IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbuset/v169y2021i1d10.1007_s10551-019-04260-2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Stakes Sensitivity and Credit Rating: A New Challenge for Regulators

Author

Listed:
  • Anthony Booth

    (University of Sussex)

  • Boudewijn Bruin

    (University of Groningen)

Abstract

The ethical practices of credit rating agencies (CRAs), particularly following the 2008 financial crisis, have been subject to extensive analysis by economists, ethicists, and policymakers. We raise a novel issue facing CRAs that has to do with a problem concerning the transmission of epistemic status of ratings from CRAs to the beneficiaries of the ratings (investors, etc.), and use it to provide a new challenge for regulators. Building on recent work in philosophy, we argue that since CRAs have different stakes than the beneficiaries of the ratings in the ratings being accurate, what counts as knowledge (and as having ‘epistemic status’) concerning credit risk for a CRA may not count as knowledge (as having epistemic status) for the beneficiary. Further, as it stands, many institutional investors (pension funds, insurance companies, etc.) are bound by law to make some of their investment decisions dependent on the ratings of officially recognized CRAs. We argue that the observation that the epistemic status of ratings does not transmit from CRAs to beneficiaries makes salient a new challenge for those who think current regulation regarding the CRAs is prudentially justified, namely, to show that the harm caused by acting on a rating that does not have epistemic status for beneficiaries is compensated by the benefit from them acting on a CRA rating that does have epistemic status for the CRA. Unlike most other commentators, therefore, we offer a defeasible reason to drop references to CRAs in prudential regulation of the financial industry.

Suggested Citation

  • Anthony Booth & Boudewijn Bruin, 2021. "Stakes Sensitivity and Credit Rating: A New Challenge for Regulators," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 169(1), pages 169-179, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:169:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s10551-019-04260-2
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-019-04260-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-019-04260-2
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10551-019-04260-2?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. ., 2004. "Market dynamics associated with credit ratings: a literature review," Financial Stability Review, Banque de France, issue 4, pages 77-93, June.
    2. Marco Pagano & Paolo Volpin, 2010. "Credit ratings failures and policy options [Cash-in-the-market pricing and optimal resolution of bank failures]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 25(62), pages 401-431.
    3. Bolton, Patrick & Freixas, Xavier & Shapiro, Joel, 2007. "Conflicts of interest, information provision, and competition in the financial services industry," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 297-330, August.
    4. Philippe Jorion, 2009. "Risk Management Lessons from the Credit Crisis," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 15(5), pages 923-933, November.
    5. 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.
    6. Steven Scalet & Thomas Kelly, 2012. "The Ethics of Credit Rating Agencies: What Happened and the Way Forward," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 111(4), pages 477-490, December.
    7. Lawrence J. White, 2010. "Markets: The Credit Rating Agencies," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 24(2), pages 211-226, Spring.
    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. Chiwitt, Ulrich, 2014. "Ratingagenturen - Fluch oder Segen? Eine kritische Bestandsaufnahme," Arbeitspapiere der FOM 48, FOM Hochschule für Oekonomie & Management.
    2. 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.
    3. Thomas Lagner & Dodozu Knyphausen‐Aufseß, 2012. "Rating Agencies as Gatekeepers to the Capital Market: Practical Implications of 40 Years of Research," Financial Markets, Institutions & Instruments, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 21(3), pages 157-202, August.
    4. Panagiotis K. Staikouras, 2012. "A Theoretical and Empirical Review of the EU Regulation on Credit Rating Agencies: In Search of Truth, Not Scapegoats," Financial Markets, Institutions & Instruments, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 21(2), pages 71-155, May.
    5. 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.
    6. Boudewijn de Bruin & Christian Walter, 2017. "Research Habits in Financial Modelling: The Case of Non-normality of Market Returns in the 1970s and the 1980s," Post-Print hal-04561125, HAL.
    7. Bar-Isaac, Heski & Shapiro, Joel, 2013. "Ratings quality over the business cycle," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 62-78.
    8. 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.
    9. Anil K. Kashyap & Natalia Kovrijnykh, 2016. "Who Should Pay for Credit Ratings and How?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(2), pages 420-456.
    10. Balios, Dimitris & Thomadakis, Stavros & Tsipouri, Lena, 2016. "Credit rating model development: An ordered analysis based on accounting data," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 122-136.
    11. Matthias Efing, 2012. "Bank Capital Regulation with an Opportunistic Rating Agency," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 12-19, Swiss Finance Institute.
    12. Aggarwal, Nidhi & Singh, Manish K. & Thomas, Susan, 2023. "Do decreases in Distance-to-Default predict rating downgrades?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    13. Chen, Yongmin & Gu, Dingwei & Yao, Zhiyong, 2013. "Rating Inflation versus Deflation: On Procyclical Credit Ratings," MPRA Paper 51159, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Kraft, Pepa & Xie, Yuan & Zhou, Ling, 2020. "The intraday timing of rating changes," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    15. Efing, Matthias & Hau, Harald, 2015. "Structured debt ratings: Evidence on conflicts of interest," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 46-60.
    16. Anna Bayona & Oana Peia & Razvan Vlahu, 2023. "Credit Ratings and Investments," Working Papers 776, DNB.
    17. 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.
    18. Yasir Riaz & Choudhry T. Shehzad & Zaghum Umar, 2021. "The sovereign yield curve and credit ratings in GIIPS," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 21(3), pages 895-916, September.
    19. Sumit Agarwal & Itzhak Ben-David & Vincent Yao, 2015. "Collateral Valuation and Borrower Financial Constraints: Evidence from the Residential Real Estate Market," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(9), pages 2220-2240, September.
    20. repec:mth:ijafr8:v:9:y:2019:i:1:p:209-228 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. 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.

    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:kap:jbuset:v:169:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s10551-019-04260-2. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.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.