We investigate the effect of analyst distance in the credit rating industry and show that issuers with analysts located in more distant offices have lower default rates than issuers with closer analysts and the same rating. Our results are robust to an analyst home bias and suggest that more...

Using a sample of issuers rated by Moody’s and S&P, we find evidence that Moody’s rating change intensities are higher given a rating change by S&P. This seems to be tentative evidence that S&P assigns ratings in a timelier manner than Moody’s. Second, we find that the tendency towards...

This paper assesses how the performance of US residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBSs) varied depending on sponsor, servicer, and underwriter characteristics. We find that the larger and “healthier” the sponsor of the transaction, the better the performance of the securitized loans....