Credit Grade Research Articles

The Relation between Corporate Governance and Credit Risk, Bond Yields and Firm Valuation

This study examines the empirical relations between the governance structure of public corporations in the United States and the rating and pricing of their debt securities. We study an unbalanced panel of 775 unique U.S. firms from 2001 through 2007 and identify several statistically significant relations between corporate governance factors and credit ratings, bond spreads and firm values. We find that credit ratings are negatively related to the presence of antitakeover measures for firms with speculative grade ratings and positively related to the presence of antitakeover measures for firms with investment grade ratings. Moreover, we find that spreads are positively related to the presence of antitakeover measures, and this relation is significantly stronger for firms with less than investment grade credit ratings. Our findings also suggest that more stable boards, defined as having attributes relating to board tenure, director liability indemnification and classified board structures are related to higher credit ratings and lower bond spreads. We conjecture that boards with greater stability may be better positioned to take into consideration the longer term interests of the firm as a whole, thus benefiting the firm's creditors.

The Effects of Corporate Governance on Firms' Credit Ratings

Using a framework for evaluating corporate governance recently developed by Standard & Poor's, this study investigates whether firms that exhibit strong governance benefit from higher credit ratings relative to firms with weaker governance. We document, after controlling for risk characteristics, that firm credit ratings are: (1) negatively associated with the number of blockholders that own at least a 5% ownership in the firm; (2) positively related to weaker shareholder rights in terms of takeover defenses; (3) positively related to the degree of financial transparency; and (4) positively related to over-all board independence, board stock ownership and board expertise, and negatively related to CEO power on the board. We also provide evidence that CEOs of firms with speculative grade credit ratings are overcompensated to a greater degree than their counterparts at firms with investment grade ratings, and that the overcompensation exceeds the CEO's share of additional debt costs related to lower credit ratings. Our study provides insights into the characteristics of governance that are likely to affect the cost of debt financing and provides one explanation for why some firms continue to operate with weaker governance when doing so may mean lower credit ratings.

The Best of Both Worlds: A Hybrid Statistics Course

This study compares students' performance and attitudes in a hybrid (blend of online and face-to-face) model of Elementary Statistics and a traditional (face-to-face) model of the same course. Performance was measured by test, quiz, project, and final exam grades. Attitude was measured by the results of a course survey administered at the end of the semester. Both models of the course required the same textbook and statistical computer package, were taught by the same instructor, and had similar demographic characteristics such as gender, major, and classification. Significant differences were found in an extra credit grade comprised of points earned on interactive worksheets, and attitudes toward the course. There was no significant difference in students' performance as measured by grades. The value of hybrid courses as a viable option in distance education and their potential benefits to students and the educational institution are discussed.

Financing Choice and Liability Structure of Real Estate Investment Trusts

We conduct an analysis of public financial offerings of equity Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), with a focus on liability structure effects and whether or not firms target longer‐run debt ratios. Our major findings are that (1) proceeds from equity offers are more likely to fund investment, whereas public debt offer proceeds are typically used to reconfigure the liability structure of the firm; (2) public debt issuers are often capital constrained and target total leverage ratios to retain an investment grade credit rating; and (3) the preoffer liability structure affects the issuance choice decision, in that firms with higher preoffer levels of secured (unsecured) debt tend to issue equity (public debt). Other notable findings are that the market for public REIT debt is integrated with the broader debt markets and that higher credit quality firms issue longer‐maturing bonds.

Credit and Grade Transfer within the European Union's SOCRATES Programme: Unity in diversity or head in the sand?

Through its financial support of SOCRATES the European Union (EU) actively encourages university students to study for part of their undergraduate degree at a higher educational institution in another EU member state. This period of foreign study is then cross-credited to the home institution as if the study had occurred at the home institution. This paper examines the mechanism that has been created to facilitate credit and grade cross-crediting, the European Credit Transfer Scheme, and questions whether its use is undermined by the cultural and societal differences in assessment that exist across the EU. These are issues are considered from a range of perspectives before a complementary approach to the transfer of credit grades is proposed.

