Financial reporting and disclosure are potentially important means for management to
communicate firm performance and governance to outside investors. We provide a …

This study assesses the validity of widespread criticisms of the large,“nationally recognized”
credit rating agencies (CRAs). The accounting scandals of 2000-02, in particular the highly …

Prior research on the determinants of credit ratings has focused on rating agencies' use of
quantitative accounting information, but the there is scant evidence on the impact of textual …

This is the first study that uses Merton's (1974) option pricing model to compute default
measures for individual firms and assess the effect of default risk on equity returns. The size …

The authors conduct the first systematic analysis of the determinants and impact of the
sovereign credit ratings assigned by the two leading US agencies, Moody's Investor …

Using both a market‐based and an accrual‐based measure of conservatism, we find that
firms facing more severe conflicts over dividend policy tend to use more conservative …

A company's credit default swap spread is the cost per annum for protection against a
default by the company. In this paper we analyze data on credit default swap spreads …

This paper examines to what extent credit ratings directly affect capital structure decisions.
The paper outlines discrete costs (benefits) associated with firm credit rating level …

Using a novel dataset that records individual debt issues on the balance sheets of public
firms, we demonstrate that traditional capital structure studies that ignore debt heterogeneity …

The credit rating industry has historically been dominated by just two agencies, Moody's and
Standard & Poor's, leading to long-standing legislative and regulatory calls for increased …