Financial Reporting and Credit Ratings: On the Effects of Competition in the Rating Industry and Rating Agencies' Gatekeeper Role

This paper studies firms' financial reporting incentives in the presence of strategic credit rating agencies and how these incentives are affected by the level of competition in the rating industry and by rating agencies' role as gatekeepers to debt markets. We develop a model featuring an entrepreneur who seeks project financing from a perfectly competitive debt market. After publicly disclosing a financial report, the entrepreneur can purchase credit ratings from rating agencies that strategically choose their rating fees and rating inflation. We derive the following core results: (1) More rating industry competition leads to stronger corporate misreporting incentives if ratings are sufficiently precise or if rating agencies assume a gatekeeper role. Under imperfect rating industry competition, (2) agencies' gatekeeper role primarily weakens firms' misreporting incentives, which then influences rating agencies' strategies, and (3) firms' misreporting and rating agencies' rating inflation can be strategic complements when agencies assume a gatekeeper role. (4) Regulatory initiatives aimed at increasing rating industry competition or at weakening rating agencies' gatekeeper role improve investment efficiency as long as corporate misreporting incentives are not significantly strengthened.     

Enhancing Loan Quality Through Transparency: Evidence from the European Central Bank Loan Level Reporting Initiative

We explore whether transparency in banks’ securitization activities enhances loan quality. We take advantage of a novel disclosure initiative introduced by the European Central Bank, which requires, as of January 2013, banks that use their asset‐backed securities as collateral for repo financing to report securitized loan characteristics and performance in a standardized format. We find that securitized loans originated under the transparency regime are of better quality with a lower default probability, a lower delinquent amount, fewer days in delinquency, and lower losses upon default. Additionally, banks with more intensive loan level information collection and those operating under stronger market discipline experience greater improvement in their loan quality under the new reporting standards. Overall, we demonstrate that greater transparency has real effects by incentivizing banks to improve their credit practices.     

国际商业票据市场监管方式最新变化及启示

商业票据市场是典型的受管制的可转让证券市场，也是货币市场的重要组成部分。本文介绍了国际商业票据市场的监管框架，重点对国际商业票据市场监管方式的最新发展情况进行了分析，并深入探讨了这种变化对商业票据市场的重大影响；最后结合我国短期融资券市场的现状，提出了我们应当借鉴的经验和果取的政策。     

Mortgage Choice in the Euro Area: Macroeconomic Determinants and the Effect of Monetary Policy on Debt Burdens

This paper provides novel evidence on the role of the macroeconomic environment for households’ choice between fixed‐interest‐rate and adjustable‐interest‐rate mortgages (ARMs) in the euro area. We find that relatively more ARMs are taken out when economic growth is strong, the interest rate spread is high, or unemployment shows low volatility. A simulation exercise shows that a reduction in mortgage rates as witnessed during the monetary easing in the course of the global financial crisis produces a substantial decline in debt burdens among mortgage‐holding households, especially in countries where households have higher debt burdens and a larger share of ARMs.     

Sovereign Credit Risk,Banks' Government Support,and Bank Stock Returns around the World

We explore the joint effect of expected government support to banks and changes in sovereign credit ratings on bank stock returns using data for banks in 37 countries between 1995 and 2011. We find that sovereign credit rating downgrades have a large negative effect on bank stock returns for those banks that are expected to receive stronger support from their governments. This result is stronger for banks in advanced economies where governments are better positioned to provide that support. Our results suggest that stock market investors perceive sovereigns and domestic banks as markedly interconnected, partly through government guarantees.     

Investment Horizon and Repo in the Over‐the‐Counter Market

This paper presents a three‐period model featuring a short‐term investor in the over‐the‐counter bond market. A short‐term investor stores cash because of a need to pay cash at some future date. If a short‐term investor buys bonds, then a deadline for retrieving cash lowers the resale price of bonds for the investor through bilateral bargaining in the bond market. Ex‐ante, this hold‐up problem explains the use of a repo by a short‐term investor, the existence of a haircut, and the vulnerability of a repo market to counterparty risk. This result holds without any uncertainty about bond returns or asymmetric information.     

