The Federal Reserve Board eagle logo links to home page
Finance and Economics Discussion Series
Finance and Economics Discussion Series logo links to FEDS home page Testing Conflicts of Interest at Bond Rating Agencies with Market Anticipation: Evidence that Reputation Incentives Dominate
Daniel M. Covitz and Paul Harrison
2003-68


Abstract: This paper presents the first comprehensive test of whether well-known conflicts of interest at bond rating agencies importantly influence their actions. This hypothesis is tested against the alternative that rating agency actions are primarily influenced by a countervailing incentive to protect their reputations as delegated monitors. These two hypotheses generate a number of testable predictions regarding the anticipation of credit-rating downgrades by the bond market, which we investigate using a new data set of about 2,000 credit rating migrations from Moody's and Standard & Poor's, and matching issuer-level bond prices. The findings strongly indicate that rating changes do not appear to be importantly influenced by rating agency conflicts of interest but, rather, suggest that rating agencies are motivated primarily by reputation-related incentives.

Keywords: Rating agencies, bond market, conflicts of interest, reputation

Full paper (559 KB PDF)


Home | FEDS | List of 2003 FEDS papers
Accessibility
To comment on this site, please fill out our feedback form.
Last update: January 8, 2004