As a result of the 2008 financial crisis, the world credit markets stalled significantly and raised the doubts of market participants and policymakers about the proper and fair valuation of financial derivatives and structured products such as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). The aim of...

We test if issuers of asset- and mortgage-backed securities receive rating favors from agencies with which they maintain strong business relationships. Controlling for issuer fixed effects and a large set of credit risk determinants, we show that agencies publish better ratings for those issuers...

This paper tracks a structured financial innovation, the commercial mortgage-backed security which is not as novel as current discussion around the sub-prime crisis let assume. However, CMBS as credit-derivatives feature various factors that influence the risks arising from a commercial-mortgage...