This paper investigates the behaviour of credit rating agencies (CRAs) using a natural experiment in monetary policy. Specifically, we exploit the corporate QE of the Eurosystem and its rating-based specific design which generates exogenous variation in the probability for a bond of becoming...

This paper studies the causal effect of gender bias on access to bank credit. We extract an exogenous measure of gender bias from survey responses by descendants of US immigrants on questions about the role of women in society. We then use data on 6,000 small business firms from 17 countries and...

We propose an empirical framework to assess joint and conditional probabilities of credit events from CDS prices observed in the market. Our model is based on a dynamic skewed-t distribution that captures many salient features of CDS data, including skewed and heavy-tailed changes in the price...

This paper investigates the effects of interbank rate uncertainty on lending rates to euro area firms. We introduce a novel measure of interbank rate uncertainty, computed as the cross-sectional dispersion in interbank market rates on overnight unsecured loans. Using proprietary bank-level data,...

This paper proposes a tractable way to incorporate lending standards ("credit qualification thresholds") into macro models of financial frictions. Banks can reject borrowers whose risk is above an endogenous threshold at which no lending rate sufficiently compensates banks for the borrowers’...

This paper contributes new evidence on market pricing of rating changes. We examine the relation between spreads and ratings for a very large and comprehensive sample of corporate bonds, which allows us to test for country- and industry-specific effects, as well as to explore the differences...

This paper examines the quality of credit ratings assigned to banks in Europe and the United States by the three largest rating agencies over the past two decades. We interpret credit ratings as relative assessments of creditworthiness, and define a new ordinal metric of rating error based on...

This paper investigates the economic viability and welfare contribution of alternatives to issuer-paid credit rating agencies (CRAs). To this end, it introduces a heterogeneous competition model for credit and ratings markets. Frictions among issuers or investors induce rating inflation from...

We use EU sovereign bond yield and CDS spreads daily data to carry out an event study analysis on the reaction of government yield spreads before and after announcements from rating agencies (Standard & Poor's, Moody's, Fitch). Our results show: significant responses of government bond yield...

Since the intensification of the crisis in September 2008, all euro area long-term government bond yields relative to the German Bund have been characterized by highly persistent processes with upward trends for countries with weaker fiscal fundamentals. Looking at the daily period 1 September...