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 empirically examines the role of soft information in the competitive interaction between relationship and transaction banks. Soft information can be interpreted as a private signal about the quality of a firm that is observable to a relationship bank, but not to a transaction bank. We...

In this paper, we empirically investigate the impact of intensified competition on rating quality in the credit rating market for residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) in the period 2017-2020. We provide evidence that competition between large credit rating agencies (CRAs) (Moody's and...

The number of firm bankruptcies is surprisingly low in economies with poor institutions. We study a model of bank-firm relationship and show that the bank's decision to liquidate bad firms has two opposing effects. First, the bank gets a payoff if a firm is liquidated. Second, it loses the rent...

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...

This paper studies firms' financial reporting incentives in the presence of strategic credit rating agencies and how these incentives are affected by the level of competition in the rating industry and by rating agencies' role as gatekeepers to debt markets. We develop a model featuring an...

This paper studies firms' financial reporting incentives in the presence of strategic credit rating agencies and how these incentives are affected by the level of competition in the rating industry and by rating agencies' role as gatekeepers to debt markets. We develop a model featuring an...

After analyzing the long-term credit ratings on European structured debt products before and after European Parliament's introduction of Article 8d in June 2013, which aims to diversify the market by encouraging the use of small credit rating agencies, I find that the rating split between large...