IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eco/journ1/2016-01-03.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Credit Rating Inflation during the 2000s: Lessons from the U.S. State Governments

Author

Listed:
  • Sungchan Kim

    (Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS 39762, USA,)

  • Soyoung Park

    (School of Public and International Affairs, University of Baltimore, Baltimore, MD 21202, USA.)

Abstract

The recent subprime mortgage crisis in 2008 was considered as resulted partly from the credit rating inflation of subprime mortgage bonds. The credit rating market of state governments may face the same risk of credit rating inflation as that witnessed during the recent recession. In this paper, we attempt to examine whether the credit ratings of state governments are inflated, and whether they are accurately reflected in financial or economic conditions. By using a data set from 1999 to 2010, we find that some credit rating agencies don't reflect financial or economic conditions of state governments appropriately and statistically, and we prove that some credit rating results are affected by characteristics other than financial or economic factors in boom years. Thus, in order to prevent the governmental bond markets from similar credit rating risks in 2008, it needs to investigate whether credit ratings of state governments are inflated.

Suggested Citation

  • Sungchan Kim & Soyoung Park, 2016. "Credit Rating Inflation during the 2000s: Lessons from the U.S. State Governments," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 6(1), pages 13-19.
    • Handle: RePEc:eco:journ1:2016-01-03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econjournals.com/index.php/ijefi/article/download/1500/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.econjournals.com/index.php/ijefi/article/view/1500/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Moon, Choon-Geol & Stotsky, Janet G, 1993. "Testing the Differences between the Determinants of Moody's and Standard & Poor's Ratings: An Application of Smooth Simulated Maximum Likelihood Estimation," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(1), pages 51-69, Jan.-Marc.
    2. Forsythe, Robert & Lundholm, Russell & Rietz, Thomas, 1999. "Cheap Talk, Fraud, and Adverse Selection in Financial Markets: Some Experimental Evidence," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(3), pages 481-518.
    3. Michael Faulkender & Mitchell A. Petersen, 2006. "Does the Source of Capital Affect Capital Structure?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(1), pages 45-79.
    4. Graham, John R. & Harvey, Campbell R., 2001. "The theory and practice of corporate finance: evidence from the field," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2-3), pages 187-243, May.
    5. Usha R. Mittoo & Zhou Zhang, 2010. "Bond Market Access, Credit Quality, and Capital Structure: Canadian Evidence," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 45(3), pages 579-602, August.
    6. Skip Krueger & Robert W. Walker, 2008. "Divided Government, Political Turnover, and State Bond Ratings," Public Finance Review, , vol. 36(3), pages 259-286, May.
    7. Jiang, John (Xuefeng) & Harris Stanford, Mary & Xie, Yuan, 2012. "Does it matter who pays for bond ratings? Historical evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(3), pages 607-621.
    8. Becker, Bo & Milbourn, Todd, 2011. "How did increased competition affect credit ratings?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(3), pages 493-514, September.
    9. Lawrence J. White, 2010. "Markets: The Credit Rating Agencies," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 24(2), pages 211-226, Spring.
    10. Liu, Pu & Thakor, Anjan V, 1984. "Interest Yields, Credit Ratings, and Economic Characteristics of State Bonds: An Empirical Analysis: A Note," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 16(3), pages 344-351, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chandan Sharma & Archana Singh & Rajan Yadav, 2023. "Impact of Competition in Credit Rating Industry: Evidence From India," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(1), pages 21582440221, January.

    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. Cornaggia, Jess & Cornaggia, Kimberly J. & Xia, Han, 2016. "Revolving doors on Wall Street," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(2), pages 400-419.
    2. Valentina Bruno & Jess Cornaggia & Kimberly J. Cornaggia, 2016. "Does Regulatory Certification Affect the Information Content of Credit Ratings?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(6), pages 1578-1597, June.
    3. Shoaib Ali & Attiya Yasmin Javid, 2015. "Relationship between Credit Rating, Capital Structure and Earning Management Behaviour: Evidence from Pakistani Listed Firms," PIDE-Working Papers 2015:121, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.
    4. Wenming Xu & Yan Liu, 2021. "Does reputational capital affect credit rating agencies?: empirical evidence from a natural experiment in China," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 51(3), pages 433-468, June.
    5. Anil K. Kashyap & Natalia Kovrijnykh, 2016. "Who Should Pay for Credit Ratings and How?," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(2), pages 420-456.
    6. Keser, Claudia & Özgümüs, Asri & Peterlé, Emmanuel & Schmidt, Martin, 2017. "An experimental investigation of rating-market regulation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 78-86.
    7. Gerald J. Lobo & Luc Paugam & Hervé Stolowy & Pierre Astolfi, 2017. "The Effect of Business and Financial Market Cycles on Credit Ratings: Evidence from the Last Two Decades," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 53(1), pages 59-93, March.
    8. Anna Bayona & Oana Peia & Razvan Vlahu, 2023. "Credit Ratings and Investments," Working Papers 776, DNB.
    9. Duan, Jin-Chuan & Van Laere, Elisabeth, 2012. "A public good approach to credit ratings – From concept to reality," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(12), pages 3239-3247.
    10. Joe, Denis Yongmin & Oh, Frederick Dongchuhl, 2018. "Credit ratings and corporate cash holdings: Evidence from Korea’s corporate reform after the 1997 Asian financial crisis," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 9-18.
    11. Jean Paul Rabanal & Olga A Rud, 2018. "Does Competition Affect Truth Telling? An Experiment with Rating Agencies," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 22(4), pages 1581-1604.
    12. Javed I. Ahmed, 2014. "Competition in Lending and Credit Ratings," Working Papers 14-01, Office of Financial Research, US Department of the Treasury.
    13. Mathias Kronlund, 2020. "Do Bond Issuers Shop for Favorable Credit Ratings?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(12), pages 5944-5968, December.
    14. Bedendo, Mascia & Cathcart, Lara & El-Jahel, Lina, 2018. "Reputational shocks and the information content of credit ratings," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 44-60.
    15. Berwart, Erik & Guidolin, Massimo & Milidonis, Andreas, 2019. "An empirical analysis of changes in the relative timeliness of issuer-paid vs. investor-paid ratings," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 88-118.
    16. Kedia, Simi & Rajgopal, Shivaram & Zhou, Xing, 2014. "Did going public impair Moody׳s credit ratings?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(2), pages 293-315.
    17. Attig, Najah & Driss, Hamdi & El Ghoul, Sadok, 2021. "Credit ratings quality in uncertain times," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    18. Driss, Hamdi & Massoud, Nadia & Roberts, Gordon S., 2019. "Are credit rating agencies still relevant? Evidence on certification from Moody's credit watches," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 119-141.
    19. Marandola, Ginevra, 2021. "Local Credit Rating Agencies: Is their economic role underrated?," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 143-156.
    20. Dong Chen, 2014. "The Non-monotonic Effect of Board Independence on Credit Ratings," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 45(2), pages 145-171, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Credit Rating Inflation; State Governments; Credit Rating Agency; Bond Ratings;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit
    • E25 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Aggregate Factor Income Distribution

    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:eco:journ1:2016-01-03. 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: Ilhan Ozturk (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.econjournals.com .

    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.