IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/not/notcfc/15-04.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Credit Rating Agency, Preliminary Ratings and Contact Disclosure

Author

Listed:
  • Marta Allegra Ronchetti

Abstract

A recent amendment to the European Regulation on credit rating agencies requires that they disclose any issuers' request of initial reviews. This paper constructs a model of preliminary ratings and uses it to investigate the effect of contact disclosure. In this setting, the CRA issues a preliminary rating. After receiving this indicative rating, the entrepreneur has the opportunity to either purchase a full report at a cost or to remain unrated. It is shown that when there is no evidence of preliminary contact four types of equilibria can arise. In two of them the entrepreneur ignores the CRA, while in the other two the CRA either issues only positive preliminary or only negative ones and the entrepreneur is responsive to the CRA's opinion. When there is disclosure of the contact between the CRA and the entrepreneur, the CRA ends up acting overconfidently more often and for lower values of the fee. This results in more projects of lower quality, accessing the final rating stage and possibly getting funded. The payoff in the conservative case shrinks because of the reputation term, providing new incentives and causing the behavioural shift. Allowing for unrated projects partial funding emphasizes even further this tendency.

Suggested Citation

  • Marta Allegra Ronchetti, 2015. "Credit Rating Agency, Preliminary Ratings and Contact Disclosure," Discussion Papers 2015/04, University of Nottingham, Centre for Finance, Credit and Macroeconomics (CFCM).
    • Handle: RePEc:not:notcfc:15/04
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cfcm/documents/papers/cfcm-2018-02.pdf
    File Function: Revised Version 2018-02
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Patrick Bolton & Xavier Freixas & Joel Shapiro, 2012. "The Credit Ratings Game," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(1), pages 85-112, February.
    2. Martin Pollrich & Lilo Wagner, "undated". "Informational opacity and honest certication," BDPEMS Working Papers 2013001, Berlin School of Economics.
    3. Sergei Kovbasyuk, 2013. "Seller - paid Ratings," EIEF Working Papers Series 1330, Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF), revised Nov 2013.
    4. Marco Ottaviani & Peter Norman Sørensen, 2006. "Reputational cheap talk," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(1), pages 155-175, March.
    5. Strausz, Roland, 2005. "Honest certification and the threat of capture," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 23(1-2), pages 45-62, February.
    6. 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.
    7. 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.
    8. Roland Benabou & Guy Laroque, 1992. "Using Privileged Information to Manipulate Markets: Insiders, Gurus, and Credibility," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(3), pages 921-958.
    9. Mariano, Beatriz, 2012. "Market power and reputational concerns in the ratings industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 1616-1626.
    10. Freixas, Xavier & Laux, Christian, 2011. "Disclosure, transparency, and market discipline," CFS Working Paper Series 2011/11, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).
    11. Bar-Isaac, Heski & Shapiro, Joel, 2013. "Ratings quality over the business cycle," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 62-78.
    12. Rablen, Matthew D., 2013. "Divergence in credit ratings," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 12-16.
    13. Stolper, Anno, 2009. "Regulation of credit rating agencies," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(7), pages 1266-1273, July.
    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.
    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. Marta Allegra Ronchetti, 2018. "Preliminary credit ratings and contact disclosure," Discussion Papers 2018/02, University of Nottingham, Centre for Finance, Credit and Macroeconomics (CFCM).
    2. Marta Allegra Ronchetti, 2018. "What if I knew you did it? An analysis of preliminary ratings’ disclosure under competition," Discussion Papers 2018/09, University of Nottingham, Centre for Finance, Credit and Macroeconomics (CFCM).
    3. 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.
    4. Loerke, Petra & Niedermayer, Andras, 2018. "On the effect of aggregate uncertainty on certification intermediaries’ incentives to distort ratings," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 20-48.
    5. Ozerturk, Saltuk, 2014. "Ratings as regulatory stamps," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 17-29.
    6. Hirth, Stefan, 2014. "Credit rating dynamics and competition," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 100-112.
    7. 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.
    8. 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.
    9. Mariano, Beatriz, 2012. "Market power and reputational concerns in the ratings industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 1616-1626.
    10. Loerke, Petra & Niedermayer, Andreas, 2015. "Crises and Rating Agencies," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 521, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    11. Patrick Bolton & Xavier Freixas & Joel Shapiro, 2012. "The Credit Ratings Game," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(1), pages 85-112, February.
    12. Abad, Pilar & Ferreras, Rodrigo & Robles, M-Dolores, 2019. "Informational role of rating revisions after reputational events and regulation reforms," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 91-103.
    13. 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.
    14. Yun Wang & Yilan Xu, 2015. "Race to the Top: Credit Rating Bias from Competition," Working Papers 2015-05-12, Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics (WISE), Xiamen University, revised 10 Jul 2015.
    15. Becker, Bo & Milbourn, Todd, 2011. "How did increased competition affect credit ratings?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(3), pages 493-514, September.
    16. Farkas, Miklós, 2021. "Competition, communication and rating bias," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 637-656.
    17. Bar-Isaac, Heski & Shapiro, Joel, 2013. "Ratings quality over the business cycle," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 62-78.
    18. Josephson, Jens & Shapiro, Joel, 2020. "Credit ratings and structured finance," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 41(C).
    19. 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.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    rating agencies; preliminary ratings; reputation; disclosure;
    All these keywords.

    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:not:notcfc:15/04. 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: Hilary Hughes (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cfnotuk.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.