayer, Christopher, Karen Pence, and Shane ed. Richard M. Levich, Carmen Reinhart, and
M. Sherlund. 2009. “The Rise in Mortgage Defaults.” Giovanni Majnoni, 19–40. Boston: Kluwer.
Journal of Economic Perspectives, 23(1): 27–50. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Moody’s Corporation. 2009. Annual Report 2003. “Report on the Role and Function of Credit
2008. New York: Moody’s. Rating Agencies in the Operation of the Securi-
Morkotter, Stefan, and Simone Westerfeld. ties Markets.” January.
2009. “Rating Model Arbitrage in CDO Markets: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
An Empirical Analysis.” International Review of 2008. “Summary Report of Issues Identified in
Financial Analysis, 18(5): 21–33. the Commission Staff’s Examinations of Select
Partnoy, Frank. 1999. “The Siskel and Ebert Credit Rating Agencies.” July.
of Financial Markets: Two Thumbs Down for the White, Lawrence J. 2002a. “The Credit Rating
Credit Rating Agencies.” Washington University Industry: An Industrial Organization Analysis.”
Law Quarterly, 77(3): 619–712. In Ratings, Rating Agencies, and the Global Financial
Partnoy, Frank. 2002. “The Paradox of Credit System, ed. Richard M. Levich, Carmen Reinhart,
Ratings.” In Ratings, Rating Agencies, and the Global and Giovanni Majnoni, 41–63. Boston: Kluwer.
Financial System, ed. Richard M. Levich, Carmen White, Lawrence J. 2002b. “The SEC’s Other
Reinhart, and Giovanni Majnoni, 65–84. Boston: Problem.” Regulation, 25(Winter 2002–2003):
Kluwer. 38–42.
Richardson, Matthew C., and Lawrence J. White, Lawrence J. 2006. “Good Intentions
White. 2009. “The Rating Agencies: Is Regula- Gone Awry: A Policy Analysis of the SEC’s Regula-
tion the Answer?” In Restoring Financial Stability: tion of the Bond Rating Industry.” Policy Brief
How to Repair a Failed System, ed. Viral Acharya No. 2006-PB-05. Networks Financial Institute,
and Matthew C. Richardson, 101–115. New York: Indiana State University.
Wiley. White, Lawrence J. 2007. “A New Law for the
Rysman, Marc. 2009. “The Economics of Two- Bond Rating Industry.” Regulation, 30(Spring):
Sided Markets.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 48–52.
23(3): 125–43. White, Lawrence J. 2009. “The Credit-Rating
Sinclair, Timothy J. 2005. The New Masters Agencies and the Subprime Debacle.” Critical
of Capital: American Bond Rating Agencies and Review, 21(2–3): 389–99.
This article has been cited by:
1. Rongda Chen, Xinhao Chen, Chenglu Jin, Yiyang Chen, Jiayi Chen. 2020. Credit rating of online
lending borrowers using recovery rates. International Review of Economics & Finance . [Crossref]
2. Glen Biglaiser, Ronald McGauvran. 2020. The effects of bond ratings on income inequality in the
developing world. Business and Politics 7, 1-31. [Crossref]
3. Panagiotis Asimakopoulos, Stylianos Asimakopoulos, Aichen Zhang. 2020. Dividend smoothing and
credit rating changes. The European Journal of Finance 74, 1-24. [Crossref]
4. Sabrina Goetz. 2020. Is Financial Distress Value Relevant? – Implications for Multiple-Based
Valuation. Journal of Business Valuation and Economic Loss Analysis, ahead of print. [Crossref]
5. Ramin P. Baghai, Bo Becker. 2020. Reputations and credit ratings: Evidence from commercial
mortgage-backed securities. Journal of Financial Economics 135:2, 425-444. [Crossref]
6. Santiago José Pérez-Balsalobre, Carlos Llano-Verduras. 2020. Modelling sovereign debt ratings for
sub-national governments: the case of Spain before and after the crisis. Empirica 27. . [Crossref]
7. Chrysovalantis Gaganis, Panagiota Papadimitri, Menelaos Tasiou. 2020. A multicriteria decision
support tool for modelling bank credit ratings. Annals of Operations Research 73. . [Crossref]
8. Yüksel Akay Ünvan. 2020. A credit default swap application by using quantile regression technique.
Communications in Statistics - Theory and Methods 3, 1-14. [Crossref]
9. Vincent Furrer, Klaus-Georg Deck. Das Potenzial von Smart Contracts an einem Beispiel aus der
Finanzbranche – Smart Rating 285-304. [Crossref]
10. Elisabeth Kempf. 2020. The job rating game: Revolving doors and analyst incentives. Journal of
Financial Economics 135:1, 41-67. [Crossref]
11. Nicoletta Rosati, Mario Bellia, Pedro Verga Matos, Vasco Oliveira. 2020. Ratings matter:
Announcements in times of crisis and the dynamics of stock markets. Journal of International Financial
Markets, Institutions and Money 64, 101166. [Crossref]
12. Larry Catá Backer. 2020. And an Algorithm to Entangle them All? Social Credit, Data Driven
Governance, and Legal Entanglement in Post-Law Legal Orders. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
13. Erik Berwart, Massimo Guidolin, Andreas Milidonis. 2019. An empirical analysis of changes in the
relative timeliness of issuer-paid vs. investor-paid ratings. Journal of Corporate Finance 59, 88-118.
