IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jfinin/v60y2024ics1042957324000421.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Can information imprecision be valuable? The case of credit ratings

Author

Listed:
  • Biswas, Sonny
  • Koufopoulos, Kostas
  • Thakor, Anjan V.

Abstract

We develop a model in which credit ratings are endogenously coarse relative to the underlying default probabilities, and ratings precision is countercyclical. Ratings coarseness arises from the profit-maximizing behavior of rating agencies, and coarseness may maximize welfare even when greater ratings precision is costlessly available. Because the private outcome may differ from the socially desirable outcome, a social planner can improve welfare by putting a ceiling (floor) on the rating agency’s fee if the desired outcome is coarseness (precision). Strikingly, when information production is costless, ratings coarseness is socially optimal, but it does not arise in the laissez-faire equilibrium, thus inviting regulatory intervention.

Suggested Citation

  • Biswas, Sonny & Koufopoulos, Kostas & Thakor, Anjan V., 2024. "Can information imprecision be valuable? The case of credit ratings," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jfinin:v:60:y:2024:i:c:s1042957324000421
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jfi.2024.101114
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1042957324000421
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jfi.2024.101114?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    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. Bar-Isaac, Heski & Shapiro, Joel, 2013. "Ratings quality over the business cycle," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 62-78.
    2. Bengt Holmstrom & Jean Tirole, 1997. "Financial Intermediation, Loanable Funds, and The Real Sector," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(3), pages 663-691.
    3. Guettler, Andre & Naeem, Mahvish & Norden, Lars & Van Doornik, Bernardus, 2024. "Pre-publication revisions of bank financial statements: A novel way to monitor banks?," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    4. 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.
    5. B. Bruno & I. Marino & G. Nocera, 2023. "Internal Ratings and Bank Opacity: Evidence from Analysts’ Forecasts," Post-Print hal-04322520, HAL.
    6. Skreta, Vasiliki & Veldkamp, Laura, 2009. "Ratings shopping and asset complexity: A theory of ratings inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(5), pages 678-695, July.
    7. Vives, Xavier, 1984. "Duopoly information equilibrium: Cournot and bertrand," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 71-94, October.
    8. Tri Vi Dang & Gary Gorton & Bengt Holmström & Guillermo Ordoñez, 2017. "Banks as Secret Keepers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(4), pages 1005-1029, April.
    9. Patrick Bolton & Xavier Freixas & Joel Shapiro, 2012. "The Credit Ratings Game," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(1), pages 85-112, February.
    10. Esther Gal-Or, 1988. "The Advantages of Imprecise Information," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 19(2), pages 266-275, Summer.
    11. Adam B. Ashcraft & Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham & James Vickery, 2010. "MBS ratings and the mortgage credit boom," Staff Reports 449, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    12. Manso, Gustavo, 2013. "Feedback effects of credit ratings," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(2), pages 535-548.
    13. 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.
    14. Martins, Theo Cotrim & Schiozer, Rafael & Linardi, Fernando de Menezes, 2023. "The information content from lending relationships across the supply chain," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    15. S Nageeb Ali & Nima Haghpanah & Xiao Lin & Ron Siegel, 2022. "How to Sell Hard Information," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 137(1), pages 619-678.
    16. 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.
    17. John M. Griffin & Dragon Yongjun Tang, 2012. "Did Subjectivity Play a Role in CDO Credit Ratings?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(4), pages 1293-1328, August.
    18. Matthieu Bouvard & Pierre Chaigneau & Adolfo De Motta, 2015. "Transparency in the Financial System: Rollover Risk and Crises," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(4), pages 1805-1837, August.
    19. 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.
    20. Matthieu Bouvard & Raphaël Levy, 2018. "Two-Sided Reputation in Certification Markets," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(10), pages 4755-4774, October.
    21. Ma, Kebin & Vadasz, Tamas, 2024. "The informational impact of prudential regulations," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    22. Bassi, Claudio & Behn, Markus & Grill, Michael & Waibel, Martin, 2024. "Window dressing of regulatory metrics: Evidence from repo markets," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    23. Millon, Marcia H & Thakor, Anjan V, 1985. "Moral Hazard and Information Sharing: A Model of Financial Information Gathering Agencies," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(5), pages 1403-1422, December.
    24. Alessandro Lizzeri, 1999. "Information Revelation and Certification Intermediaries," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 30(2), pages 214-231, Summer.
    25. Hirshleifer, Jack, 1971. "The Private and Social Value of Information and the Reward to Inventive Activity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 61(4), pages 561-574, September.
    26. Allen, Franklin, 1990. "The market for information and the origin of financial intermediation," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 3-30, March.
    27. Christine A Parlour & Uday Rajan, 2020. "Contracting on Credit Ratings: Adding Value to Public Information," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 33(4), pages 1412-1444.
    28. Darren J. Kisgen & Philip E. Strahan, 2010. "Do Regulations Based on Credit Ratings Affect a Firm's Cost of Capital?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(12), pages 4324-4347, December.
