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Credit crisis

John P Hunt

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Credit Rating Agencies And The 'Worldwide Credit Crisis': The Limits Of Reputation, The Insufficiency Of Reform, And A Proposal For Improvement, John P. Hunt Jan 2009

Credit Rating Agencies And The 'Worldwide Credit Crisis': The Limits Of Reputation, The Insufficiency Of Reform, And A Proposal For Improvement, John P. Hunt

John P Hunt

The “worldwide credit crisis” has thrust credit rating agencies into the spotlight, with attention focused on their ratings of novel structured finance products. Policymakers have undertaken a number of initiatives intended to address perceived problems with such ratings – enhancing competition, promoting transparency, reducing conflicts of interest, and reducing ratings-dependent regulation. These approaches are all broadly consistent with the dominant academic theory of rating agencies, the “reputational capital” model, which is taken to imply that under the right circumstances a well-functioning reputation mechanism will deter low-quality ratings. The policy initiatives currently under consideration can be seen as efforts to fix …