IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v92y2002i4p874-888.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rating Banks: Risk and Uncertainty in an Opaque Industry

Author

Listed:
  • Donald P. Morgan

Abstract

The pattern of disagreement between bond raters suggests that banks and insurance firms are inherently more opaque than other types of firms. Moody's and S&P split more often over these financial intermediaries, and the splits are more lopsided, as theory here predicts. Uncertainty over the banks stems from certain assets, loans and trading assets in particular, the risks of which are hard to observe or easy to change. Banks' high leverage, which invites agency problems, compounds the uncertainty over their assets. These findings bear on both the existence and reform of bank regulation. (JEL G20, G21, G28)

Suggested Citation

  • Donald P. Morgan, 2002. "Rating Banks: Risk and Uncertainty in an Opaque Industry," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 874-888, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:92:y:2002:i:4:p:874-888
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/00028280260344506
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/00028280260344506
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Flannery, Mark J. & Kwan, Simon H. & Nimalendran, M., 2004. "Market evidence on the opaqueness of banking firms' assets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 419-460, March.
    2. Stewart C. Myers & Raghuram G. Rajan, 1998. "The Paradox of Liquidity," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(3), pages 733-771.
    3. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    4. O'Hara, Maureen & Shaw, Wayne, 1990. "Deposit Insurance and Wealth Effects: The Value of Being "Too Big to Fail."," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(5), pages 1587-1600, December.
    5. Krasa, Stefan & Villamil, Anne P, 1992. "A Theory of Optimal Bank Size," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 44(4), pages 725-749, October.
    6. Peter C. Reiss, 1989. "Economic and Financial Determinants of Oil and Gas Exploration Activity," NBER Working Papers 3077, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Jensen, Michael C, 1986. "Agency Costs of Free Cash Flow, Corporate Finance, and Takeovers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(2), pages 323-329, May.
    8. Richard Cantor & Frank Packer, 1994. "The credit rating industry," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 19(Sum), pages 1-26.
    9. Douglas W. Diamond, 1984. "Financial Intermediation and Delegated Monitoring," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 51(3), pages 393-414.
    10. Demsetz, Rebecca S & Strahan, Philip E, 1997. "Diversification, Size, and Risk at Bank Holding Companies," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(3), pages 300-313, August.
    11. Bomberger, William A, 1996. "Disagreement as a Measure of Uncertainty," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 28(3), pages 381-392, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Donald P. Morgan, 2000. "Rating risks: risk and uncertainty in an opaque industry," Staff Reports 105, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    2. Donald P. Morgan, 1998. "Judging the risk of banks: what makes banks opaque?," Research Paper 9805, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    3. Avramidis, Panagiotis & Cabolis, Christos & Serfes, Konstantinos, 2018. "Bank size and market value: The role of direct monitoring and delegation costs," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 127-138.
    4. Allen N. Berger & Sadok El Ghoul & Omrane Guedhami & Raluca A. Roman, 2017. "Internationalization and Bank Risk," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(7), pages 2283-2301, July.
    5. Saoussen Ben Gamra & Dominique Plihon, 2011. "Revenue diversification in emerging market banks: implications for financial performance," CEPN Working Papers hal-00598136, HAL.
    6. Cardozo, Pamela & Morales-Acevedo, Paola & Murcia, Andrés & Rosado, Alejandra, 2022. "Does the geographical complexity of the Colombian financial conglomerates increase banks’ risk? The role of diversification, regulatory arbitrage, and funding costs," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    7. Ross Levine & Chen Lin & Wensi Xie, 2021. "Geographic Diversification and Banks’ Funding Costs," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(5), pages 2657-2678, May.
    8. Donald P. Morgan & Kevin J. Stiroh, 1999. "Bond market discipline of banks: is the market tough enough?," Staff Reports 95, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    9. Evan Gatev & Philip Strahan, 2008. "Liquidity Risk and Syndicate Structure," NBER Working Papers 13802, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Tran, Dung Viet & Hassan, M. Kabir & Houston, Reza, 2019. "Activity strategies, information asymmetry, and bank opacity," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 160-172.
    11. Demirgüç-Kunt, Asli & Huizinga, Harry, 2010. "Bank activity and funding strategies: The impact on risk and returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(3), pages 626-650, December.
    12. Laeven, Luc & Levine, Ross, 2007. "Is there a diversification discount in financial conglomerates?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 331-367, August.
    13. Anat R. Admati & Peter M. DeMarzo & Martin F. Hellwig & Paul Pfleiderer, 2010. "Fallacies, Irrelevant Facts, and Myths in the Discussion of Capital Regulation: Why Bank Equity is Not Expensive," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2010_42, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    14. Muhammad Suhail Rizwan & Muhammad Moinuddin & Barbara L’Huillier & Dawood Ashraf, 2018. "Does a one-size-fits-all approach to financial regulations alleviate default risk? The case of dual banking systems," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 53(1), pages 37-74, February.
    15. Philip Strahan, 2008. "Liquidity Production in 21st Century Banking," NBER Working Papers 13798, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Muhammad Saifuddin Khan, 2018. "The Role of Liquidity in Financial Intermediation," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 1-2018.
    17. Paola Brighi & Valeria Venturelli, 2013. "The Effect Of Revenue And Geographic Diversification On Bank Performance," Centro Studi di Banca e Finanza (CEFIN) (Center for Studies in Banking and Finance) 0043, Universita di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Dipartimento di Economia "Marco Biagi".
    18. Heider, Florian & Gropp, Reint E., 2008. "The Determinants of Capital Structure: Some Evidence from Banks," ZEW Discussion Papers 08-015, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    19. Tao Zhang & Larry A. Cox & Robert A. Van Ness, 2009. "Adverse Selection and the Opaqueness of Insurers," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 76(2), pages 295-321, June.
    20. Saoussen Ben Gamra & Dominique Plihon, 2011. "Revenue diversification in emerging market banks: implications for financial performance," Working Papers hal-00598136, HAL.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G20 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - General
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Rating Banks: Risk and Uncertainty in an Opaque Industry (AER 2002) in ReplicationWiki

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:92:y:2002:i:4:p:874-888. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.