Since 2011, Morningstar has issued Morningstar Analyst Ratings on many of the largest mutual funds in the United States. In June 2017, Morningstar launched the Morningstar Quantitative Rating™ to provide a forward‐looking rating on all mutual funds. Morningstar uses a “robo‐rater”...

We analyse whether soliciting multiple ratings leads to lower syndicated loan spreads. Our results document that banks apply, on average, lower spreads to multi-rated firms. This effect depends on the reduction of information asymmetry about borrowers' creditworthiness (information production...

A rater is paid by a seller, observes a signal about the seller's product, and issues a public cheap-talk rating for potential buyers. I characterize the partition of the rater's information into ratings issued following public payments from the seller to the rater, and ratings issued when the...

Since 2011, Morningstar has issued Morningstar Analyst Ratings on many of the largest mutual funds in the United States. In June 2017, Morningstar launched the Morningstar Quantitative Rating™ to provide a forward‐looking rating on all mutual funds. Morningstar uses a “robo‐rater”...