Pricing Default Swaps: Empirical Evidence

In this paper we compare market prices of credit default swaps with model prices. We show that a simple reduced form model with a constant recovery rate outperforms the market practice of directly comparing bonds' credit spreads to default swap premiums. We find that the model works well for investment grade credit default swaps, but only if we use swap or repo rates as proxy for default-free interest rates. This indicates that the government curve is no longer seen as the reference default-free curve. We also show that the model is insensitive to the value of the assumed recovery rate.

Liquidity and credit risk

The paper uses fuzzy measure theory to represent liquidity risk, i.e. the case in which the probability measure used to price contingent claims is not known precisely. This theory enables one to account for different values of long and short positions. Liquidity risk is introduced by representing the upper and lower bound of the price of the contingent claim computed as the upper and lower Choquet integral with respect to a subadditive function. The use of a specific class of fuzzy measures, known as g λ measures enables one to easily extend the available asset pricing models to the case of illiquid markets. As the technique is particularly useful in corporate claims evaluation, a fuzzified version of Merton's model of credit risk is presented. Sensitivity analysis shows that both the level and the range (the difference between upper and lower bounds) of credit spreads are positively related to the ‘quasi debt to firm value ratio’ and to the volatility of the firm value. This finding may be read as correlation between credit risk and liquidity risk, a result which is particularly useful in concrete risk-management applications. The model is calibrated on investment grade credit spreads, and it is shown that this approach is able to reconcile the observed credit spreads with risk premia consistent with observed default rate. Default probability ranges, rather than point estimates, seem to play a major role in the determination of credit spreads.

A Study of RASC Subprime Loan Prepayments, Delinquencies, and Losses

Subprime first-lien mortgages are securitized through the residential assets securities corporation. While they manifest differences with respect to loan age, credit grade, loan-to-value ratio, and vintage, both fixed-rate and adjustable-rate rasc mortgages exhibit positive convexity similar to that of the rest of the subprime market. There is some flexibility built into the credit underwriting guidelines through compensating factors related to (for example) delinquency versus debt-to-income ratios. This article describes collateral and performance differences in detail.

Estimating the term structures of corporate debt

This paper investigates the corporate bond market by estimating monthly interest rate term structures for investment grade credit classes using both S&P's and Moody's ratings. Term structures are modeled by a piecewise constant forward rate curve and estimated on noncallable coupon paying bonds issued by industrial firms. The iterative estimation algorithm minimizes the sum of squared errors between market prices and model prices while identifying and removing outliers from the sample. Although the forward rate model is successful at pricing corporate debt, additional factors are found to be significant at explaining the residual price error that remains after the forward rate model is fit to market prices. Six necessary no-arbitrage conditions are derived for the term structures of risky and risk-free debt. Occasionally, some of these no-arbitrage conditions are violated and a few violations are asymptotically statistically significant. Finally, trading strategies that capture mispricing in the corporate debt market and violations of no-arbitrage bounds are discussed.

The Determinants of the Maturity of Corporate Debt Issues

ABSTRACTWe document the determinants of the term to maturity of 7,369 bonds and notes issued between 1982 and 1993. Our main finding is that large firms with investment grade credit ratings typically borrow at the short end and at the long end and of the maturity spectrum, while firms with speculative grade credit ratings typically borrow in the middle of the maturity spectrum. This pattern is consistent with the theory that risky firms do not issue short‐term debt in order to avoid inefficient liquidation, but are screened out of the long‐term debt market because of the prospect of risky asset substitution.

The Determinants of the Maturity of Corporate Debt Issues

We document the determinants of the term to maturity of 7,369 bonds and notes issued between 1982 and 1993. Our main finding is that large firms with investment grade credit ratings typically borrow at the short end and at the long end of the maturity spectrum, while firms with speculative grade credit ratings typically borrow in the middle of the maturity spectrum. This pattern is consistent with the theory that risky firms do not issue short-term debt in order to avoid inefficient liquidation, but are screened out of the long-term debt market because of the prospect of risky asset substitution.