Bank Ratings: What Determines Their Quality?

Harald Hau, Sam Langfield () and David Marques-Ibanez

No 12-31, Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series from Swiss Finance Institute

Abstract: This paper examines the quality of credit ratings assigned to banks in Europe and the United States by the three largest rating agencies over the past two decades. We interpret credit ratings as relative assessments of creditworthiness, and define a new ordinal metric of rating error based on banks’ expected default frequencies. Our results suggest that rating agencies assign more positive ratings to large banks and to those institutions more likely to provide the rating agency with additional securities rating business (as indicated by private structured credit origination activity). These competitive distortions are economically significant and help perpetuate the existence of ‘too-big-to-fail’ banks. We also show that, overall, differential risk weights recommended by the Basel accords for investment grade banks bear no significant relationship to empirical default probabilities.

Keywords: Rating Agencies; Credit Ratings; Conflicts of Interest; Prudential Regulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G21 G23 G28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2012-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban and nep-rmg
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

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http://ssrn.com/abstract=2154793 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Bank ratings: what determines their quality? (2013)
Working Paper: Bank ratings-What determines their quality? (2012)
Working Paper: Bank ratings: What determines their quality? (2012)
Working Paper: Bank ratings: what determines their quality? (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:chf:rpseri:rp1231

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