IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/17238.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Are All Ratings Created Equal? The Impact of Issuer Size on the Pricing of Mortgage-backed Securities

Author

Listed:
  • Jie (Jack) He
  • Jun 'QJ' Qian
  • Philip E. Strahan

Abstract

We examine whether rating agencies (Moody's, S&P, and Fitch) reward large issuers of mortgage-backed securities, who bring substantial business, by granting them unduly favorable ratings. The initial yield on both AAA-rated and non-AAA rated tranches sold by large issuers is higher than that on similar tranches sold by small issuers during the market boom years of 2004-2006. Moreover, the prices of MBS sold by large issuers drop more than those sold by small issuers, and the differences are concentrated among tranches issued during 2004-2006. We conclude that large issuers receive more favorable ratings and that the market prices the risk of inflated ratings, especially during booming periods.

Suggested Citation

  • Jie (Jack) He & Jun 'QJ' Qian & Philip E. Strahan, 2011. "Are All Ratings Created Equal? The Impact of Issuer Size on the Pricing of Mortgage-backed Securities," NBER Working Papers 17238, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17238
    Note: CF
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w17238.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Acharya, Viral V. & Schnabl, Philipp & Suarez, Gustavo, 2013. "Securitization without risk transfer," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(3), pages 515-536.
    2. Ashcraft, A. & Goldsmith-Pinkham, P. & Vickery, J., 2010. "MBS Ratings and the Mortgage Credit Boom," Other publications TiSEM aea4b6fb-eb57-49d4-a347-f, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    3. Becker, Bo & Milbourn, Todd, 2011. "How did increased competition affect credit ratings?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(3), pages 493-514, September.
    4. Benmelech, Efraim & Dlugosz, Jennifer, 2009. "The alchemy of CDO credit ratings," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(5), pages 617-634, July.
    5. William P. Alexander & Scott D. Grimshaw & Grant R. McQueen & Barrett A. Slade, 2002. "Some Loans Are More Equal than Others: Third–Party Originations and Defaults in the Subprime Mortgage Industry," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 30(4), pages 667-697.
    6. Bar-Isaac, Heski & Shapiro, Joel, 2013. "Ratings quality over the business cycle," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 62-78.
    7. Ashcraft, Adam B. & Schuermann, Til, 2008. "Understanding the Securitization of Subprime Mortgage Credit," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 2(3), pages 191-309, June.
    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. Theurl, Theresia & Schaetzle, Dominik, 2011. "Ratingagenturen in der Kritik: Eine Analyse der Reformforderungen und -vorschläge," Arbeitspapiere 116, University of Münster, Institute for Cooperatives.

    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. He, Jie & Qian, Jun & Strahan, Philip E., 2011. "Are All Ratings Created Equal? The Impact of Issuer Size on the Pricing of Mortgage-Backed Securities," Working Papers 11-61, University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School, Weiss Center.
    2. Anna Bayona & Oana Peia & Razvan Vlahu, 2023. "Credit Ratings and Investments," Working Papers 776, DNB.
    3. Lawrence J. White, 2013. "Credit Rating Agencies: An Overview," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 5(1), pages 93-122, November.
    4. Mariano, Beatriz, 2012. "Market power and reputational concerns in the ratings industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 1616-1626.
    5. Efing, Matthias, 2015. "Arbitraging the Basel securitization framework: Evidence from German ABS investment," Discussion Papers 40/2015, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    6. Josephson, Jens & Shapiro, Joel, 2020. "Credit ratings and structured finance," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 41(C).
    7. Chen, Yongmin & Gu, Dingwei & Yao, Zhiyong, 2013. "Rating Inflation versus Deflation: On Procyclical Credit Ratings," MPRA Paper 51159, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. 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.
    9. Efing, Matthias & Hau, Harald, 2015. "Structured debt ratings: Evidence on conflicts of interest," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 46-60.
    10. Jess N. Cornaggia & Kimberly J. Cornaggia & John E. Hund, 2017. "Credit Ratings Across Asset Classes: A Long-Term Perspective," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 21(2), pages 465-509.
    11. Baghai, Ramin P. & Becker, Bo, 2018. "Non-rating revenue and conflicts of interest," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(1), pages 94-112.
    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. Efraim Benmelech & Jennifer Dlugosz, 2010. "The Credit Rating Crisis," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2009, Volume 24, pages 161-207, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Opp, Christian C. & Opp, Marcus M. & Harris, Milton, 2013. "Rating agencies in the face of regulation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 46-61.
    15. Jones, Laurence & Alsakka, Rasha & ap Gwilym, Owain & Mantovan, Noemi, 2022. "Regulating rating agencies: A conservative behavioural change," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    16. Patrick Bolton & Xavier Freixas & Joel Shapiro, 2012. "The Credit Ratings Game," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(1), pages 85-112, February.
    17. W. Scott Frame & Lawrence J. White, 2009. "Technological change, financial innovation, and diffusion in banking," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2009-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    18. Kraft, Pepa, 2015. "Do rating agencies cater? Evidence from rating-based contracts," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 264-283.
    19. Sergey Chernenko & Samuel G. Hanson & Adi Sunderam, 2014. "The Rise and Fall of Demand for Securitizations," NBER Working Papers 20777, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Kathleen Weiss Hanley & Gerard Hoberg, 2019. "Dynamic Interpretation of Emerging Risks in the Financial Sector," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(12), pages 4543-4603.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises
    • G2 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:17238. 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://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.