IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/rcorpf/v11y2022i4p815-848..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do Security Analysts Discipline Credit Rating Agencies?
[Credit ratings accuracy and analyst incentives]

Author

Listed:
  • Kingsley Fong
  • Harrison Hong
  • Marcin Kacperczyk
  • Jeffrey D Kubik

Abstract

Credit ratings of corporations are biased, but the forces driving this bias are unclear. We argue it would be difficult for rating agencies to issue high grades for a firm’s debt when there are a lot of objective equity analyst reports about the firm’s earnings that are informative about its default. We find that an exogenous drop in analyst coverage leads to greater optimism-bias in ratings, especially for firms with little bond analyst coverage and those that are close to default. This coverage-induced shock leads to less informative ratings about future defaults and downgrades and more subsequent bond security mispricings.Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

Suggested Citation

  • Kingsley Fong & Harrison Hong & Marcin Kacperczyk & Jeffrey D Kubik, 2022. "Do Security Analysts Discipline Credit Rating Agencies? [Credit ratings accuracy and analyst incentives]," The Review of Corporate Finance Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 11(4), pages 815-848.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:rcorpf:v:11:y:2022:i:4:p:815-848.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rcfs/cfac021
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to 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. Heski Bar-Isaac & Joel Shapiro, 2011. "Credit Ratings Accuracy and Analyst Incentives," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(3), pages 120-124, May.
    2. Becker, Bo & Milbourn, Todd, 2011. "How did increased competition affect credit ratings?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(3), pages 493-514, September.
    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. Jiang, Xianfeng & Packer, Frank, 2019. "Credit ratings of Chinese firms by domestic and global agencies: Assessing the determinants and impact," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 178-193.
    2. Cornaggia, Jess & Cornaggia, Kimberly J. & Xia, Han, 2016. "Revolving doors on Wall Street," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(2), pages 400-419.
    3. Bar-Isaac, Heski & Shapiro, Joel, 2013. "Ratings quality over the business cycle," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 62-78.
    4. Chen, Yongmin & Gu, Dingwei & Yao, Zhiyong, 2013. "Rating Inflation versus Deflation: On Procyclical Credit Ratings," MPRA Paper 51159, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Bae, Kee-Hong & Driss, Hamdi & Roberts, Gordon S., 2019. "Does competition affect ratings quality? Evidence from Canadian corporate bonds," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 605-623.
    6. Harald Hau & Sam Langfield & David Marques-Ibanez, 2013. "Bank ratings: what determines their quality? [Bank risk during the financial crisis: do business models matter?]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 28(74), pages 289-333.
    7. Doherty, Neil A. & Kartasheva, Anastasia V. & Phillips, Richard D., 2012. "Information effect of entry into credit ratings market: The case of insurers' ratings," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(2), pages 308-330.
    8. Alessio Piccolo & Joel Shapiro, 2022. "Credit Ratings and Market Information," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 35(10), pages 4425-4473.
    9. 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.
    10. Wang, Yuyue & Fang, Hongyan & Luo, Ronghua, 2022. "Does state ownership affect rating quality? Evidence from China's corporate bond market," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    11. Andreas Freytag & Martin Zenker, 2012. "The Credit Rating Market - Options for Appropriate Regulation," Global Financial Markets Working Paper Series 2012-39, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    12. Nguyen, Quan M.P. & Do, Hung Xuan & Molchanov, Alexander & Nguyen, Lily & Nguyen, Nhut H., 2023. "Political similarities in credit ratings," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    13. Uslu Çağrı L., 2017. "Examining the Behavior of Credit Rating Agencies Post 2008 Economic Turmoil," International Journal of Management and Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, Collegium of World Economy, vol. 53(4), pages 61-76, December.
    14. Chen, Zhongfei & Matousek, Roman & Stewart, Chris & Webb, Rob, 2019. "Do rating agencies exhibit herding behaviour? Evidence from sovereign ratings," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 57-70.
    15. Byoun, Soku, 2014. "Information content of unsolicited credit ratings and incentives of rating agencies: A theory," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 338-349.
    16. Xiaoyang Zhuo & Guangli Xu & Yongjin Wang, 2017. "The Issuer-pays Business Model and Competitive Rating Market: Rating Network Structure," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 55(2), pages 216-241, August.
    17. Eliza Xia Zhang, 2020. "The impact of cash flow management versus accruals management on credit rating performance and usage," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 54(4), pages 1163-1193, May.
    18. Toscano, Francesca, 2020. "Does the Dodd-Frank Act reduce the conflict of interests of credit rating agencies?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    19. Hu, Xiaolu & Shi, Jing & Wang, Lafang & Yu, Jing, 2020. "Foreign ownership in Chinese credit ratings industry: Information revelation or certification?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    20. Lamar Pierce & Jason Snyder, 2015. "Unethical Demand and Employee Turnover," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 131(4), pages 853-869, November.

    More about this item

    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:oup:rcorpf:v:11:y:2022:i:4:p:815-848.. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/rcfs .

    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.