We use a comprehensive sample that comprises essentially all Moody's bond rating changes between 1970 and 1997 to examine the long-run stock returns following the changes. Our main finding is that stocks with upgrades outperform stocks with downgrades for up to one year following the...

This study investigates the long-run stock returns following issues of corporate debt. The investigation of long-run returns allows us to use a balance sheet-based method of identifying debt issuers, which has two major advantages. First, the balance sheet method identifies both public and...

This study uses a balance sheet-based method to identify both public and private debt issues. This feature is important because there have been no studies of the information content of private debt issues, while private debt is substantially more prevalent than public debt. We find no abnormal...