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The New Masters of Capital
InThe New Masters of Capital, Timothy J. Sinclair examines a key aspect of the global economy-the rating agencies. In the global economy, trust is formalized in the daily operations of such firms as Moody's and Standard & Poor's, which continuously monitor the financial health of bond-issuers ranging from private corporations to local and national governments. Their judgments affect unimaginably large sums, approximately $30 trillion in outstanding debt issues, according to a recent Moody's estimate. The difference between an AA and a BB rating may cost millions of dollars in interest payments or determine if a corporation or government can even issue bonds.
Without bond rating agencies, there would be no standard means to compare risks in the global economy, and international investment would be problematic. Most observers assume that the agencies are neutral and scientific, and that they interpret their role in narrowly economic terms. But these agencies, by their nature, wield extraordinary power and exert massive influence over public policy. Sinclair offers a highly accessible account of these institutions, their origins, and the rating processes they use to judge creditworthiness. Illustrated with a wide range of cases, this book offers a fresh assessment of the role of an often-overlooked institution in the dynamics of modern global capitalism.
eBook
Have Rating Agencies Become More Conservative? Implications for Capital Structure and Debt Pricing
Rating agencies have become more conservative in assigning corporate credit ratings over the period 1985 to 2009; holding firm characteristics constant, average ratings have dropped by three notches. This change does not appear to be fully warranted because defaults have declined over this period. Firms affected more by conservatism issue less debt, have lower leverage, hold more cash, are less likely to obtain a debt rating, and experience lower growth. Their debt spreads are lower than those of unaffected firms with the same rating, which implies that the market partly undoes the impact of conservatism on debt prices. This evidence suggests that firms and capital markets do not perceive the increase in conservatism to be fully warranted.
Journal Article
The Real Effects of Credit Ratings: The Sovereign Ceiling Channel
We show that sovereign debt impairments can have a significant effect 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 rating downgrade. We identify these effects by exploiting exogenous variation in corporate ratings due to rating agencies' sovereign ceiling policies, which require that firms' ratings remain at or below the sovereign rating of their country of domicile.
Journal Article
Opacity, Credit Rating Shopping, and Bias
We develop a rational expectations model in which an issuer purchases credit ratings sequentially, deciding which to disclose to investors. Opacity about contacts between the issuer and rating agencies induces potential asymmetric information about which ratings the issuer obtained. While the equilibrium forces disclosure of ratings when the market knows these have been generated, endogenous uncertainty about whether there are undisclosed ratings can arise and lead to selective disclosure and rating bias. Although investors account for this bias in pricing, selective disclosure makes ratings noisier signals of project value, leading to inefficient investment decisions. Our paper suggests that regulatory disclosure requirements are welfare enhancing.
This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance
.
Journal Article
Assessment
The 'Essential Guides for Early Career Teachers' provide accessible, carefully researched, quick-reads for early career teachers, covering the key topics they will encounter during their training year and first two years of teaching. This title on assessment provides a range of practical but critically engaged strategies and approaches to assessment. It offers a brief history of the core ideas and educational philosophy underpinning these, looks at links to planning and reflection, examines the concept of progress over time as a mirror for quality teaching and learning, and explores the idea of pupil self-assessment.
Book
The Credit Ratings Game
The collapse of AAA-rated structured finance products in 2007 to 2008 has brought renewed attention to conflicts of interest in credit rating agencies (CRAs). We model competition among CRAs with three sources of conflicts: (1) CRAs conflict of understating risk to attract business, (2) issuers' ability to purchase only the most favorable ratings, and (3) the trusting nature of some investor clienteles. These conflicts create two distortions. First, competition can reduce efficiency, as it facilitates ratings shopping. Second, ratings are more likely to be inflated during booms and when investors are more trusting. We also discuss efficiency-enhancing regulatory interventions.
Journal Article