Freelancing human experts play an important role in Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). Expert ratings partially reflect the reciprocal network of ICO members and analysts. Ratings predict ICO success, but highly imperfectly so. Favorably rated ICOs tend to fail when more ratings reciprocate prior...

Using an international sample of more than 65,000 rating actions by Fitch, Moody's and S&P, we analyze the effect of the Dodd-Frank Act on credit ratings. We document that (i) rating report content changes significantly after Dodd-Frank and (ii) show, by exploiting within firm-quarter variation,...

This study analyzes the trading activity of institutional investors on German Stock Exchanges to evaluate herding behavior and its determinants. The paper uses a unique and superior high-frequent investor-level database that directly identifies every transaction of banks and financial service...

This paper sheds new light on the impact of information risk and market stress on herding of institutional traders from both, a theoretical and an empirical perspective. Using numerical simulations of a herd model, we show that buy and sell herding intensity should increase with information...

Credit rating agencies are frequently criticized for producing sovereign ratings that do not accurately reflect the economic and political fundamentals of rated countries. This article discusses how the home country of rating agencies could affect rating decisions as a result of political...

In this paper we measure knowledge spillovers arising from venture-capital nanced companies on the patenting activities of other companies and com- pare them to spillovers from established rms. We develop a novel measure to to identify the appropriate spillover pool based on backward citations...

This paper analyzes innovation races in a moral hazard setting. I develop a model where two competing entrepreneurs, financed by a single venture capitalist, work independently on the same project. The venture capitalist cannot observe the allocation of funds she provides, which creates a moral...

In this paper, we explore the institutional investors' assessment of relative creditworthiness across selected country groups with a special focus on the impact of public debt on the perception of sovereign risk. Our results show that general government debt is among the most important...

Traditional business models of credit rating agencies (CRAs) are criticized for creating incentives for misreporting. This paper investigates a potential alternative in which CRAs receive revenue from advertisement only. We use a two-period Bayesian reputation model and show that CRAs will shirk...