The allocation of authority affects the communication of information about clients within banks. We document that in small business lending internal control leads loan officers to propose inflated credit ratings for their clients. Inflated ratings are, however, anticipated and partly reversed by...

We empirically investigate the benefits of multiple ratings not only at issuance of debt instruments but also during the subsequent monitoring phase. Using a record of monthly credit rating migration data on all U.S. residential mortgage-backed securities rated by Standard & Poor's, Moody's, and...

Based on an empirical analysis of European corporations, we investigate the impact of sovereign risk on the pricing of corporate credit risk. In our paper, we show that sovereign credit default swaps (CDS) are positively correlated with corresponding corporate CDS spreads and are a significant...