Creditworthiness risk over years: The evolution of credit rating standards

Abstract

AbstractThe last financial crisis has increased the attention into the business of credit rating agencies. In this paper, I investigate the evolution of credit rating standards to measure if rating agencies have moved to different standards over years. First, I present a rating regression model where I employ specific explanatory variables to measure how they impact on ratings outcome. Next, I examine long term issuer credit rating from 1985 to 2013 to analyze how the credit rating agencies have modified their standards over years. I focus on the dynamics of the time variable and I find credit rating agencies strengthen their standards over years since they assign more conservative issuer ratings, holding the companies stable characteristics.