Using the Credit Rating Agency Reform Act of 2006, we examine the credibility of mandatory disclosure by credit rating agencies (CRAs) on managerial learning from stock prices. We find an increase in investment-price sensitivity for firms affected by the Act. Consistent with managers relying...

Do rating announcements reduce information asymmetries? We investigate the effect of rating disclosures on the volatility and liquidity of the US bond market. Although rating agencies' decisions often are anticipated by credit spread changes, we show that in the case of no regulatory change...

Standard explanatory variables that determine credit ratings do not achieve significant effects in a sample of 100 US non-financial firms in an ordered probit panel estimation. Sample size and selection as well as the distribution of explanatory variables across rating classes may be the cause...

In July 2013, Moody's unexpectedly increased the amount of equity credit that speculative-grade firms receive for preferred stock from 50% to 100%. Firms affected by the rule change were suddenly considered less levered by Moody's even though their balance sheets did not change. These firms...

This study develops and evaluates a model that generates synthetic credit ratings using accounting and market based information. The model performs very well in explaining agency ratings, suggesting that fitted values for unrated companies are likely to be reasonably precise. In addition, the...

The paper models and analyses the dynamics of credit spread curves based on ratings over the period from 2004 to 2021. Using more than 1.5 million data points of individual bonds, instead of using index data, monthly asset swap spread (ASW) curves are constructed for all rating levels. The paper...

We find that large shareholders of Moody's (affiliated investors) abnormally decrease their stock ownerships in a firm before its downgrade by Moody's. This finding is stronger for informationally opaque stocks and active affiliated investors, significant only after Moody's initial public...