[Crossref]
14. ANNA GIBERT. 2019. SOLICITED VERSUS UNSOLICITED RATINGS: THE ROLE OF
SELECTION. Journal of Financial Management, Markets and Institutions 07:02, 1950005. [Crossref]
15. Lior Herman. 2019. Neither takers nor makers: The Big-4 auditing firms as regulatory intermediaries.
Accounting History 48, 103237321987521. [Crossref]
16. Willem K. M. Brauers, Natalija Lepkova. 2019. IS CREDIT RATING RESERVED TERRITORY
FOR CREDIT RATING AGENCIES? A MULTIMOORA APPROACH FOR EUROPEAN
FIRMS AND COUNTRIES. Technological and Economic Development of Economy 25:6, 1259-1281.
[Crossref]
17. Ben Charoenwong, Alan Kwan, Tarik Umar. 2019. Does Regulatory Jurisdiction Affect the Quality
of Investment-Adviser Regulation?. American Economic Review 109:10, 3681-3712. [Abstract] [View
PDF article] [PDF with links]
18. Kyung-A Sun, Sungbeen Park, Zeya He. 2019. Effect of franchising on restaurant firms’ risk
evaluations in the bond market. International Journal of Hospitality Management 83, 19-27. [Crossref]
19. Anthony Booth, Boudewijn de Bruin. 2019. Stakes Sensitivity and Credit Rating: A New Challenge
for Regulators. Journal of Business Ethics 85. . [Crossref]
20. Shinichiro Asayama, Mike Hulme. 2019. Engineering climate debt: temperature overshoot and peak-
shaving as risky subprime mortgage lending. Climate Policy 19:8, 937-946. [Crossref]
21. Jun Zhang. 2019. Is options trading informed? Evidence from credit rating change announcements.
Journal of Futures Markets 39:9, 1085-1106. [Crossref]
22. Marco Pleßner, Justus Blaschke. 2019. Ratingagenturen – eine Analyse ihrer historischen Wurzeln.
List Forum für Wirtschafts- und Finanzpolitik 45:1, 1-18. [Crossref]
23. Xiaolu Hu, Haozhi Huang, Zheyao Pan, Jing Shi. 2019. Information asymmetry and credit rating: A
quasi-natural experiment from China. Journal of Banking & Finance 106, 132-152. [Crossref]
24. Simona Hašková, Petr Fiala. 2019. A fuzzy approach for the estimation of foreign investment risk
based on values of rating indices. Risk Management 21:3, 183-199. [Crossref]
25. Jiawei Yang, Amrit Paudel, H B Gooi. Blockchain Framework for Peer-to-Peer Energy Trading with
Credit Rating 1-5. [Crossref]
26. Ashrafee Tanvir Hossain, Lawrence Kryzanowski. 2019. Global financial crisis after ten years: a review
of the causes and regulatory reactions. Managerial Finance 45:7, 904-924. [Crossref]
27. Zhongfei Chen, Roman Matousek, Chris Stewart, Rob Webb. 2019. Do rating agencies exhibit
herding behaviour? Evidence from sovereign ratings. International Review of Financial Analysis 64,
57-70. [Crossref]
28. Christian Dietzmann, Rainer Alt. How IT-Related Financial Innovation Influences Bank Risk-
Taking: Results from an Empirical Analysis of Patent Applications 452-461. [Crossref]
29. Giulia Mennillo, Timothy J Sinclair. 2019. A hard nut to crack: Regulatory failure shows how rating
really works. Competition & Change 23:3, 266-286. [Crossref]
30. Sudheer Chava, Rohan Ganduri, Chayawat Ornthanalai. 2019. Do Credit Default Swaps Mitigate the
Impact of Credit Rating Downgrades?*. Review of Finance 23:3, 471-511. [Crossref]
31. Hyunjun PARK, Youngtae YOO. 2019. Differences among Credit Rating Agencies and the
Information Environment. The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business 6:2, 25-32. [Crossref]
32. Xudong An, Larry Cordell, Joseph B. Nichols. 2019. Reputation, Information, and Herding in Credit
Ratings: Evidence from CMBS. The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics 16. . [Crossref]
33. Yasir Riaz, Choudhry Tanveer Shehzad, Zaghum Umar. 2019. Pro-cyclical effect of sovereign rating
changes on stock returns: a fact or factoid?. Applied Economics 51:15, 1588-1601. [Crossref]
34. Jonathan Brogaard, Jennifer L. Koski, Andrew F. Siegel. 2019. Do upgrades matter? Evidence from
trading volume. Journal of Financial Markets 43, 54-77. [Crossref]
35. Sascha Behnk, Iván Barreda-Tarrazona, Aurora García-Gallego. 2019. Deception and reputation – An
experimental test of reporting systems. Journal of Economic Psychology 71, 37-58. [Crossref]
36. Antonella Moretto, Laura Grassi, Federico Caniato, Marco Giorgino, Stefano Ronchi. 2019. Supply
chain finance: From traditional to supply chain credit rating. Journal of Purchasing and Supply
Management 25:2, 197-217. [Crossref]
37. Alessandro Romano. Credit: Rating Agencies 456-462. [Crossref]
38. J. S. L. McCombie, M. R. M. Spreafico. Why the Subprime Financial Crash Should Have Been
Prevented and Implications for Current Macroeconomic and Regulatory Policy 131-172. [Crossref]
39. . Milestones in Banking Legislation and Regulatory Reform 397-426. [Crossref]
40. . The Evolution of Banks and Markets and the Role of Financial Innovation 429-440. [Crossref]
41. Itay Goldstein, Liyan Yang. 2019. Good disclosure, bad disclosure. Journal of Financial Economics
131:1, 118-138. [Crossref]
42. Patrick Jahnke. 2019. Holders of Last Resort: The Role of Index Funds and Index Providers in
Divestment and Climate Change. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
43. Wenming Xu, Yan Liu. 2019. Does Reputational Capital Affect Credit Rating Agencies?: Empirical
Evidence from a Natural Experiment in China. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
44. A. Talha Yalta, A. Yasemin Yalta. 2018. Are credit rating agencies regionally biased?. Economic Systems
42:4, 682-694. [Crossref]
45. Makram El-Shagi, Gregor von Schweinitz. 2018. The joint dynamics of sovereign ratings and
government bond yields. Journal of Banking & Finance 97, 198-218. [Crossref]
