This study considers whether the associations between credit ratings and banks’ capital structure can be explained by the channels of asymmetric information, namely, countries’ economic cycle and development, banking supervision and private monitoring. Using an international sample of 391...

Credit score cutoff rules result in very similar potential borrowers being treated differently by mortgage lenders. Recent research has used variation induced by these rules to investigate the connection between securitization and lender moral hazard in the recent financial crisis. However, the...

Mortgage originators use credit score cutoff rules to determine how carefully to screen loan applicants. Recent research has hypothesized that these cutoff rules result from a securitization rule of thumb. Under this theory, an observed jump in defaults at the cutoff would imply that...

This paper investigates the incentive of credit rating agencies (CRAs) to bias ratings using a semiparametric, ordered-response model. The proposed model explicitly takes conflicts of interest into account and allows the ratings to depend flexibly on risk attributes through a semiparametric...