Credit rating industry business model has traditionally been based on an ‘issuer-pays' principle. Issuer-paid credit rating agencies (CRAs) have recently faced criticism regarding untimely releases of negative ratings adjustments, which is attributed to conflict of interest of their business...

We find that leverage-initiating stocks experience an increase in return comovement with existing leveraged stocks and a decrease in return comovement with existing zero-leverage stocks in the year after the leverage initiation event. In contrast, stocks that fully deleverage comove more with...

We investigate whether political similarities between credit rating agencies (CRAs) and bond issuers impact credit rating quality. We find that a higher degree of similarity of political affiliation leads to a decrease in timeliness and accuracy of downgrades prior to default events. Our finding...

The fierce aerospace competition between superpowers results in a strong public attention to satellite launch events in the U.S. Under limited attentional resources, U.S. investors allocate their attention more to market-level shocks than firm-specific shocks, making stock returns to comove more...