46. Peter J. Buckley. 2018. Towards a theoretically-based global foreign direct investment policy regime.
Journal of International Business Policy 1:3-4, 184-207. [Crossref]
47. John (X.) Jiang, Isabel Y. Wang, K. Philip Wang. 2018. Revolving Rating Analysts and Ratings of
Mortgage-Backed and Asset-Backed Securities: Evidence from LinkedIn. Management Science 64:12,
5832-5854. [Crossref]
48. Xia (Eliza) Zhang. 2018. Do Firms Manage Their Credit Ratings? Evidence from Rating-Based
Contracts. Accounting Horizons 32:4, 163-183. [Crossref]
49. Joshua Preiss. 2018. Did we trade freedom for credit? Finance, domination, and the political economy
of freedom. European Journal of Political Theory 84, 147488511880669. [Crossref]
50. Cristina Bodea, Raymond Hicks. 2018. Sovereign credit ratings and central banks: Why do analysts
pay attention to institutions?. Economics & Politics 30:3, 340-365. [Crossref]
51. Emmanuel Alanis, Sudheer Chava, Praveen Kumar. 2018. Shareholder Bargaining Power, Debt
Overhang, and Investment. The Review of Corporate Finance Studies 7:2, 276-318. [Crossref]
52. Paul A. Griffin, Hyun A. Hong, Ji Woo Ryou. 2018. Corporate innovative efficiency: Evidence of
effects on credit ratings. Journal of Corporate Finance 51, 352-373. [Crossref]
53. Jean Paul Rabanal, Olga A Rud. 2018. Does Competition Affect Truth Telling? An Experiment with
Rating Agencies*. Review of Finance 22:4, 1581-1604. [Crossref]
54. Oana Branzei, Jeff Frooman, Brent Mcknight, Charlene Zietsma. 2018. What Good Does Doing
Good do? The Effect of Bond Rating Analysts’ Corporate Bias on Investor Reactions to Changes in
Social Responsibility. Journal of Business Ethics 148:1, 183-203. [Crossref]
55. Patrick Behr, Darren J. Kisgen, Jérôme P. Taillard. 2018. Did Government Regulations Lead to
Inflated Credit Ratings?. Management Science 64:3, 1034-1054. [Crossref]
56. Dirk-Hinnerk Fischer. 2018. The European rating fund. Journal of Financial Regulation and
Compliance 26:1, 72-86. [Crossref]
57. Mark Mietzner, Juliane Proelss, Denis Schweizer. 2018. Hidden champions or black sheep? The role
of underpricing in the German mini-bond market. Small Business Economics 50:2, 375-395. [Crossref]
58. Mascia Bedendo, Lara Cathcart, Lina El-Jahel. 2018. Reputational shocks and the information content
of credit ratings. Journal of Financial Stability 34, 44-60. [Crossref]
59. Gitae Park, Ho-Young Lee. 2018. Opportunistic behaviors of credit rating agencies and bond issuers.
Pacific-Basin Finance Journal 47, 39-59. [Crossref]
60. Mirjana Radovanović, Sanja Filipović, Vladimir Golušin. 2018. Geo-economic approach to energy
security measurement – principal component analysis. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 82,
1691-1700. [Crossref]
61. Daniel Cash. The Future for the Relationship 99-118. [Crossref]
62. Neil Shenai. The Rise of Fragile Finance 103-132. [Crossref]
63. David Jamieson Bolder. Default Probabilities 491-573. [Crossref]
64. Sven Kette. Prognostische Leistungsvergleiche 73-98. [Crossref]
65. Stefanie Hiß, Sebastian Nagel. Ratingagenturen 165-178. [Crossref]
66. Jürgen Kädtler. Finanzmärkte und Finanzialisierung 299-322. [Crossref]
67. Natalia Besedovsky. 2018. Financialization as calculative practice: the rise of structured finance and the
cultural and calculative transformation of credit rating agencies. Socio-Economic Review 16:1, 61-84.
[Crossref]
68. Larry Catt Backer. 2018. And an Algorithm to Bind Them All? Social Credit, Data Driven
Governance, and the Emergence of an Operating System for Global Normative Orders. SSRN
Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
69. Bina Sharma, Binay Kumar Adhikari, Anup Agrawal, Bruno R. Arthur, Monika Rabarison. 2018.
Credit Rating Agencies and Corporate Financing and Investment Decisions: An Unintended
Consequence of the Dodd-Frank Act. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
70. Claudia Keser, Asri Özgümüs, Emmanuel Peterlé, Martin Schmidt. 2017. An experimental
investigation of rating-market regulation. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 144, 78-86.