A Theoretical and Empirical Review of the EU Regulation on Credit Rating Agencies: In Search of Truth,Not Scapegoats

The undergoing financial turbulence has raised significant concerns over the role that credit rating agencies (CRAs) played in the inception, magnification and expansion of the crisis. In response, the EU legislature has adopted Regulation 1060/2009, which, for the first time, set out a legally binding pan‐European authorization regime for CRAs, which issue ratings that have been used by EU‐based financial institutions. As the turmoil turned into an unprecedented Eurozone debt crisis, EU politicians have been calling for tighter regulation of the credit rating industry. Drawing on the relevant empirical and theoretical research and building upon a comparative study of the corresponding US framework, the paper discusses critically the principles underlying EU Regulation 1060/2009 and the most recent suggestions for its reform. The paper argues that although, overall, the EU Regulation seems to be a well‐balanced instrument in the sense that it introduces the essential checks upon CRAs’ behavior while avoiding excessive regulatory intervention, more fine‐tuning is needed in certain fields, including, rating shopping, financial ties with rated entities, abuse of inside information, transparency and CRAs’ accountability.     

Cross‐Listed Bonds,Information Asymmetry,and Conservatism in Credit Ratings

We propose information asymmetry as an additional explanation for rating conservatism. Because information asymmetry is likely higher for cross‐listed bonds than for U.S. bonds, we expect and find that cross‐listed bonds are rated more conservatively than U.S. domestic bonds at issuance. Further, cross‐listed bonds receive less frequent upgrades and take longer to be upgraded after issuance. Because lower ratings might also reflect higher default risk based on agencies’ private information, we conduct additional tests to discriminate between the rating conservatism and private information explanations. The results are consistent with ratings conservatism and inconsistent with the private information explanation.     

The Determinants of Credit Ratings in the United Kingdom Insurance Industry

This paper examines the determinants of external credit ratings attained by insurance firms in the United Kingdom (UK) and of the likelihood that insurers will have such an assessment. Using panel data relating to A.M. Best‐rated and Standard and Poor's (S&P)‐rated insurers over the period 1993–1997, a trichotomous logit model and an ordered probit model with sample selection are employed to show that the factors which influence the likelihood of having external credit assessments not only vary between the two agencies but also differ from those which determine the ratings themselves. Our results are shown to be of potential interest to participants in the insurance industry and policy‐makers alike.     

Effect of the Sovereign Credit Ratings in East Asia Countries: Evidence from Panel Vector Autoregression

We study the effect of the sovereign credit ratings on the economies of seven East Asian countries, applying panel vector autoregression (VAR). We find that rating has less effect than outlook of rating on the credit default swap (CDS) spreads, the stock indexes, and the GDP growth rates. Rating upgrade and positive outlook have stronger effects than rating downgrade and negative outlook, and the effects of positive outlook and rating are greater after the financial crisis. There is evidence of contagion in that the economic variables of a country seem to have been affected by the outlooks of the other countries.     

Market power and reputational concerns in the ratings industry

This paper studies the incentives of rating agencies to reveal the information that they obtain about their client firms. In the model, rating agencies seek to maximize their reputation and protect their market power. They observe public information and obtain either precise or noisy private information about a firm. Reputational concerns dictate that a rating reflects private information when it is precise. However, when private information is noisy, two situations arise. In a monopoly, the rating agency may ignore private information and issue a rating that conforms to public information. Under some conditions, it may even become cautious and issue bad ratings ignoring both types of information. With competition, however, it has incentives to contradict public information as a way to pretend that it holds precise private information. Moreover, it may become more likely to issue good ratings in an attempt to protect market power.     

Discipline and Liquidity in the Interbank Market

Using 20 years of panel data, I demonstrate that high-risk banks have consistently paid more than safe banks for interbank loans and have been less likely to use these loans as a source of liquidity. The economic importance of this effect was relatively small until the mid-1990s, when regulatory and institutional changes began to impose more of the costs of bank failure on uninsured creditors. Subsequently, interbank-market price discipline roughly doubled, and risk-based rationing effects increased by a factor of six. In imposing this discipline, lenders seem to care most about credit risk at borrowing institutions.     

