סמינר במימון חשבונאות

Bo Becker, Stockholm School of Economics, and CEPR 

We study the dynamics of credit ratings after Standard & Poor's (S&P) was shut out of a large segment of the commercial mortgage-backed securities

(CMBS) ratings market following a procedural mistake. Exploiting the fact that most CMBS securities have ratings from multiple agencies, we show that S&P

subsequently eased its standards, in particular for large deals and for deals from important issuers, relative to other agencies. This coincided with a partial recovery

in volume. The results are consistent with the view that an agency can regain market share after suffering reputational damage by issuing optimistic ratings.