[Crossref]
71. Andreas Fuchs, Kai Gehring. 2017. The Home Bias in Sovereign Ratings. Journal of the European
Economic Association 15:6, 1386-1423. [Crossref]
72. Saltuk Ozerturk. 2017. Moral hazard, skin in the game regulation and CRA performance. International
Review of Economics & Finance 52, 147-164. [Crossref]
73. Kjell G. Nyborg. 2017. Reprint of: Central bank collateral frameworks. Journal of Banking & Finance
83, 232-248. [Crossref]
74. Stefanos Ioannou. 2017. Credit Rating Downgrades and Sudden Stops of Capital Flows in the
Eurozone. Journal of International Commerce, Economics and Policy 08:03, 1750016. [Crossref]
75. Marlies Whitehouse. Financial Analysts and Their Role in Financial Communication and Investor
Relations 117-126. [Crossref]
76. Ed deHaan. 2017. The Financial Crisis and Corporate Credit Ratings. The Accounting Review 92:4,
161-189. [Crossref]
77. Zuziwe Ntsalaze, Gideon Boako, Paul Alagidede. 2017. The impact of sovereign credit ratings on
corporate credit ratings in South Africa. African Journal of Economic and Management Studies 8:2,
126-146. [Crossref]
78. Alexander E. Saak. 2017. The Value of Delegated Quality Control. The Journal of Industrial Economics
65:2, 309-335. [Crossref]
79. Vrajlal Sapovadia. Jaiz: The Birth of Non-Interest Banking in Nigeria 199-246. [Crossref]
80. Bart Stellinga, Daniel Mügge. 2017. The regulator's conundrum. How market reflexivity limits
fundamental financial reform. Review of International Political Economy 24:3, 393-423. [Crossref]
81. Sasan Bakhtiari. 2017. Corporate credit ratings: Selection on size or productivity?. International Review
of Economics & Finance 49, 84-101. [Crossref]
82. Imad A Moosa. 2017. The regulation of credit rating agencies: A realistic view. Journal of Banking
Regulation 18:2, 180-200. [Crossref]
83. Jeroen Jansen, Frank J. Fabozzi. 2017. CDS Implied Credit Ratings. The Journal of Fixed Income
26:4, 25-52. [Crossref]
84. Kjell G. Nyborg. 2017. Central bank collateral frameworks. Journal of Banking & Finance 76, 198-214.
[Crossref]
85. Gerald J. Lobo, Luc Paugam, Hervé Stolowy, Pierre Astolfi. 2017. The Effect of Business and
Financial Market Cycles on Credit Ratings: Evidence from the Last Two Decades. Abacus 53:1, 59-93.
[Crossref]
86. Andreas Kruck. 2017. Asymmetry in Empowering and Disempowering Private Intermediaries. The
ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 670:1, 133-151. [Crossref]
87. Hong Zhou, Chang Zhou, Wanfa Lin, Guoping Li. 2017. Corporate governance and credit spreads
on corporate bonds: an empirical study in the context of China. China Journal of Accounting Studies
5:1, 50-72. [Crossref]
88. Alessandro Romano. Credit (Rating Agencies) 1-6. [Crossref]
89. Boudewijn de Bruin, Christian Walter. Research Habits in Financial Modelling: The Case of Non-
normality of Market Returns in the 1970s and the 1980s 73-93. [Crossref]
90. Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn. The Dynamic Authority of Leading Financial Services Providers 33-63.
[Crossref]
91. Ricardo G. Barcelona. Accessing Funding 269-304. [Crossref]
92. Ramin Baghai, Bo Becker. 2017. Reputations and Credit Ratings - Evidence from Commercial
Mortgage-Backed Securities. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
93. Elisabeth Kempf. 2017. The Job Rating Game: The Effects of Revolving Doors on Analyst Incentives.
SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
94. Claudia Keser, Asri zggmms, Emmanuel Peterle, Martin Schmidt. 2017. An Experimental
Investigation of Rating-Market Regulation. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
95. Ben Charoenwong, Alan Kwan, Tarik Umar. 2017. Who Should Regulate Investment Advisers?.
SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
96. Cristina Bodea, Raymond Hicks. 2017. Sovereign Credit Ratings and Central Banks: Do Analysts Pay
Attention to Institutions?. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
97. Allen Ferrell, John D. Morley. 2017. New Special Study of the Securities Markets: Institutional
Intermediaries. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
98. Francesco Sangiorgi, Chester S. Spatt. 2017. The Economics of Credit Rating Agencies. SSRN
Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
99. Yasir Riaz, Choudhry Tanveer Tanveer Shehzad, Zaghum Umar. 2017. Pro-Cyclical Effect of
Sovereign Rating Changes on Stock Returns: A Fact or Factoid?. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
100. Tavis D. Jules, Sadie Stockdale Jefferson. The Next Educational Bubble – Educational Brokers and
Education Governance Mechanisms: Who Governs What! 123-147. [Crossref]
101. Ginevra Marandola. 2016. InkLocal credit rating agencies: a new dataset. Research in International
Business and Finance 38, 83-103. [Crossref]
102. Prabesh Luitel, Rosanne Vanpée, Lieven De Moor. 2016. Pernicious effects: How the credit rating
agencies disadvantage emerging markets. Research in International Business and Finance 38, 286-298.
