Can a negative shock to sovereign ratings invoke a vicious cycle of increasing government bond yields and further downgrades, ultimately pushing a country toward default? The narratives of public and political discussions, as well as of some widely cited papers, suggest this possibility. In this...

When firms are forced to publicly disclose financial information, credit rating agencies are supposed to improve their risk assessments. Theory predicts such an information quality effect but also an adverse reputational concerns effect because credit analysts may become increasingly concerned...

We study the impact of transparency on liquidity in OTC markets. We do so by providing an analysis of liquidity in a corporate bond market without trade transparency (Germany), and comparing our findings to a market with full posttrade disclosure (the U.S.). We employ a unique regulatory dataset...

This paper tests for the sensitivity of R&D to financing constraints conditional on restrictions in external financing. Financing constraints of firms are identified by an exogenously calculated rating index. Restrictions in external financing are determined by (i) the specific time period...

This paper presents a new approach, based on the Merton model, to decomposing corporate bond spreads into the expected loss, bond risk premium and liquidity premium components. The approach focuses on establishing the bond risk premium using the equity risk premium and the hedge ratio, which are...