This paper is the first attempt to analyze Standard & Poor’s unsolicited and solicited ratings by using bond-yield data in Japan. Our findings show that there are differences in firm characteristics between firms seeking solicited ratings and those that receive unsolicited ratings. Firms with...

Rating agencies strive to assign reliable, objective and comparable credit ratings as an indicator on one consistent scale. We test empirically how rating agencies meet their promise of providing objective and comparable assessments of credit risk of an issuer and thus creditworthiness. Logistic...

Previous studies show that the unsolicited ratings of S&P and Fitch are lower than the solicited ratings assigned by these two agencies. The unsolicited ratings of S&P and Fitch are based on publicly available information for a firm. However, no previous study has examined the unsolicited...

We conducted a global study of the long-term issuer ratings of nonfinancial firms from Standard and Poor's Ratings Services (S&P) for the period 19982003. Specifically, we focused on the solicited versus unsolicited ratings and sample-selection bias in the analysis. Unlike the literature, we...

This paper examines why unsolicited ratings tend to be lower than solicited ratings. Both self-selection among issuers and strategic conservatism of rating agencies may be reasonable explanations. Analyses of default incidences of non-U.S. borrowers between January 1996 and December 2006 show...

This paper analyses the effect of soliciting a rating on the rating outcome of banks. This type of analysis sheds light on an important policy question, namely whether there is a difference in treatment between banks which request a rating and those which do not. Using a sample of Asian banks...

This paper investigates the short-run price adjustment around the acquisition announce-ment <p> and the long-run upward bias of the cross-sectional average buy-and-hold returns. <p> We apply the geometric Brownian motion model to decompose the cross-sectional ave r-age <p> long-run returns into mean...</p></p></p>

We use a sample of JASDAQ IPOs to study the effects of public information on offer price formation, initial returns, and long-run returns. Underwriters begin reporting anticipated offer prices of Japanese IPOs at an earlier point than in the US. The observable portion of the price formation...

An improved method for measuring and testing long-run returns is proposed. The method adjusts <p> for the right-skewed distribution of long-run buy-and-hold by decomposing average cross-sectional <p> buy-and-hold returns into mean components and volatility components. The method is <p> applied to initial...</p></p></p>

We analyse the extent to which prices in the sovereign credit default swap (CDS) and bond markets reflect the same information on credit risk in the context of the current crisis of the European Monetary Union (EMU). We first document that deviations between CDS and bond spreads are related to...