[Crossref]
103. Craig S. Maher, Steven C. Deller, Judith I. Stallmann, Sungho Park. 2016. The Impact of Tax and
Expenditure Limits on Municipal Credit Ratings. The American Review of Public Administration 46:5,
592-613. [Crossref]
104. Benjamin Käfer. 2016. The Value of a Joint Liability Scheme: Estimating Group Support for German
Landesbanken. Applied Economics Quarterly 62:3, 231-265. [Crossref]
105. Oscar Bernal, Alexandre Girard, Jean-Yves Gnabo. 2016. The importance of conflicts of interest in
attributing sovereign credit ratings. International Review of Law and Economics 47, 48-66. [Crossref]
106. Fritz Sager, Markus Hinterleitner. 2016. How Do Credit Rating Agencies Rate? An Implementation
Perspective on the Assessment of Austerity Programs during the European Debt Crisis. Politics &
Policy 44:4, 783-815. [Crossref]
107. Meryem Duygun, Huseyin Ozturk, Mohamed Shaban. 2016. The role of sovereign credit ratings in
fiscal discipline. Emerging Markets Review 27, 197-216. [Crossref]
108. Valentina Bruno, Jess Cornaggia, Kimberly J. Cornaggia. 2016. Does Regulatory Certification Affect
the Information Content of Credit Ratings?. Management Science 62:6, 1578-1597. [Crossref]
109. Andreas Kruck. 2016. Resilient blunderers: credit rating fiascos and rating agencies’ institutionalized
status as private authorities. Journal of European Public Policy 23:5, 753-770. [Crossref]
110. Jess Cornaggia, Kimberly J. Cornaggia, Han Xia. 2016. Revolving doors on Wall Street. Journal of
Financial Economics 120:2, 400-419. [Crossref]
111. Lawrence J. White. 2016. Credit Rating Agencies: An Analysis Through the Lenses of Industrial
Organization, Finance and Regulation. Pacific Economic Review 21:2, 202-226. [Crossref]
112. Anil K. Kashyap, Natalia Kovrijnykh. 2016. Who Should Pay for Credit Ratings and How?. Review
of Financial Studies 29:2, 420-456. [Crossref]
113. H. Schäfer, F. Sauter. Das Rating der Nachhaltigkeit von Staaten – Analyse und Bewertung
existierender Ratingmethoden 109-133. [Crossref]
114. . Milestones in Banking Legislation and Regulatory Reform 397-426. [Crossref]
115. . The Evolution of Banks and Markets and the Role of Financial Innovation 429-440. [Crossref]
116. Lawrence J. White. 2016. The Credit Rating Agencies: An Analysis Through the Lenses of Industrial
Organization, Finance, and Regulation. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
117. Anna Gibert. 2016. The Signaling Role of Fiscal Austerity. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
118. Brendan Daley, Brett S. Green, Victoria Vanasco. 2016. Security Design with Ratings. SSRN
Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
119. Antonello D'Agostino, Alvise Lennkh. 2016. Euro Area Sovereign Ratings: An Analysis of
Fundamental Criteria and Subjective Judgement. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
120. Tim Wittenberg. 2015. Regulatory Evolution of the EU Credit Rating Agency Framework. European
Business Organization Law Review 16:4, 669-709. [Crossref]
121. Tima T. Moldogaziev, Tatyana Guzman. 2015. Economic Crises, Economic Structure, and State
Credit Quality Through-the-Cycle. Public Budgeting & Finance 35:4, 42-67. [Crossref]
122. Thomas Fischer. 2015. Market structure and rating strategies in credit rating markets – A dynamic
model with matching of heterogeneous bond issuers and rating agencies. Journal of Banking & Finance
58, 39-56. [Crossref]
123. Sumit Agarwal, Itzhak Ben-David, Vincent Yao. 2015. Collateral Valuation and Borrower Financial
Constraints: Evidence from the Residential Real Estate Market. Management Science 61:9, 2220-2240.
[Crossref]
124. Vito Polito, Michael Wickens. 2015. Sovereign credit ratings in the European Union: A model-based
fiscal analysis. European Economic Review 78, 220-247. [Crossref]
125. David James Gill. 2015. Rating the UK: the British government's sovereign credit ratings, 1976-8.
The Economic History Review 68:3, 1016-1037. [Crossref]
126. Christoph Bühren, Marco Pleßner. 2015. Rating Agencies - An Experimental Analysis of Their
Remuneration Model. German Economic Review 16:3, 324-342. [Crossref]
127. Pablo Kurlat, Laura Veldkamp. 2015. Should we regulate financial information?. Journal of Economic
Theory 158, 697-720. [Crossref]
128. Stefano Lugo, Annalisa Croce, Robert Faff. 2015. Herding Behavior and Rating Convergence among
Credit Rating Agencies: Evidence from the Subprime Crisis*. Review of Finance 19:4, 1703-1731.
[Crossref]
129. Bertrand Hassani, Xin Zhao. 2015. Reconsidering Corporate Ratings. Economic Notes 44:2, 177-209.
[Crossref]
130. Andrey Tomashevskiy, Daniel Yuichi Kono. 2015. Extra Credit: Preferential Trade Arrangements and
Credit Ratings. International Studies Quarterly 59:2, 291-302. [Crossref]
131. Karyn L. Neuhauser. 2015. The Global Financial Crisis: what have we learned so far?. International
Journal of Managerial Finance 11:2, 134-161. [Crossref]
132. Matthias Efing, Harald Hau. 2015. Structured debt ratings: Evidence on conflicts of interest. Journal
of Financial Economics 116:1, 46-60. [Crossref]
133. Stephanie Meyr, Sharon Tennyson. 2015. Product Ratings as a Market Reaction to Deregulation:
Evidence From the German Insurance Market. Risk Management and Insurance Review 18:1, 77-100.
[Crossref]
134. David Christoph Ehmke. 2015. Publicly Offered Debt in the Shadow of Insolvency. European Business
Organization Law Review 16:1, 63-96. [Crossref]
135. Sivan Frenkel. 2015. Repeated Interaction and Rating Inflation: A Model of Double Reputation.
American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 7:1, 250-280. [Abstract] [View PDF article] [PDF with
links]
136. Mohammed Hemraj. Theories, Rating Failure and the Subprime Mortgage Crisis 11-70. [Crossref]
137. Isabelle Bouty, Marie-Léandre Gomez, Carole Godard-Drucker. Sociomateriality and the
Transnational Expansion of Soft Regulation: Michelin in Haute Cuisine around the World 267-292.
