Rating shopping and rating inflation in Israel

Inna Bakalyar and Koresh Galil ()

International Review of Financial Analysis, 2014, vol. 33, issue C, 270-280

Abstract: Firms may exploit the option of choosing among different rating agencies in order to pick the highest rating offered. This possibility, known as rating shopping, is relatively limited on the US corporate bond market because the two main rating agencies (S&P and Moody's) rate virtually all large bond issuers. In this study, we use the data on corporate bond ratings assigned by two Israeli rating agencies affiliated with S&P and Moody's during the period 2004–2012. We show that while one agency (Midroog) systematically assigned higher ratings, the ratings of the other agency (S&P-Maalot) were inflated due to rating shopping. However, despite the many features that encourage rating inflation, the resulting distortion was relatively small (one notch). This may be a fair price for maintaining a competitive rating industry.

Keywords: Corporate bonds; Credit ratings; Rating agencies; Rating shopping; Rating inflation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G01 G24 G28 G33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521914000428
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:finana:v:33:y:2014:i:c:p:270-280

DOI: 10.1016/j.irfa.2014.03.005

Access Statistics for this article

International Review of Financial Analysis is currently edited by B.M. Lucey

More articles in International Review of Financial Analysis from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().