We study the role of financial frictions and firm heterogeneity in determining the investment channel of monetary policy. Empirically, we find that firms with low default risk – those with low debt burdens and high “distance to default” – are the most responsive to monetary shocks. We...

Credit rating agencies emphasize the importance of specific financial ratio thresholds in their rating process. Firms below these thresholds are more likely to receive higher ratings than similar firms that are not. I show that firms near key Debt/EBITDA thresholds are significantly more likely...

This book provides the conceptual and operational tools for understanding the mechanisms for assigning a rating to a network of companies. In it, the author explores the rating systems of corporate networks and analyses the link between rating and an enterprise network