[Crossref]
138. Emil NNsteggrd. 2015. Does Member State Law Make Article 35a of the EU Regulation on Credit
Rating Agencies Redundant?. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
139. Ginevra Marandola. 2015. Local Credit Rating Agencies: Is Their Economic Role Underrated?. SSRN
Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
140. Oscar Bernal, Alexandre Girard, Jean-Yves Gnabo. 2015. The Importance of Conflicts of Interest in
Attributing Sovereign Credit Ratings. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
141. Saltuk Ozerturk. 2015. Moral Hazard, Skin in the Game Regulation and Rating Quality. SSRN
Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
142. Jonathan Brogaard, Jennifer L. Koski, Andrew F. Siegel. 2015. The Information Content of Credit
Rating Changes: Evidence from Trading Volume. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
143. Andreas Fuchs, Kai Gehring. 2015. The Home Bias in Sovereign Ratings. SSRN Electronic Journal
. [Crossref]
144. Robert E. Marks. 2015. Learning Lessons: The Global Financial Crisis in Retrospect. SSRN
Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
145. Steffen Nauhaus. 2015. The Power of Opinion: More Evidence of a GIPS-Markup in Sovereign
Ratings During the Euro Crisis. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
146. Jess Cornaggia, Kimberly Rodgers Cornaggia, Timothy T. Simin. 2015. The Value of Uninformative
Credit Ratings. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
147. Claus Schmitt. 2015. Recovery News. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
148. John (Xuefeng) Jiang, John R. Robinson, maobin wang. 2015. Sleeping with the Enemy: Taxes and
Former IRS Employees. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
149. Claude Gangolf, Robert Dochow, Gunter Schmidt, Thomas Tamisier. SVDD: A proposal for
automated credit rating prediction 048-053. [Crossref]
150. Soku Byoun. 2014. Information content of unsolicited credit ratings and incentives of rating agencies:
A theory. International Review of Economics & Finance 33, 338-349. [Crossref]
151. Vito Polito, Mike Wickens. 2014. Modelling the U.S. sovereign credit rating. Journal of Banking &
Finance 46, 202-218. [Crossref]
152. Saltuk Ozerturk. 2014. Ratings as regulatory stamps. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
105, 17-29. [Crossref]
153. Vu Tran, Rasha Alsakka, Owain ap Gwilym. 2014. Sovereign rating actions and the implied volatility
of stock index options. International Review of Financial Analysis 34, 101-113. [Crossref]
154. Saltuk Ozerturk. 2014. Upfront versus rating contingent fees: Implications for rating quality. Finance
Research Letters 11:2, 91-103. [Crossref]
155. Saad Azmat, Michael Skully, Kym Brown. 2014. The Shariah compliance challenge in Islamic bond
markets. Pacific-Basin Finance Journal 28, 47-57. [Crossref]
156. Paolo Fulghieri, Günter Strobl, Han Xia. 2014. The Economics of Solicited and Unsolicited Credit
Ratings. Review of Financial Studies 27:2, 484-518. [Crossref]
157. . The Subprime Crisis 123-141. [Crossref]
158. . References 161-171. [Crossref]
159. Neil B. Niman. The Coming “Perfect Storm” in Higher Education 7-26. [Crossref]
160. Brian K. Collins. 2014. Credit and Credibility. The American Review of Public Administration 44:1,
112-123. [Crossref]
161. Itay Goldstein, Liyan Yang. 2014. Good Disclosure, Bad Disclosure. SSRN Electronic Journal .
[Crossref]
162. Alessio M. Pacces, Alessandro Romano. 2014. A Strict Liability Regime for Rating Agencies. SSRN
Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
163. Patrick Behr, Darren J. Kisgen, JJrrme Taillard. 2014. Did Government Regulations Lower Credit
Rating Quality?. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
164. Erik Berwart, Massimo Guidolin, Andreas Milidonis. 2014. An Empirical Analysis of Changes in the
Relative Timeliness of IssuerrPaid vs. InvestorrPaid Ratings. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
165. John (Xuefeng) Jiang, Isabel Yanyan Wang, Kailong (Philip) Wang. 2014. Former Rating Analysts
and the Ratings of MBS and ABS: Evidence from LinkedIn. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
166. Matthew C. Turk. 2014. The Convergence of Insurance with Banking and Securities Industries, and
the Limits of Regulatory Arbitrage in Finance. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
167. Indraneel Chakraborty, Alessio Saretto, Malcolm Wardlaw. 2014. The Trust Alternative. SSRN
Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
168. Sasan Bakhtiari. 2014. Corporate Credit Ratings: Selection on Size or Productivity?. SSRN Electronic
Journal . [Crossref]
169. Willem K. M. Brauers, Romualdas Ginevičius. 2013. HOW TO INVEST IN BELGIAN SHARES BY
MULTIMOORA OPTIMIZATION. Journal of Business Economics and Management 14:5, 940-956.
[Crossref]
170. Lawrence J. White. 2013. Credit Rating Agencies: An Overview. Annual Review of Financial Economics
5:1, 93-122. [Crossref]
171. Esther Duflo, Michael Greenstone, Rohini Pande, Nicholas Ryan. 2013. Truth-telling by Third-party
Auditors and the Response of Polluting Firms: Experimental Evidence from India*. The Quarterly
Journal of Economics 128:4, 1499-1545. [Crossref]
172. Peter J. Katzenstein, Stephen C. Nelson. 2013. Reading the right signals and reading the signals
right: IPE and the financial crisis of 2008. Review of International Political Economy 20:5, 1101-1131.
[Crossref]
173. Navneet Arora. 2013. Discussion of “Financial statement comparability and credit risk”. Review of
Accounting Studies 18:3, 824-832. [Crossref]
174. Doh-Shin Jeon, Stefano Lovo. 2013. Credit rating industry: A helicopter tour of stylized facts and
recent theories. International Journal of Industrial Organization 31:5, 643-651. [Crossref]
175. Andreas Milidonis. 2013. Compensation incentives of credit rating agencies and predictability of
changes in bond ratings and financial strength ratings. Journal of Banking & Finance 37:9, 3716-3732.
