Rating agencies report ordinal ratings in discrete classes . We question the market's implicit assumption that agencies define their classe s on identical scales, e.g., that AAA by Standard & Poor's is equivalent to Aaa by Moody's. To this end, we develop a non-parametric method to estimate the...

Key role of credit rating agencies is reducing the asymmetry information about credit quality (of governments, business entities or securities) between issuers and investors, and ensuring a common standard of measuring the creditworthiness. Credit rating agencies are engaged in the sale of...

Credit rating agencies (CRAs) have not consistently met the expectations placed on them by investors and policymakers. It is difficult, however, to improve the quality of ratings through regulatory initiatives. In the short term, changes to the CRAs' regulatory environment, in a context of high...