We test if issuers of asset- and mortgage-backed securities receive rating favors from agencies with which they maintain strong business relationships. Controlling for issuer fixed effects and a large set of credit risk determinants, we show that agencies publish better ratings for those issuers...

We propose a measure of dispersion in fund managers׳ beliefs about future stock returns based on their active holdings, i.e., deviations from benchmarks. We find that both the level of and the change in dispersion positively predict subsequent stock returns on a risk-adjusted basis. This effect...