Credit ratings failures and policy options
Abstract
"This paper examines the role of credit rating agencies in the subprime crisis that triggered the 2007-2008 financial turmoil. We focus on two aspects of ratings that contributed to the boom and bust of the market for structured debt: rating inflation and coarse information disclosure. The paper discusses how regulation can be designed to mitigate these problems in the future. Our preferred policy is to require rating agencies to be paid by investors rather than by issuers and to grant open and free access to data about the loans or securities underlying structured debt products. A more modest (but less effective) approach would be to retain the 'issuer pays' model but require issuers to pay an upfront fee irrespective of the rating, ban 'credit shopping', and prescribe a more complete format for the information that rating agencies must disseminate." Copyright (c) CEPR, CES, MSH, 2010.Download Info
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Bibliographic Info
Article provided by CEPR & CES & MSH in its journal Economic Policy.
Volume (Year): 25 (2010)
Issue (Month): (04)
Pages: 401-431
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Related research
Keywords:Other versions of this item:
- Pagano, Marco & Volpin, Paolo, 2009. "Credit Ratings Failures and Policy Options," CEPR Discussion Papers 7556, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
- Marco Pagano & Paolo Volpin, 2009. "Credit Ratings Failures and Policy Options," EIEF Working Papers Series 0912, Einaudi Institute for Economic and Finance (EIEF), revised Sep 2009.
- Marco Pagano & Paolo Volpin, 2009. "Credit Ratings Failures and Policy Options," CSEF Working Papers 239, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
- D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
- G18 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Government Policy and Regulation
- G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Patrick Bolton & Xavier Freixas & Joel Shapiro, 2009.
"The Credit Ratings Game,"
NBER Working Papers
14712, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Patrick Bolton & Xavier Freixas & Joel Shapiro, 2012. "The Credit Ratings Game," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(1), pages 85-112, 02.
- Patrick Bolton & Xavier Freixas & Joel Shapiro, 2010. "The credit ratings game," Economics Working Papers 1221, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
- Patrick Bolton & Xavier Freixas & Joel Shapiro, 2010. "The Credit Ratings Game," Working Papers 468, Barcelona Graduate School of Economics.
- Patrick Bolton & Xavier Freixas & Joel Shapiro, 2009. "The credit ratings game," Economics Working Papers 1149, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
- Bo Becker & Todd Milbourn, 2008. "Reputation and competition: evidence from the credit rating industry," Harvard Business School Working Papers 09-051, Harvard Business School, revised Sep 2010.
- Benjamin J. Keys & Tanmoy Mukherjee & Amit Seru & Vikrant Vig, 2010. "Did Securitization Lead to Lax Screening? Evidence from Subprime Loans," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 125(1), pages 307-362, February.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Aggelos KOTIOS & George GALANOS & Spyros ROUKANAS, 2012. "The Rating Agencies In The International Political Economy," Scientific Bulletin - Economic Sciences, University of Pitesti, vol. 11(1), pages 3-15.
- Baghai, Ramin & Servaes, Henri & Tamayo, Ane, 2011. "Have Rating Agencies Become More Conservative? Implications for Capital Structure and Debt Pricing," CEPR Discussion Papers 8446, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
- Eberl, Jakob & Jus, Darko, 2012. "The year of the cat: Taxing nuclear risk with the help of capital markets," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 364-373.
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