This study examines empirically whether corporate ratings by the credit rating agency Standard & Poor's reflect fundamental and publicly observable shocks to the credit quality of companies. This serves to assess the degree of information sensitivity of external ratings, and the timeliness of...

Keech and Munger (2015) argue that the failures of markets are often preceded by the failures of governments to define the necessary institutions needed for the success of markets. In this paper, we attempt to test this hypothesis by examining whether institutional quality is associated with...