Are Credit Rating Agencies Useful?

Abstract or Introduction

This assignment will examine whether credit rating agencies can be regarded as useful. In order to do so, two given academic papers will be analysed and discussed, supplemented by further academic literature. The first of the two is a working paper by Efraim Benmelech called “Credit Ratings: Qualitative Versus Quantitative Information”. The second one is called “What’s Wrong with Credit Ratings” and written by Frank Partnoy. Before looking at these papers in greater detail, it is important to provide a general definition of CRAs. Gavras defines CRAs as “private companies [which] assess credit risk for companies and governments seeking to take out loans and issue fixed-income securities”. Arnold states that this risk assessment comes in the form of a rating, which represents the CRAs’ opinion of the rated entity’s creditworthiness, i.e. its “ability to repay its debt”. Both Gavras and Arnold remark that the rating ultimately affects the price and interest rate paid by the borrower on the debt instrument. Having generally defined CRAs, the authors of the two given papers also provide their own views. Both Benmelech and Partnoy agree with Gavras regarding the importance of CRAs in today’s credit markets and the strong influence these agencies have. They also agree that CRAs played a major part in the 2007/08 financial crisis. In his paper, Benmelech evaluates rating by S&P Global Ratings Inc. and concludes that they are vastly quantitative and, thus, can easily be predicted and substituted “by an algorithm that uses just ten financial variables”. On a similar note, Partnoy believes that rating methodologies are highly uninformative, that numerous reforms after the financial crisis have failed, and that the unchanged overreliance of investors and regulators on these ratings should be reduced.