[Crossref]
176. Jess Cornaggia, Kimberly J. Cornaggia. 2013. Estimating the Costs of Issuer-Paid Credit Ratings.
Review of Financial Studies 26:9, 2229-2269. [Crossref]
177. Giovanni Ferri, Punziana Lacitignola, Jeong Yeon Lee. 2013. Foreign ownership and the credibility
of national rating agencies: Evidence from Korea. Journal of Comparative Economics 41:3, 762-776.
[Crossref]
178. Aurelio Fernandez Bariviera, Luciano Zunino, M Belén Guercio, Lisana B Martinez, Osvaldo A Rosso.
2013. Efficiency and credit ratings: a permutation-information-theory analysis. Journal of Statistical
Mechanics: Theory and Experiment 2013:08, P08007. [Crossref]
179. ANDREW COHEN, MARK D. MANUSZAK. 2013. Ratings Competition in the CMBS Market.
Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 45:s1, 93-119. [Crossref]
180. B. G. Carruthers. 2013. From uncertainty toward risk: the case of credit ratings. Socio-Economic Review
11:3, 525-551. [Crossref]
181. Marek Hanusch, Paul M. Vaaler. 2013. Credit rating agencies and elections in emerging democracies:
Guardians of fiscal discipline?. Economics Letters 119:3, 251-254. [Crossref]
182. Gunter Löffler. 2013. Can Market Discipline Work in the Case of Rating Agencies? Some Lessons
from Moody’s Stock Price. Journal of Financial Services Research 43:2, 149-174. [Crossref]
183. Christian C. Opp, Marcus M. Opp, Milton Harris. 2013. Rating agencies in the face of regulation.
Journal of Financial Economics 108:1, 46-61. [Crossref]
184. Heski Bar-Isaac, Joel Shapiro. 2013. Ratings quality over the business cycle. Journal of Financial
Economics 108:1, 62-78. [Crossref]
185. Kee-Hong Bae, Lynnette Purda, Michael Welker, Ligang Zhong. 2013. Credit rating initiation and
accounting quality for emerging-market firms. Journal of International Business Studies 44:3, 216-234.
[Crossref]
186. Harald Hau, Sam Langfield, David Marques-Ibanez. 2013. Bank ratings: what determines their
quality?. Economic Policy 28:74, 289-333. [Crossref]
187. Miklós Antal, Jeroen C.J.M. van den Bergh. 2013. Macroeconomics, financial crisis and the
environment: Strategies for a sustainability transition. Environmental Innovation and Societal
Transitions 6, 47-66. [Crossref]
188. Matthew D. Rablen. 2013. Divergence in credit ratings. Finance Research Letters 10:1, 12-16.
[Crossref]
189. Bo Becker, Marcus M. Opp. 2013. Replacing Ratings. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
190. Esther Duflo, Michael Greenstone, Rohini Pande, Nicholas Ryan. 2013. Truth-Telling by Third-
Party Auditors and the Response of Polluting Firms: Experimental Evidence from India. SSRN
Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
191. Edward A.E. Jones, Quentin Mulet-Marquis. 2013. The Stock Market Reaction to Changes to Credit
Ratings of US-Listed Banks. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
192. Matthias Efing, Harald Hau. 2013. Structured Debt Ratings: Evidence on Conflicts of Interest. SSRN
Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
193. Yongmin Chen, Dingwei Gu, Zhiyong Yao. 2013. Rating Inflation versus Deflation: On Procyclical
Credit Ratings. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
194. Andreas Fuchs, Kai Gehring. 2013. The Home Bias in Sovereign Ratings. SSRN Electronic Journal
. [Crossref]
195. Stefano Lugo, Annalisa Croce, Robert W. Faff. 2013. Herding Behavior and Rating Convergence
among Credit Rating Agencies: Evidence from the Subprime Crisis. SSRN Electronic Journal .
[Crossref]
196. Harold L. Cole, Thomas F. Cooley. 2013. Rating Agencies. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
197. Anastasia V. Kartasheva, Bilge Yilmaz. 2013. Precision of Ratings. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
198. Kathleen Weiss Hanley, Stanislava Nikolova. 2013. The Removal of Credit Ratings from Capital
Regulation: Implications for Systemic Risk. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
199. Jin-Chuan Duan, Elisabeth Van Laere. 2012. A public good approach to credit ratings – From concept
to reality. Journal of Banking & Finance 36:12, 3239-3247. [Crossref]
200. SYLVESTER C.W. EIJFFINGER. 2012. Rating Agencies: Role and Influence of Their Sovereign
Credit Risk Assessment in the Eurozone*. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 50:6, 912-921.
[Crossref]
201. Viral V. Acharya, Matthew Richardson. 2012. Implications of the Dodd-Frank Act*. Annual Review
of Financial Economics 4:1, 1-38. [Crossref]
202. Mark J. Flannery. 2012. Corporate Finance and Financial Institutions. Annual Review of Financial
Economics 4:1, 233-253. [Crossref]
203. John (Xuefeng) Jiang, Mary Harris Stanford, Yuan Xie. 2012. Does it matter who pays for bond
ratings? Historical evidence. Journal of Financial Economics 105:3, 607-621. [Crossref]
204. Thomas Lagner, Dodozu Knyphausen-Aufseß. 2012. Rating Agencies as Gatekeepers to the Capital
Market: Practical Implications of 40 Years of Research. Financial Markets, Institutions & Instruments
21:3, 157-202. [Crossref]
205. Panagiotis K. Staikouras. 2012. A Theoretical and Empirical Review of the EU Regulation on Credit
Rating Agencies: In Search of Truth, Not Scapegoats. Financial Markets, Institutions & Instruments
21:2, 71-155. [Crossref]
206. Anne Orford. 2012. Europe Reconstructed. The Modern Law Review 75:2, 275-286. [Crossref]
207. PATRICK BOLTON, XAVIER FREIXAS, JOEL SHAPIRO. 2012. The Credit Ratings Game. The
Journal of Finance 67:1, 85-111. [Crossref]
208. Anja Theis, Michael Wolgast. 2012. Regulation and Reform of Rating Agencies in the European
Union: An Insurance Industry Perspective. The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and
Practice 37:1, 47-76. [Crossref]
209. Andr Uhde, Christian Farruggio, Tobias C. Michalak. 2012. Wealth Effects of Credit Risk
Securitization in European Banking. Journal of Business Finance & Accounting 39:1-2, 193-228.
