tailieunhanh - How did increased competition affect credit ratings?

As in many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, the majority of poor smallholders in Malawi are left out of the agricultural extension and credit systems. These households, characterized by landholdings of less than 1 hectare and very low crop yields, are unable to grow enough food to feed themselves even though they focus much effort on producing food crops, especially maize. It has been argued that most of these farmers are too poor and cash-strapped to be able to benefit from any kind of access to credit and that, even if they received adequate supplies of the right in- puts, their land constraints are so severe that any. | HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL How did increased competition affect credit ratings Bo Becker Todd Milbourn Working Paper 09-051 Copyright 2008 2009 2010 by Bo Becker and Todd Milbourn Working papers are in draft form. This working paper is distributed for purposes of comment and discussion only. It may not be reproduced without permission of the copyright holder. Copies of working papers are available from the author. How did increased competition affect credit ratings Draft Date September 15 2010 T l T l 1 1rT- 11-W 4-11 Bo Becker and Todd Milbourn Abstract. The credit rating industry has historically been dominated by just two agencies Moody s and S P leading to longstanding legislative and regulatory calls for increased competition. The material entry of a third rating agency Fitch to the competitive landscape offers a unique experiment to empirically examine how in fact increased competition affects the credit ratings market. Increased competition from Fitch coincides with lower quality ratings from the incumbents rating levels went up the correlation between ratings and market-implied yields fell and the ability of ratings to predict default deteriorated. We offer several possible explanations for these findings that are linked to existing theories. Key words Credit ratings competition and reputation information quality Harvard Business School Becker and Washington University in St Louis Milbourn . Contact author s e-mail address bbecker@. We wish to thank Pierluigi Balduzzi Robert Battalio Doug Diamond Serdar Dinc Radhakrishnan Gopalan Robin Greenwood Burton Hollifield Edith Hotchkiss Dave Ikenberry Darren Kisgen Christian Leutz Joe Mason Atif Mian Michael Meltz Neil Pearson Mitch Petersen Joshua Pollet Raghuram Rajan Matthew Rhodes-Kopf Sébastien Michenaud Antoinette Schoar and Gary Witt as well as seminar participants at Helsinki DePaul-Chicago Federal Reserve the NBER 2008 Summer Meeting the NBER 2010 Summer Meeting on Credit Rating Agencies MIT Harvard .