ARE RATING AGENCIES STILL CREDIBLE AFTER THE SUBPRIME CRISIS?

Reputational concerns should discipline credit rating agencies (CRAs), eliminate any conflicts of interest, and motivate them to provide unbiased ratings. However, the recent financial crisis confirms models of CRAs’ behavior that predict inflated ratings for complex products and during booms. We test whether CRAs suffered a reputational damage for this behavior. We find strong support in the data for our hypothesis. The stock price reaction to rating revisions is significantly lower after the financial crisis, particularly in the financial sector. In multivariate tests, we find that the stock price reaction is lower, on average, in the post-crisis period by 2.3%.