[Crossref]
210. Christian C. Opp, Marcus M. Opp, Milton Harris. 2012. Rating Agencies in the Face of Regulation.
SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
211. Nelson Camanho, Pragyan Deb, Zijun Liu. 2012. Credit Rating and Competition. SSRN Electronic
Journal . [Crossref]
212. Jess Cornaggia, Kimberly Rodgers Cornaggia. 2012. Estimating the Costs of Issuer-Paid Credit
Ratings. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
213. Valentina Giulia Bruno, Jess Cornaggia, Kimberly Rodgers Cornaggia. 2012. Does Certification Affect
the Information Content of Credit Ratings?. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
214. Matthias Efing. 2012. Bank Capital Regulation with an Opportunistic Rating Agency. SSRN
Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
215. Sudheer Chava, Rohan Ganduri, Chayawat Ornthanalai. 2012. Are Credit Ratings Still Relevant?.
SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
216. Ronny K. Hofmann, Thomas R. Loy. 2012. Dynamic Properties of Earnings in the Bond Market.
SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
217. Harald Hau, Sam Langfield, David Marques-Ibanez. 2012. Bank Ratings: What Determines their
Quality?. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
218. Lars Norden, Viorel Roscovan. 2012. Explaining the (Non-)Overlap in Credit Rating Actions. SSRN
Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
219. Jin Xiang. 2012. Credit Rating Categories. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
220. Willem K. M. Brauers, Alvydas Baležentis, Tomas Baležentis. Economic Ranking of the European
Union Countries by Multimoora Optimization 329-335. [Crossref]
221. Nicolas Petit. 2011. Credit Rating Agencies, the Sovereign Debt Crisis and Competition Law.
European Competition Journal 7:3, 587-632. [Crossref]
222. Edward I. Altman, T. Sabri Öncü, Matthew Richardson, Anjolein Schmeits, Lawrence J. White.
Regulation of Rating Agencies 443-467. [Crossref]
223. Andrew Johnston. 2011. Corporate Governance is the Problem, not the Solution: A Critical Appraisal
of the European Regulation on Credit Rating Agencies. Journal of Corporate Law Studies 11:2,
395-441. [Crossref]
224. Arnoud W.A. Boot. 2011. Banking at the crossroads: How to deal with marketability and complexity?.
Review of Development Finance 1:3-4, 167-183. [Crossref]
225. Heski Bar-Isaac,, Joel Shapiro. 2011. Credit Ratings Accuracy and Analyst Incentives. American
Economic Review 101:3, 120-124. [Abstract] [View PDF article] [PDF with links]
226. Soku Byoun. 2011. Information Content of Unsolicited Ratings: A Theory. SSRN Electronic Journal
. [Crossref]
227. Mathias Kronlund. 2011. Best Face Forward: Does Rating Shopping Distort Observed Bond Ratings?.
SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
228. Arnoud W. A. Boot. 2011. Banking at the Cross Roads: How to Deal with Marketability and
Complexity?. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
229. Rodrigo Gonzalez, Fernando Sotelino, Jose Roberto Ferreira Savoia. 2011. Simplified Standard
Approach: An Alternative Model to Mitigate Incentives for Rating Centered Regulatory Arbitrage.
SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
230. Jakob de Haan, Fabian Amtenbrink. 2011. Credit Rating Agencies. SSRN Electronic Journal .
[Crossref]
231. Rikard Englund Smistad. 2011. The Failure of Lehman Brothers: Was it Preventable? If so, How?
Recommendations for Going Forward. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
232. Bertrand Candelon, Amadou N. R. Sy, Rabah Arezki. 2011. Sovereign Rating News and Financial
Markets Spillovers: Evidence From the European Debt Crisis. IMF Working Papers 11:68, 1.
[Crossref]
233. Wei-Huei Hsu, Abdullah Mamun, Lawrence C. Rose. 2010. Size does matter! The intra-industry
effect of bank loan ratings. Applied Financial Economics 20:23, 1807-1818. [Crossref]
234. Paolo Fulghieri, Gunter Strobl, Han Xia. 2010. The Economics of Solicited and Unsolicited Credit
Ratings. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
235. Peter N. Posch, Roger J. J. Bowden. 2010. Quality Signalling and Ratings Credibility: Regulatory
Reform for the Ratings Industry. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
236. Vincent Bignon, Marc Flandreau. 2010. The Economics of Badmouthing: Libel Law and the
Underworld of the Financial Press in France Before World War I. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
237. David M. Levy, Sandra J. Peart. 2010. Prudence with Biased Experts: Ratings Agencies & Regulators.
SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
238. Lara Cathcart, Lina El-Jahel, Leo Evans. 2010. The Credit Rating Crisis and the Informational
Content of Corporate Credit Ratings. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
239. Michael C. I. Nwogugu. 2010. Problems Inherent in the Compensation and Business Models of
Credit Rating Agencies. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
240. Michael C. I. Nwogugu. 2008. Credit Rating Agencies. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]
241. Michael C. I. Nwogugu. 2007. Choice of Land Title Systems, Land Values and Optimal Title
Insurance. SSRN Electronic Journal . [Crossref]