Investors and regulators have been increasing their reliance on the opinions of the credit rating agencies. This article shows that although the ratings provide accurate rank-orderings of default risk, the meaning of specific letter grades varies over time and across agencies. Noting that...

Rating-dependent financial regulators assume that the same letter ratings from different agencies imply the same levels of default risk. Most "third" agencies, however, assign significantly higher ratings on average than Moody's and Standard & Poor's. We show that, contrary to the claims of some...

Although issuers may benefit generally from securitization, some asset securitizations transfer more credit risk than others. When a lender uses securitization to replace on‐balance‐sheet financing, that lender transfers to investors some of the risks, and, in the form of credit...