Credit rating agencies do not only disclose simple ratings but announce watchlists (rating reviews) and outlooks as well. This paper analyzes the economic function underlying the review procedure. Using Moody's rating data between 1982 and 2004, we find that for borrowers of high...

Credit rating agencies do not only disclose simple ratings but announce watchlists (rating reviews) and outlooks as well. This paper analyzes the economic function underlying the review procedure. Using Moody's rating data between 1982 and 2004, we find that for borrowers of high...

In this paper we analyze whether the use of credit risk transfer instruments affects the risk taking by large, international banks. Relying on a unique data set of European collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), we find that the issue of CDOs tends to raise the systematic risk (equity beta) of...

This paper contributes to the economics of financial institutions risk management by exploring how loan securitization affects their default risk, their systematic risk, and their stock prices. In a typical CDO transaction a bank retains through a first loss piece a very high proportion of the...

Some of the most widely expressed myths about the German financial system are concerned with the close ties and intensive interaction between banks and firms, often described as Hausbank relationships. Links between banks and firms include direct shareholdings, board representation, and proxy...

This paper makes an attempt to present the economics of credit securitization in a non-technical way, starting from the description and the analysis of a typical securitization transaction. The paper sketches a theoretical explanation for why tranching, or nonproportional risk sharing, which is...

We report results of a series of nine market experiments with asymmetric information and a fundamental value process that is more quot;realisticquot; than those in previous experiments. Both a call market institution and a continuous double auction mechanism are employed. We find considerable...

This paper investigates experimentally whether certainty equivalents (CE) can be useful indicators for an individual's risk attitude. It is found that the reliability of this indicator (i.e. of a CE elicited by a Vickrey auction) is rather low. The possibility that the Vickrey auction mechanism...

Previous research suggests that overpricing is a common phenomenon in experimental asset markets. We argue, however, that the experimental design, in particular the fundamental value which steadily declines in the course of the experiment, facilitates the emergence of overpricing. In our...