This paper provides a more direct test of the superior information hypothesis of banks and informs a long standing policy debate about whether banks serve a special information role in the economy. I circumvent the self-selection bias that contaminated prior studies by obtaining bank loan...

We analyse whether soliciting multiple ratings leads to lower syndicated loan spreads. Our results document that banks apply, on average, lower spreads to multi-rated firms. This effect depends on the reduction of information asymmetry about borrowers' creditworthiness (information production...