The Technology of Ratings Then and Now; Hiding in Plain Sight

Berry K. Wilson and John T. Donnellan

Financial Markets, Institutions & Instruments, 2016, vol. 25, issue 1, 49-74

Abstract: The subprime crisis seriously undermined the credibility of the rating agencies and their approach to analyzing credit risk. Along with other identified problems with bond ratings, this study investigates the issue that the technology used by the ratings agencies is at best dated and little changed since John Moody published his first bond ratings in 1909. The study compares the predictive accuracy of Moody's bond ratings with the structural modeling approach of Vassalou and Xing (2004), using railroad data from the Great Depression. Study results show that the structural modeling approach outperforms the expert judgment incorporated in Moody's bond ratings from that period.

Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/fmii.12035

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:wly:finmar:v:25:y:2016:i:1:p:49-74

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Financial Markets, Institutions & Instruments from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().