We investigate whether the stock market impact of tone in Moody's rating reports depends on negative news. Reports convey negative news through negative rating actions (downgrades, reviews for downgrade or negative outlooks) or negative tone if there is no rating action. Using data from U.S....

All since the rise of the first civilizations, economic development has been closely intertwined with the evolution of states. In this paper, we contribute to the literature on state history and long-run economic development in four ways. First, we extend and complete the state history index...