This paper models competition among credit rating agencies as an auction. Equilibrium ratings give a distorted representation of agencies' true assessment of quality, because the agencies choose their ratings strategically. I quantify the distortion in ratings for individual commercial...

In case of multiple creditors a coordination problem can arise when the borrowingfirm runs into financial distress. Even if the project's value at maturity is enoughto pay all creditors in full, some creditors may be tempted to foreclose on theirloans. We develop a model of creditor coordination...

The principal agent problem is one of the major issues of the credit rating agency market. Is it possible to solve the prevailing incentive problem of the market and contemporaneously satisfy the reputation demand of the investors? This paper presents an option for regulating the credit rating...

How does market information affect credit ratings? How do credit ratings affect market information? We analyze a model in which a credit rating agency's (CRA's) rating is followed by a market for credit risk that provides a public signal - the price. A more accurate rating decreases market...

We explore the pricing of variance risk by decomposing stocks' total variance into systematicand idiosyncratic return variances. While systematic variance risk exhibits a negative priceof risk, common shocks to the variances of idiosyncratic returns carry a large positive riskpremium. This...