This paper tests whether the tendency of third rating agencies to assign higher ratings than Moody's and Standard & Poor's results from more lenient standards or sample selection bias. More lenient standards might result from incentives to satisfy issuers who are, in fact, the purchasers of the...

In this article, we present the first systematic analysis of the sovereign credit ratings of the two leading agencies, Moody's and Standard & Poor's (S&P). We find that the ordering of risks they imply is broadly consistent with macroeconomic fundamentals. While the agencies cite a large number...

Wages subject to continuous renegotiations provide inefficient incentives for the creation of firm-specific human capital if training requires both firm investment and worker effort. Noncontingent career-long, fixed-wage contracts do not induce efficient levels of training because they award all...

Despite the fact that over 50 percent of all corporate bonds have different ratings from Moody's and Standard and Poor's at issuance, most bond pricing models ignore these differences of opinion. Our work compares a number of different methods of accounting for split ratings in estimating bond...