Efficiency and productivity growth in the banking industry of Central and Eastern Europe

We employ the directional technology distance function and provide estimates of bank efficiency and productivity change across Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries and across banks with different ownership status for the period 1998–2003. Our results demonstrate the strong links of competition and concentration with bank efficiency. They also show that productivity for the whole region initially declined but has improved more recently with further progress on institutional and structural reforms. Input-biased technical change has been consistently positive throughout the entire period suggesting that the reforms have induced favorable changes in relative input prices and input mix. However we find evidence of diverging trends in productivity growth patterns across banking industries and that foreign banks outperform domestic private and state-owned banks both in terms of efficiency and productivity gains. Overall, we find that productivity change in CEE is driven by technological change rather than efficiency change.     

The Cross‐Market Spillover of Economic Shocks through Multimarket Banks

This study investigates the mortgage lending of banks operating in multiple U.S. metropolitan areas during the housing market collapse of 2007–09. We show that multimarket banks reduced local portfolio lending in response to high overall mortgage delinquencies in their other markets, consistent with the view that local economic shocks can be transmitted to other regions through banks’ internal capital markets. This spillover was greatest when the bank lacked a branch presence and when the market was highly peripheral to the bank in terms of its total mortgage lending. These effects were not fully offset by securitization or other portfolio lenders.     

Foreign Entry into Underwriting Services: Evidence from Japan's “Big Bang” Deregulation

We examined the effect of foreign entry into bond market underwriting activity using issue‐level data from the Japanese “Samurai” and euro–yen bond markets. We found that the fees charged by Japanese underwriters were higher on average than those of foreign underwriters, but the difference could be explained by conditioning on issue characteristics. Our results also suggest that bond issuers sorted properly across underwriters, as switching across underwriter nationalities would be expected to result in higher fees. However, the savings enjoyed by firms issuing with foreign underwriters were modest and statistically insignificant, while those of firms issuing with Japanese underwriters were substantial and statistically significant. This result suggests that Japanese underwriters priced their services aggressively over the sample period, perhaps in an effort to retain or gain market share. This conjecture is supported by a matching exercise that examined the liberalization of foreign underwriter access to the Samurai bond market, using euro–yen bond issues as a control. Foreign entry led to a statistically and economically significant decrease of 16 basis points on average in underwriting fees in the Samurai bond market. Overall, our results suggest that the international market for Japanese bond underwriting services was partially segmented by nationality as issuers appear to have preferred habitats, but that liberalization increased overall market competition.     

Productivity and efficiency at large and community banks in the US: A Bayesian true random effects stochastic distance frontier analysis

This paper compares the productivity and efficiency of large banks and community banks in the United States over the period 1997–2006. This comparison is performed by estimating a true random effects stochastic distance frontier model—a model that is capable of disentangling unobserved heterogeneity from inefficiency—within a Bayesian framework. We find that failure to consider unobserved heterogeneity results in a misleading ranking of banks and mismeasured technical efficiency, productivity growth, and returns to scale. Our results show that, compared with community banks, large banks have experienced much higher productivity growth and higher levels of returns to scale. Our estimates of total factor productivity growth show a clear downward trend for both large and community banks, and our decomposition of the output-distance-function-based Divisia productivity index indicates that technical change is the driving force behind this trend.     

Do Rating Agencies Benefit from Providing Higher Ratings? Evidence from the Consequences of Municipal Bond Ratings Recalibration

We ask whether credit rating agencies receive higher fees and gain greater market share when they provide more favorable ratings. To investigate this question, we use the 2010 rating scale recalibration by Moody's and Fitch, which increased ratings absent any underlying change in issuer credit quality. Consistent with prior research, we find that the recalibration allowed the clients of Moody's and Fitch to receive better ratings and lower yields. We add to this evidence by showing that the recalibration also led to larger fees and to increases in the market shares of Moody's and Fitch. These results are consistent with critics’ concerns about the effects of the issuer‐pay model on the credit ratings market.