Biased towards home, drained towards banks. Do biases in analyst views and analyst composition affect credit rating quality?

在过去的15年里，穆迪、标准普尔和惠誉等主要信用评级机构受到了几波批评。亚洲危机、2000年代初的会计丑闻、次贷危机和欧元债务危机引发了公众辩论和学术研究。讨论的主要主题是，评级质量可能会受到市场结构和利益冲突的损害。因此，大多数改革提案都侧重于减少进入壁垒、改变激励结构和增加透明度。在这个实证研究项目中，我们希望阐明迄今为止很少受到关注的低评级质量的可能来源：与发行人子集有关的机构层面的偏见，以及分析师层面的偏见。对于前一种类型的偏见，我们想把重点放在评级行为的文化和政治驱动因素上，因为占主导地位的评级机构经常被指责错误地将他们的盎格鲁-撒克逊观点强加给国际发行人。对于后一种类型，我们将首先测试个别分析师观点的偏见是否会转化为有偏见的评级。这种分析将包括比机构一级的分析多得多的资料，例如个别分析员的文化或教育背景。我们还将研究分析师向其他雇主的转变是否会导致人才流失，从而使分析师队伍偏向于低质量。从我们的项目得出的结果将提供有关评级机构的客观性的重要见解。监管机构和评级机构都可以利用我们的研究结果来解决在企业和主权国家评级过程中观察到的任何不一致性。此外，债券市场投资者将了解信用评级是否存在偏差，如果存在偏差，程度有多严重。我们的研究结果与分析师特定的影响将是相关的内部组织的评级机构和他们的监管。例如，它们将有助于评估各机构是否应加强评级委员会维斯维斯首席分析师的作用，以及它们是否应建立具有文化多样性的评级委员会。最后，我们对人才外流的分析结果将为个别分析人员的作用提供更多的证据。如果出现人才外流，各机构可以考虑改变程序，以减轻其后果（例如加强评级委员会或更加重视量化模型）。在监管方面，人才外流效应对评估改革很重要，因为改革通过市场结构的变化导致机构利润的减少，因为这会使向分析师提供有吸引力的一揽子服务变得更加困难。

Over the last 15 years, the leading credit rating agencies such as Moody's, Standard and Poor's and Fitch have met several waves of criticism. The Asian crisis, the accounting scandals of the early 2000s, the subprime crisis and the Euro debt crisis have sparked both public debates and academic research. The dominant theme of the discussion is that rating quality can be impaired by market structure and conflicts of interest. Accordingly, most reform proposals focus on a reduction of entry barriers, a change of incentive structures, and an increase in transparency. In this empirical research project, we want to shed light on possible sources of low rating quality that have received little attention so far: biases at agency level that pertain to subsets of issuers, and biases on the analyst level. For the former type of bias we want to focus on cultural and political drivers of rating behavior, because the dominant agencies have often been accused of wrongly imposing their Anglo-Saxon perspective on international issuers. For the latter type, we will first test whether biases in the views of individual analysts translate into biased ratings. This analysis will include much more information than the one on the agency level, e.g. the cultural or educational background of individual analysts. We will also examine whether analyst transitions to other employers lead to a brain drain that biases the pool of analysts towards a low quality. Results derived from our project will give important insights regarding the objectivity of rating agencies. Both regulators and agencies could use our findings to address any inconsistency observed in the rating process of corporates and sovereigns. In addition, bond market investors would learn whether, and if yes how severely, credit ratings have been biased. Our results with respect to analyst-specific effects will be relevant for the internal organization of rating agencies and their regulation. For example, they will help to evaluate whether agencies should strengthen the role of the rating committee vis-à-vis the lead analyst, and whether they should establish culturally diverse rating committees. The outcome of our brain drain analysis, finally, will provide additional evidence on the role of individual analysts. If there is a brain drain, agencies could consider changes in processes in order to mitigate its consequences (e.g. strengthen the rating committee or give more weight to quantitative models). On the regulatory side, brain drain effects can matter for the evaluation of reforms that, through a change in market structure, lead to a reduction in agencies' profits, as this can make it more difficult to provide analysts with attractive packages.