Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics:Information Acquisition and Mercantile Credit Reporting in the 19th Century U.S.

经济学博士论文研究：19世纪美国的信息获取与商业信用报告

• 批准号: 1324238
• 负责人: Gary Gorton
• 金额: $ 1.57万
• 依托单位: Yale University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-09-01 至 2014-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1324238&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Economics; Information

In the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, a main criticism of credit rating agencies (CRAs) has been that they produced biased ratings that led investors to overvalue structured financial products. Aside from regulatory concerns, biased ratings only have direct detrimental effects on the economy if investors know the ratings and use them to make investment decisions. Nevertheless, economic theory suggests that investors might not look at ratings during business cycle peaks if demand for idiosyncratic information decreases when aggregate returns increase. In general, we don't know what information investors have; often the best we can do is infer their information from trading actions. This inference is imprecise and does not indicate the source of the information. In order to evaluate the economic importance of CRAs and other information producers, we need to know more about what determines demand for their product.This dissertation research aims to (1) construct a unique direct measure of information acquisition from an information producer and (2) use this measure to identify the determinants of demand for information.The primary sources for this research are the credit report records of the Mercantile Agency. Founded in 1841, the Agency was one of the first mercantile credit-reporting firms and, along with its main competitor, J.M. Bradstreet & Company, established the system on which modern credit rating is based. Wholesalers subscribed to the service to gain information on the credit quality of their trading partners. The credit reports cover merchants for almost the entire United States between 1850 and the mid-1880s. A sample of the reports will be collected from the R.G. Dun & Company Credit Report Volumes, located in the Baker Library Historical Collections at the Harvard Business School. The main variable for this dataset will be a feature of the credit reports that has yet to be exploited by any scholars: indications of how many subscribers inquired about each report. These data will support two main research projects about how subscribers acquired information. If we assume that subscribers used the credit reports to make trading decisions, they should only have inquired after a report if they expected the information to impact their decisions. The first project will empirically identify the economic conditions under which subscribers acquired the most information. The preliminary evidence based on a small sample suggests that subscribers acquired information counter-cyclically. If this finding holds more generally, it implies that information was less valuable in boom periods relative to bust periods. The second project will investigate what types of firms the Mercantile Agency reported on relative to the entire market and how this supply changed over time. If the Agency learned about its subscribers' preferences over time, it should have improved at predicting the information its subscribers would find useful. Hence, the development of supply can shed light on the characteristics of firms for which credit reporting was most valuable.By studying the credit reports of the Mercantile Agency, this research will further our understanding of how people acquire information and the economic significance of the institutions that produce information. This research will contribute to the literature in economics on costly information acquisition by providing a direct measure of acquisition and contribute to the literature on the history of the Mercantile Agency by studying a key component of how the company operated.

2007-2008 年金融危机之后，对信用评级机构 (CRA) 的主要批评是，它们产生的评级存在偏见，导致投资者高估了结构性金融产品。除了监管问题之外，如果投资者了解评级并利用它们做出投资决策，有偏见的评级只会对经济产生直接的有害影响。然而，经济理论表明，如果总回报增加时对特殊信息的需求减少，投资者可能不会在商业周期高峰期间关注评级。一般来说，我们不知道投资者有哪些信息；通常我们能做的最好的事情就是从交易行为中推断出他们的信息。这个推论并不精确，也没有表明信息的来源。为了评估 CRA 和其他信息生产者的经济重要性，我们需要更多地了解决定其产品需求的因素。本论文研究的目的是 (1) 构建一种独特的从信息生产者获取信息的直接衡量标准，以及 (2) 使用该衡量标准来确定信息需求的决定因素。这项研究的主要来源是商业机构的信用报告记录。该机构成立于 1841 年，是最早的商业信用报告公司之一，与其主要竞争对手 J.M. Bradstreet & Company 一起建立了现代信用评级的基础系统。批发商订阅该服务是为了获取有关其贸易伙伴信用质量的信息。信用报告涵盖了 1850 年代至 1880 年代中期几乎整个美国的商人。报告样本将从 R.G. 收集。 Dun & Company 信用报告卷，位于哈佛商学院贝克图书馆历史馆藏。该数据集的主要变量将是信用报告的一个尚未被任何学者利用的特征：表明有多少订阅者查询了每份报告。这些数据将支持两个关于订阅者如何获取信息的主要研究项目。如果我们假设订阅者使用信用报告来做出交易决策，那么他们只有在预期信息会影响他们的决策时才应该查询报告。第一个项目将根据经验确定订户获取最多信息的经济条件。基于小样本的初步证据表明，订阅者以反周期方式获取信息。如果这一发现更普遍，则意味着相对于萧条时期，信息在繁荣时期的价值较低。第二个项目将调查商业机构报告的相对于整个市场的公司类型以及供应量如何随时间变化。如果该机构随着时间的推移了解其订户的偏好，它应该能够更好地预测其订户会发现有用的信息。因此，供应的发展可以揭示信用报告最有价值的公司的特征。通过研究商业机构的信用报告，本研究将进一步了解人们如何获取信息以及产生信息的机构的经济意义。这项研究将通过提供直接的获取衡量标准，为有关昂贵信息获取的经济学文献作出贡献，并通过研究公司运作方式的关键组成部分，为有关商业机构历史的文献做出贡献。