Feedback Effects of Rating Downgrades

Andras Fulop ()
Additional contact information
Andras Fulop: ESSEC Business School, Postal: Avenue Bernard Hirsch - B.P. 50105, 95021 CERGY-PONTOISE Cedex , FRANCE,, http://www.essec.edu

No DR 06016, ESSEC Working Papers from ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School

Abstract: This paper addresses whether credit rating downgrades feed back on the asset value of the downgraded companies, causing real losses. To investigate this issue we construct a structural credit risk model incorporating ratings and the feedback loss. To estimate the parameters of the model we develop a maximum likelihood estimator using time series of equity prices and credit ratings. Implementing the model on a sample of US public firms downgraded from investment grade to junk, we find strong support for the existence of feedback losses. First, estimated feedback losses are significant for a third of our sample with the cross-sectional averages of the feedback loss around 7 %. Second, the behavior of estimated asset volatilities around downgrades in real data is consistent with the predictions of our model. We observe a hump-shaped pattern of estimated asset volatilities when feedback is ignored. Using the feedback model, the hump-shaped pattern disappears. These findings suggest that ignoring feedback can lead to the appearance of changing asset volatility even when the real volatility is constant. Last, accounting for feedback helps in asset volatility prediction.

Keywords: Credit Ratings; Credit Risk; Distress Costs; Maximum Likelihood; Option Pricing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C22 G00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2006-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-rmg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.essec.fr/faculty/showDeclFileRes.do?declId=7052&key=__workpaper__ (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.essec.fr/faculty/showDeclFileRes.do?declId=7052&key=__workpaper__ [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.essec.edu/fr/faculty/showDeclFileRes.do?declId=7052&key=__workpaper__)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ebg:essewp:dr-06016

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ESSEC Working Papers from ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School ESSEC Research Center, BP 105, 95021 Cergy, France. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sophie Magnanou ().