Over the past five years the world has witnessed a spectacular boom in asset prices. This
paper reviews different explanations for this phenomenon, and argues that future financial …

This paper will explore how the financial regulatory structure propelled three credit rating
agencies—Moody's, Standard & Poor's (S&P), and Fitch—to the center of the US bond …

This paper investigates the spectacular rise and fall of structured finance. The essence of
structured finance activities is the pooling of economic assets like loans, bonds, and …

This article analyzes the role in the credit crisis of the processes by which market
participants produce knowledge about financial instruments. Employing documentary …

Credit rating agencies (CRAs) are accused of bearing a strong responsibility for contributing
to the subprime crisis by having been deliberately too lax in the ratings of some structured …

In this survey we provide an overview of the subprime mortgage securitization process and
the seven key informational frictions which arise. We discuss how market participants work …

Many identify inflated credit ratings as one contributor to the recent financial-market turmoil.
We develop an equilibrium model of the market for ratings and use it to examine possible …

Rating agencies have become more conservative in assigning corporate credit ratings over
the period 1985 to 2009; holding firm characteristics constant, average ratings have dropped …

Over the last two years, the United States has observed, with some horror, the explosion and
collapse of entire segments of the housing market, especially those driven by subprime and …

Analyzing 916 collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), we find that a top credit rating agency
frequently made positive adjustments beyond its main model that amounted to increasingly …