I build a model where creditworthy countries may use fiscal austerity to communicate their ability to repay sovereign debt and show that the signaling channel is active only for high levels of asymmetric information. The model generates a negative association between the amount of public...

Although there is a wide consensus that rating agencies have frequently failed to predict major crises, the literature on sovereign ratings has so far mostly focused on explaining the rating level rather than explaining the timing of the rating decision. In this paper we aim to fill this gap in...

We analyse a sample of funds and other securities each assigned a total rating score by an unknown expert entity. The scores are based on a number of risk and complexity factors, each assigned a category (factor score) of Low, Medium, or High by the expert entity. A principal component analysis...

This paper analyzes a model where investors use a credit rating to decide whether to finance a firm. The rating quality depends on the unobservable effort exerted by a credit rating agency (CRA). We analyze optimal compensation schemes for the CRA that differ depending on whether a social...

This paper investigates the information in corporate credit ratings. If ratings are to be informative indicators of credit risk they must reflect what a risk-averse investor cares about: both raw default probability and systematic risk. We find that ratings are relatively inaccurate measures of...

This article explores the question of whether bond insurers are able to sufficiently evaluate the credit risk of insured bonds, the answer to which would determine the future of municipal bond insurance. A sample of insured municipal bonds is investigated to determine whether bond insurance...

We provide the first empirical evidence on the determinants of the lending decision of venture debt firms, specialized institutions that provide loans to finance growth of high-tech startups. Building on existing field interviews and case studies, we design a choice experiment of the lending...

This paper argues that a mitigated strict liability regime can incentivize Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs) to produce ratings as accurate as the available forecasting technology allows. A damage cap based on objective factors is introduced in order to avoid crushing liability. Moreover, CRAs are...

We investigate ratings quality across uncertain and normal times proxied by variations in economic policy uncertainty. We find that increased policy uncertainty is associated with weaker rating standards. This finding is unrelated to variations in macroeconomic conditions and holds when we use...

We investigate how shocks to the reputation of credit rating agencies and the subsequent introduction of stricter regulation affect investors' reaction to rating signals. We focus on three major episodes of reputational distress: The Enron/WorldCom scandals, the subprime crisis and the lawsuit...