IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/11961.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Credit Ratings and Market Information

Author

Listed:
  • Shapiro, Joel
  • Piccolo, Alessio

Abstract

How does market information affect credit ratings? How do credit ratings affect market information? We analyze a model in which a credit rating agency's (CRA's) rating is followed by a market for credit risk that provides a public signal - the price. A more accurate rating decreases market informativeness, as it diminishes mispricing and, hence, incentives for investor information acquisition. On the other hand, more-informative trading increases CRA accuracy incentives by making rating inflation more transparent. If the first effect is strong, policies that increase reputational sanctions on CRAs decrease rating inflation, but also decrease the total amount of information.

Suggested Citation

  • Shapiro, Joel & Piccolo, Alessio, 2017. "Credit Ratings and Market Information," CEPR Discussion Papers 11961, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:11961
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP11961
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    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. Finnerty, John D. & Miller, Cameron D. & Chen, Ren-Raw, 2013. "The impact of credit rating announcements on credit default swap spreads," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 2011-2030.
    2. Antoine Faure-Grimaud, 2004. "Public Trading and Private Incentives," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 17(4), pages 985-1014.
    3. Hull, John & Predescu, Mirela & White, Alan, 2004. "The relationship between credit default swap spreads, bond yields, and credit rating announcements," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(11), pages 2789-2811, November.
    4. Abarbanell, Jeffery S., 1991. "Do analysts' earnings forecasts incorporate information in prior stock price changes?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 147-165, June.
    5. Diamond, Douglas W, 1985. "Optimal Release of Information by Firms," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(4), pages 1071-1094, September.
    6. Arnoud W. A. Boot & Todd T. Milbourn & Anjolein Schmeits, 2006. "Credit Ratings as Coordination Mechanisms," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(1), pages 81-118.
    7. In-Koo Cho & David M. Kreps, 1987. "Signaling Games and Stable Equilibria," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(2), pages 179-221.
    8. Qi Chen & Wei Jiang, 2006. "Analysts' Weighting of Private and Public Information," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(1), pages 319-355.
    9. Kreps, David M. & Wilson, Robert, 1982. "Reputation and imperfect information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 253-279, August.
    10. Strausz, Roland, 2005. "Honest certification and the threat of capture," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 23(1-2), pages 45-62, February.
    11. Philip Bond & Itay Goldstein, 2015. "Government Intervention and Information Aggregation by Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(6), pages 2777-2812, December.
    12. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1982. "Predation, reputation, and entry deterrence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 280-312, August.
    13. Pingyang Gao & Pierre Jinghong Liang, 2013. "Informational Feedback, Adverse Selection, and Optimal Disclosure Policy," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(5), pages 1133-1158, December.
    14. Mathis, Jérôme & McAndrews, James & Rochet, Jean-Charles, 2009. "Rating the raters: Are reputation concerns powerful enough to discipline rating agencies?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(5), pages 657-674, July.
    15. Jean-Jacques Laffont & Jean Tirole, 1993. "A Theory of Incentives in Procurement and Regulation," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262121743, December.
    16. Mariano, Beatriz, 2012. "Market power and reputational concerns in the ratings industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 1616-1626.
    17. Ederington, Louis H. & Goh, Jeremy C., 1998. "Bond Rating Agencies and Stock Analysts: Who Knows What When?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 33(4), pages 569-585, December.
    18. Paolo Fulghieri & Günter Strobl & Han Xia, 2014. "The Economics of Solicited and Unsolicited Credit Ratings," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 27(2), pages 484-518.
    19. John C. Easterwood & Stacey R. Nutt, 1999. "Inefficiency in Analysts' Earnings Forecasts: Systematic Misreaction or Systematic Optimism?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(5), pages 1777-1797, October.
    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. Osano, Hiroshi, 2020. "Credit default swaps and market information," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 48(C).
    2. Goldman, Eitan & Martel, Jordan & Schneemeier, Jan, 2022. "A theory of financial media," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(1), pages 239-258.
    3. Basu, Kaushik & Sun, Haokun, 2022. "The power and influence of rating agencies with insights into their misuse," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    4. Yung‐Ling Chi & Sean Flynn, 2022. "The impact of credit rating information on disclosure quality," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 51(1), pages 73-115, March.

    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. Alessio Piccolo & Joel Shapiro, 2022. "Credit Ratings and Market Information," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 35(10), pages 4425-4473.
    2. Bar-Isaac, Heski & Shapiro, Joel, 2013. "Ratings quality over the business cycle," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 62-78.
    3. Josephson, Jens & Shapiro, Joel, 2020. "Credit ratings and structured finance," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 41(C).
    4. Jeon, Doh-Shin & Lovo, Stefano, 2013. "Credit rating industry: A helicopter tour of stylized facts and recent theories," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 643-651.
    5. José Jorge, 2016. "Sovereign Ratings and Investor Behavior," CEF.UP Working Papers 1601, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto.
    6. Heidrun Hoppe-Wewetzer & Christian Siemering, 2022. "Advertisement-financed credit ratings," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 46(1), pages 188-206, January.
    7. Yao, Zhiyong & Gu, Dingwei & Chen, Yongmin, 2017. "Rating deflation versus inflation: On procyclical credit ratings," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 46-64.
    8. Xia, Han, 2014. "Can investor-paid credit rating agencies improve the information quality of issuer-paid rating agencies?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(2), pages 450-468.
    9. Hoppe-Wewetzer, Heidrun C. & Siemering, Christian, 2020. "Advertisement-Financed Credit Ratings," CEPR Discussion Papers 14735, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Chen, Yongmin & Gu, Dingwei & Yao, Zhiyong, 2013. "Rating Inflation versus Deflation: On Procyclical Credit Ratings," MPRA Paper 51159, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Nelson Camanho & Pragyan Deb & Zijun Liu, 2022. "Credit rating and competition," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(3), pages 2873-2897, July.
    12. 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.
    13. Patrick Bolton & Xavier Freixas & Joel Shapiro, 2012. "The Credit Ratings Game," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(1), pages 85-112, February.
    14. Holden, Steinar & Natvig, Gisle James & Vigier, Adrien, 2012. "An Equilibrium Model of Credit Rating Agencies," Memorandum 01/2013, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    15. Kiesel, Florian, 2016. "The effect of credit and rating events on credit default swap and equity markets," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 81265, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    16. Jeon, Doh-Shin & Lovo, Stefano, 2011. "Reputation as an Entry Barrier in the Credit Rating Industry," IDEI Working Papers 675, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse, revised 25 May 2012.
    17. Hartman-Glaser, Barney, 2017. "Reputation and signaling in asset sales," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(2), pages 245-265.
    18. Fischer, Thomas, 2015. "Market structure and rating strategies in credit rating markets – A dynamic model with matching of heterogeneous bond issuers and rating agencies," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 39-56.
    19. Farkas, Miklós, 2021. "Competition, communication and rating bias," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 637-656.
    20. Brogaard, Jonathan & Koski, Jennifer L. & Siegel, Andrew F., 2019. "Do upgrades matter? Evidence from trading volume," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 54-77.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Credit ratings;

    JEL classification:

    • G24 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Investment Banking; Venture Capital; Brokerage
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation

    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:cpr:ceprdp:11961. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.