Credit ratings are commonly used by lenders to assess the default risk, because every credit is connected with a possible loss. If the probability of a default is above a certain threshold, a credit will not be provided. The purpose of this paper is to test whether credit ratings contribute...

Rating agencies state that they take a rating action only when it is unlikely to be reversed shortly afterwards. Based on a formal representation of the rating process, I show that such a policy provides a good explanation for the empirical evidence: Rating changes occur relatively seldom,...

A firm's current leverage ratio is one of the core characteristics of credit quality used in statistical default prediction models. Based on the capital structure literature, which shows that leverage is mean-reverting to a target leverage, we forecast future leverage ratios and include them in...

The study of firms' default has attracted wide interest among both practitioners and scholars. However, attention has often been limited to a relatively small set of financial variables. In this work, we try to increase the scope of analysis extending the investigation to other possible...

Danmarks Nationalbank introduced its annual report on financial stability in Denmark in 2000. The purpose of the analyses is to identify risks currently faced by the financial sector. As the stability in the financial sector depends on the customers' financial circumstances, and as the majority...

We estimate the effects of R&D on firms' credit ratings and on financial distress. The main purpose is the comparison of firms in Western Germany and Eastern Germany as a transitional economy. Innovative activity has a positive impact on firm value proxied by ratings in Western Germany, but a...

Most of the existing empirical literature on the relationship of firm value and knowledge capital is based on the stock market valuation of companies. However, the assets of many firms are not publicly traded, and hence the calculation of market value is limited to a subsample of firms. We...

"Arbitrage CDOs" have recorded an explosive growth during the years before the outbreak of the financial crisis. In the present paper we discuss potential sources of such arbitrage opportunities, in particular arbitrage gains due to mispricing. For this purpose we examine the risk profiles of...

We consider 1927 borrowers from 54 countries who had a credit rating by both Moody's and S&P as of the end of 1998, and their subsequent default history up to the end of 2002. Viewing bond ratings as predicted probabilities of default, we show that it is unlikely that both agencies are well...