IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/boe/boeewp/265.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Asset pricing, asymmetric information and rating announcements: does benchmarking on ratings matter?

Author

Listed:
  • Spyros Pagratis

Abstract

Using an intertemporal model of asset pricing under asymmetric information, we demonstrate how public ratings about the quality of a risky asset could enhance information efficiency, albeit at a cost of higher asset price volatility. The analysis also draws implications for the use of ratings for benchmarking purposes, in particular, ratings-based capital requirements and an investment/subinvestment grade dichotomy depending on the rating of the asset. In this situation, allowing a class of market participants (eg pension funds) to hold an asset only if its rating exceeds a certain threshold may lead informed traders to overreact to news about fundamentals. In this case, ratings induce lower price efficiency and excessive asset price volatility.

Suggested Citation

  • Spyros Pagratis, 2005. "Asset pricing, asymmetric information and rating announcements: does benchmarking on ratings matter?," Bank of England working papers 265, Bank of England.
    • Handle: RePEc:boe:boeewp:265
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/research/Documents/workingpapers/2005/WP265.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Laura L. Veldkamp, 2006. "Media Frenzies in Markets for Financial Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 577-601, June.
    3. Franklin Allen & Stephen Morris & Hyun Song Shin, 2003. "Beauty Contests, Bubbles and Iterated Expectations in Asset Markets," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1406, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    4. Sargent, Thomas J., 1991. "Equilibrium with signal extraction from endogenous variables," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 245-273, April.
    5. Grossman, Sanford J & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1980. "On the Impossibility of Informationally Efficient Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(3), pages 393-408, June.
    6. Hellwig, Martin F., 1980. "On the aggregation of information in competitive markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 477-498, June.
    7. Holden, Craig W & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 1992. "Long-Lived Private Information and Imperfect Competition," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(1), pages 247-270, March.
    8. Diamond, Douglas W, 1985. "Optimal Release of Information by Firms," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(4), pages 1071-1094, September.
    9. Kyle, Albert S, 1985. "Continuous Auctions and Insider Trading," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1315-1335, November.
    10. Philippe Bacchetta & Eric Van Wincoop, 2006. "Can Information Heterogeneity Explain the Exchange Rate Determination Puzzle?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 552-576, June.
    11. Townsend, Robert M, 1983. "Forecasting the Forecasts of Others," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(4), pages 546-588, August.
    12. Diamond, Douglas W. & Verrecchia, Robert E., 1981. "Information aggregation in a noisy rational expectations economy," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 221-235, September.
    13. Hussman, John P., 1992. "Market efficiency and inefficiency in rational expectations equilibria : Dynamic effects of heterogeneous information and noise," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 16(3-4), pages 655-680.
    14. Foster, F Douglas & Viswanathan, S, 1993. "The Effect of Public Information and Competition on Trading Volume and Price Volatility," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(1), pages 23-56.
    15. Foster, F Douglas & Viswanathan, S, 1996. "Strategic Trading When Agents Forecast the Forecasts of Others," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(4), pages 1437-1478, September.
    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. Grothe, Magdalena, 2013. "Market pricing of credit rating signals," Working Paper Series 1623, European Central Bank.
    2. Deb, Pragyan & Manning, Mark & Murphy, Gareth & Penalver, Adrian & Toth, Aron, 2011. "Financial Stability Paper No 9: Whither the Credit Ratings Industry?," Bank of England Financial Stability Papers 9, Bank of England.
    3. Donato Masciandaro, 2013. "Sovereign debt: financial market over-reliance on credit rating agencies," BIS Papers chapters, in: Bank for International Settlements (ed.), Sovereign risk: a world without risk-free assets?, volume 72, pages 50-62, Bank for International Settlements.

    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. Philippe Bacchetta & Eric Van Wincoop, 2006. "Can Information Heterogeneity Explain the Exchange Rate Determination Puzzle?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 552-576, June.
    2. Spyros Pagratis, 2013. "Ratings Hardwiring and Asset Prices," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 80(320), pages 621-649, October.
    3. Michele Berardi, 2021. "Learning from prices: information aggregation and accumulation in an asset market," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 45-77, March.
    4. He, Hua & Wang, Jiang, 1995. "Differential Information and Dynamic Behavior of Stock Trading Volume," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 8(4), pages 919-972.
    5. Giovanni Cespa, 2008. "Information Sales and Insider Trading with Long‐Lived Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(2), pages 639-672, April.
    6. Vayanos, Dimitri & Wang, Jiang, 2013. "Market Liquidity—Theory and Empirical Evidence ," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1289-1361, Elsevier.
    7. Angeletos, G.-M. & Lian, C., 2016. "Incomplete Information in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1065-1240, Elsevier.
    8. George-Marios Angeletos & Chen Lian, 2016. "Incomplete Information in Macroeconomics: Accommodating Frictions in Coordination," NBER Working Papers 22297, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Naik, Narayan Y., 1997. "On aggregation of information in competitive markets: The dynamic case," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 21(7), pages 1199-1227, June.
    10. Ackert, Lucy F. & Church, Bryan K. & Zhang, Ping, 2018. "Informed traders’ performance and the information environment: Evidence from experimental asset markets," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 1-15.
    11. McNulty, Mark S. & Huffman, Wallace E., 1996. "Market equilibria with endogenous, hierarchical information," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 607-626, April.
    12. Philippe Bacchetta & Eric Van Wincoop, 2008. "Higher Order Expectations in Asset Pricing," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(5), pages 837-866, August.
    13. Boco, Hervé & Germain, Laurent & Rousseau, Fabrice, 2016. "Heterogeneous noisy beliefs and dynamic competition in financial markets," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 347-363.
    14. Makarov, Igor & Rytchkov, Oleg, 2012. "Forecasting the forecasts of others: Implications for asset pricing," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(3), pages 941-966.
    15. Walker, Todd B., 2007. "How equilibrium prices reveal information in a time series model with disparately informed, competitive traders," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 137(1), pages 512-537, November.
    16. Dimitri Vayanos & Jiang Wang, 2012. "Market Liquidity -- Theory and Empirical Evidence," NBER Working Papers 18251, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Verrecchia, Robert E., 2001. "Essays on disclosure," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1-3), pages 97-180, December.
    18. Ashish Arora & Amy Greenwald & Karthik Kannan & Ramayya Krishnan, 2007. "Effects of Information-Revelation Policies Under Market-Structure Uncertainty," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(8), pages 1234-1248, August.
    19. Blankespoor, Elizabeth & deHaan, Ed & Marinovic, Iván, 2020. "Disclosure processing costs, investors’ information choice, and equity market outcomes: A review," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2).
    20. Harris, Milton & Raviv, Artur, 1993. "Differences of Opinion Make a Horse Race," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(3), pages 473-506.

    More about this item

    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:boe:boeewp:265. 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: Digital Media Team (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/boegvuk.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.