    29. Becker, Bo & Milbourn, Todd, 2011. "How did increased competition affect credit ratings?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(3), pages 493-514, September.
    30. Terovitis, Spyros, 2022. "Information disclosure and the feedback effect in capital markets," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    31. Francesco Sangiorgi & Chester Spatt, 2017. "Opacity, Credit Rating Shopping, and Bias," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(12), pages 4016-4036, December.
    32. Brunella Bruno & Immacolata Marino & Giacomo Nocera, 2020. "Internal Ratings, Non-Performing Loans, and Bank Opacity: Evidence from Analysts’ Forecasts," CSEF Working Papers 576, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy, revised 25 Jan 2023.
    33. Ram T. S. Ramakrishnan & Anjan V. Thakor, 1984. "Information Reliability and a Theory of Financial Intermediation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 51(3), pages 415-432.
    34. Goel, Anand M. & Thakor, Anjan V., 2015. "Information reliability and welfare: A theory of coarse credit ratings," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(3), pages 541-557.
    35. Farkas, Miklós, 2021. "Competition, communication and rating bias," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 637-656.
    36. Theo Cotrim Martins & Rafael Schiozer & Fernando de Menezes Linardi, 2023. "The Information Content from Lending Relationships Across the Supply Chain," Working Papers Series 577, Central Bank of Brazil, Research Department.
    37. 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.
    38. Sivan Frenkel, 2015. "Repeated Interaction and Rating Inflation: A Model of Double Reputation," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 250-280, February.
    39. Crawford, Vincent P & Sobel, Joel, 1982. "Strategic Information Transmission," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1431-1451, November.
    40. Bruno, Brunella & Marino, Immacolata & Nocera, Giacomo, 2023. "Internal ratings and bank opacity: Evidence from analysts’ forecasts," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    41. Esther Gal-Or, 1987. "First Mover Disadvantages with Private Information," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 54(2), pages 279-292.
    42. Anne Beatty & Jacquelyn Gillette & Reining Petacchi & Joseph Weber, 2019. "Do Rating Agencies Benefit from Providing Higher Ratings? Evidence from the Consequences of Municipal Bond Ratings Recalibration," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(2), pages 323-354, May.
    43. Michael Spence, 1973. "Job Market Signaling," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 87(3), pages 355-374.
    44. Christine A Parlour & Uday Rajan, 2020. "Contracting on Credit Ratings: Adding Value to Public Information," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 33(4), pages 1412-1444.
    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. Farkas, Miklós, 2021. "Competition, communication and rating bias," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 637-656.
    2. Terovitis, Spyros, 2022. "Information disclosure and the feedback effect in capital markets," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    3. 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.
    4. Anna Bayona & Oana Peia & Razvan Vlahu, 2023. "Credit Ratings and Investments," Working Papers 776, DNB.
    5. Itay Goldstein & Chong Huang, 2020. "Credit Rating Inflation and Firms' Investments," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 75(6), pages 2929-2972, December.
    6. 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.
    7. 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.
    8. 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.
    9. 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.
    10. Jess N. Cornaggia & Kimberly J. Cornaggia & Ryan D. Israelsen, 2020. "Where the Heart Is: Information Production and the Home Bias," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(12), pages 5532-5557, December.
    11. Sean Flynn & Andra Ghent, 2018. "Competition and Credit Ratings After the Fall," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(4), pages 1672-1692, April.
    12. Efing, Matthias & Hau, Harald, 2015. "Structured debt ratings: Evidence on conflicts of interest," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 46-60.
    13. 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.
    14. Kyungha (Kari) Lee & Stefan F. Schantl, 2019. "Financial Reporting and Credit Ratings: On the Effects of Competition in the Rating Industry and Rating Agencies' Gatekeeper Role," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(2), pages 545-600, May.
    15. Francesco Sangiorgi & Chester Spatt, 2017. "Opacity, Credit Rating Shopping, and Bias," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(12), pages 4016-4036, December.
    16. Goel, Anand M. & Thakor, Anjan V., 2015. "Information reliability and welfare: A theory of coarse credit ratings," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(3), pages 541-557.
    17. Brendan Daley & Brett Green & Victoria Vanasco, 2020. "Securitization, Ratings, and Credit Supply," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 75(2), pages 1037-1082, April.
    18. Singh, Amanjot & Singh, Harminder, 2022. "Insiders' stock pledging disclosures and credit ratings: Evidence from India," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    19. 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.
    20. Cornaggia, Jess & Cornaggia, Kimberly J. & Xia, Han, 2016. "Revolving doors on Wall Street," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(2), pages 400-419.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Credit ratings; Coarseness; Information precision; Adverse selection; Effort moral hazard;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • 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:eee:jfinin:v:60:y:2024:i:c:s1042957324000421. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622875 .

    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.