This paper examines how the information quality of ratings from an issuer-paid rating agency (Standard and Poor's) responds to the entry of an investor-paid rating agency, the Egan-Jones Rating Company (EJR). By comparing S&P's ratings quality before and after EJR initiates coverage of each firm, I find a significant improvement in S&P's ratings quality following EJR's coverage initiation. S&P's ratings become more responsive to credit risk and its rating changes incorporate higher information content. These results differ from the existing literature documenting a deterioration in the incumbents' ratings quality following the entry of a third issuer-paid agency. I further show that the issuer-paid agency seems to improve the ratings quality because EJR's coverage has elevated its reputational concerns.

This paper develops a dynamic rational expectations model of the credit rating process, incorporating three critical elements of this industry: (1) the rating agencies' ability to misreport the issuer's credit quality, (2) their ability to issue unsolicited ratings, and (3) their reputational concerns. We analyze the incentives of credit rating agencies to issue unsolicited credit ratings and the effects of this practice on the agencies' rating strategies. We find that issuance of unfavorable unsolicited credit ratings enables rating agencies to extract higher fees from issuers by credibly threatening to punish those that refuse to acquire a rating. Also, issuing unfavorable unsolicited ratings increases the rating agencies' reputation by demonstrating to investors that they resist the temptation to issue inflated ratings. In equilibrium, unsolicited credit ratings are lower than solicited ratings, because all favorable ratings are solicited; however, they do not have a downward bias. We show that, under certain conditions, a credit rating system that incorporates unsolicited ratings leads to more stringent rating standards.

We examine how securitization markets affect the role of banks as monitors in corporate lending. We find that banks active in securitization impose looser covenants on borrowers at origination. After origination, these borrowers take on substantially more risk than do borrowers of non-securitization-active banks. We use borrowers' geographic locations to instrument for borrower-lender matching to distinguish the effect of securitization on the banks' ex post monitoring from its effect on ex ante screening. We further investigate direct evidence of banks' monitoring role by examining their actions following covenant violations and find that securitization-active lenders are more likely to grant waivers without changing loan terms. Our results suggest that banks exert less effort on ex post monitoring when they can securitize loans.

This paper develops a dynamic rational expectations model of the credit rating process, incorporating three critical elements of this industry: (1) the rating agencies' ability to misreport the issuer's credit quality, (2) their ability to issue unsolicited ratings, and (3) their reputational concerns. We analyze the incentives of credit rating agencies to issue unsolicited credit ratings and the effects of this practice on the agencies' rating strategies. We find that issuance of unfavorable unsolicited credit ratings enables rating agencies to extract higher fees from issuers by credibly threatening to punish those that refuse to acquire a rating. Also, issuing unfavorable unsolicited ratings increases the rating agencies' reputation by demonstrating to investors that they resist the temptation to issue inflated ratings. In equilibrium, unsolicited credit ratings are lower than solicited ratings, because all favorable ratings are solicited; however, they do not have a downward bias. We show that, under certain conditions, a credit rating system that incorporates unsolicited ratings leads to more stringent rating standards.