This paper examines the quality of credit ratings assigned to banks in Europe and the United States by the three largest rating agencies over the past two decades. We interpret credit ratings as relative assessments of creditworthiness, and define a new ordinal metric of rating error based on...

Notes on contributors -- Introduction / Juan Fernssndez de Guevara and José Manuel Pastor -- Financial stability and economic growth / Santiago Carbó Valverde and Luis Pedauga -- Financial crisis and EU banks' performance / Ted Lindblom and Magnus Willesson -- Diversification, diversity and...