This paper describes the common financing challenges faced by micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in India and some important measures taken to address them, with a focus on the credit rating scheme implemented in 2000. It examines the usefulness as well as the limitations of the...

This paper looks at the development of the banking sector in emerging East Asia in the 10 years since the financial crisis of 1997/98. It suggests that the health of banking sectors in the region has improved substantially, with key changes including increased foreign ownership, movement into...

We show that sovereign debt impairments can have a significant impact on financial markets and real economies through a credit ratings channel. Specifically, we find that firms reduce their investment and reliance on credit markets due to a rising cost of debt capital following a sovereign...

We examine the effect of firm credit rating downgrades on the pricing and structure of syndicated bank loans following rating downgrades in the firms' countries of domicile. We find that the sovereign ceiling policies used by credit rating agencies create a disproportionally adverse impact on...

We analyze the impact of sovereign rating changes on European corporate loan spreads. We demonstrate that sovereign downgrades lead to significant increases in the spread of loans to domestic firms. We find evidence that the negative effects of a sovereign downgrade are widespread across all...

Moody's adjusts a firm's reported leverage across several dimensions to determine credit ratings. I find that changes to this adjustment methodology affect firm capital structure and investment decisions. In particular, in 2006, Moody's made several changes to its adjustment methodologies, which...

We analyze an initiative by insurance regulators to reform capital regulations for mortgage-backed securities (MBS) by replacing credit ratings with third-party estimates of expected credit losses and by considering an insurer's exposure to future losses when determining regulatory capital....

It was once conventional wisdom that lenders routinely influenced corporate managers’ decision making. Covenants constrained borrower risk taking and compelled specific affirmative obligations to protect lenders. Recent policy discussion, however, laments loan markets’ turn to various forms...

It was once conventional wisdom that lenders routinely influenced corporate managers’ decision making. Covenants constrained borrower risk taking and compelled specific affirmative obligations to protect lenders. Recent policy discussion, however, laments loan markets’ turn to various forms...

The current standardized approach for assessing credit risk under Basel III depends on ratings assigned by credit rating agencies (CRAs). However, this approach presents three problems. First, the definitions of ratings used by CRAs to assess the likelihood of default and recovery rates are not...