In recent years, credit rating agencies have faced increased regulatory pressure and investor criticism for their ratings’ lack of timeliness. This study investigates whether and how rating agencies respond to such pressure and criticism. We find that the rating agencies not only improve rating timeliness, but also increase rating accuracy and reduce rating volatility. Our findings support the criticism that, in the past, rating agencies did not avail themselves of the best rating methodologies/efforts possible. When their market power is threatened by the possibility of increased regulatory intervention and/or reputation concerns, rating agencies respond by improving their credit analysis.

We provide more direct evidence on the causal relation between the quality of financial reporting and investment efficiency. We examine the investment behavior of a sample of firms that disclosed internal control weaknesses under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. We find that prior to the disclosure, these firms under-invest (over-invest) when they are financially constrained (unconstrained). More importantly, we find that after the disclosure, these firms’ investment efficiency improves significantly.

ABSTRACT We investigate the role played by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in monitoring fair value disclosures in regulatory filings. Specifically, we assess whether SEC action via the issuance of fair value comment letters to registrants is followed by reductions in uncertainty about the firms' fair value estimates. We hypothesize that registrants that receive a comment letter focusing on their fair value disclosure policies experience reductions in investor uncertainty regarding their fair value estimates in the post-letter period, compared to the pre-letter period. Supporting this prediction, we find that for the periods after the fair value comment letters, the associations between Level 2 and 3 fair value assets and our measures of uncertainty are significantly reduced. These findings are robust to a series of tests designed to ensure that we do not simply capture general changes in market uncertainty levels for firms investing in these types of assets. Our study contributes to the further understanding of market participants' perception of fair value disclosures by investigating the role of SEC enforcement. This finding is important given recent criticisms of fair value reporting emanating from the highest levels of government and industry. Data Availability: Data are available from public sources identified in the paper.

ABSTRACT: In this study, we examine some of the consequences of asset securitization. Specifically, using a sample of bank holding companies, we investigate whether the difficulty in assessing the true extent of risk transfer, between securitizing banks and investors in asset-backed securities, affects bank information uncertainty. We find that when market participants have a greater difficulty in estimating risk transfer, banks face greater information uncertainty (i.e., larger bid-ask spreads and analyst forecast dispersion). In addition, we find that this effect is mitigated for banks that operate in a higher quality information environment. We also find that banks that securitize financial assets have higher spreads and analyst forecast dispersion as compared to non-securitizing banks.

ABSTRACT We document multiple dimensions of usefulness of banks' interest income sensitivity disclosures. First, we find management-generated sensitivity measures are predictive of future realized changes in net interest income. Second, we find financial analysts' forecasts of net interest income reflect information provided by interest income sensitivity disclosures. Third, we find equity market responses to interest rate shocks as well as firms' interest rate betas are larger for banks with greater disclosed sensitivity of net interest income to interest rate changes. Across all of these tests, the informativeness of income sensitivity measures is incremental to that of regulatory data. These results suggest that interest income sensitivity disclosures are informative measures of interest rate risk. Our results contradict assertions that these disclosures are useless due to lack of relevance of income sensitivity, poor modeling techniques, and/or redundancy relative to regulatory data. JEL Classifications: G21; M41.