This bestselling and thoroughly classroom-tested textbook is a complete resource for finance students. A comprehensive and illustrated discussion of the most common empirical approaches in finance prepares students for using econometrics in practice, while detailed case studies help them understand how the techniques are used in relevant financial contexts. Worked examples from the latest version of the popular statistical software EViews guide students to implement their own models and interpret results. Learning outcomes, key concepts and end-of-chapter review questions (with full solutions online) highlight the main chapter takeaways and allow students to self-assess their understanding. Building on the successful data- and problem-driven approach of previous editions, this third edition has been updated with new data, extensive examples and additional introductory material on mathematics, making the book more accessible to students encountering econometrics for the first time. A companion website, with numerous student and instructor resources, completes the learning package.

Introductory Econometrics for Finance

We ask whether a two-country real business cycle model can account simultaneously for domestic and international aspects of business cycles. With this question in mind, we document a number of discrepancies between theory and data. The most striking discrepancy concerns the correlations of consumption and output across countries. In the data, outputs are generally more highly correlated across countries than consumptions. In the model we see the opposite.

/pdf/international-real-business-cycles-4imxbeqt0a.pdf

International Real Business Cycles

One of the most important developments over the past three decades has been the spread of liberal economic ideas and policies throughout the world. These policies have affected the lives of millions of people, yet our most sophisticated political economy models do not adequately capture influences on these policy choices. Evidence suggests that the adoption of liberal economic practices is highly clustered both temporally and spatially. We hypothesize that this clustering might be due to processes of policy diffusion. We think of diffusion as resulting from one of two broad sets of forces: one in which mounting adoptions of a policy alter the benefits of adopting for others and another in which adoptions provide policy relevant information about the benefits of adopting. We develop arguments within these broad classes of mechanisms, construct appropriate measures of the relevant concepts, and test their effects on liberalization and restriction of the current account, the capital account, and the exchange rate regime. Our findings suggest that domestic models of foreign economic policy making are insufficient. The evidence shows that policy transitions are influenced by international economic competition as well as the policies of a country's sociocultural peers. We interpret the latter influence as a form of channeled learning reflecting governments' search for appropriate models for economic policy.

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The Globalization of Liberalization: Policy Diffusion in the International Political Economy

Founding family ownership and the agency cost of debt

A complete resource for finance students, this textbook presents the most common empirical approaches in finance in a comprehensive and well-illustrated manner that shows how econometrics is used in practice, and includes detailed case studies to explain how the techniques are used in relevant financial contexts. Maintaining the accessible prose and clear examples of previous editions, the new edition of this best-selling textbook provides support for the main industry-standard software packages, expands the coverage of introductory mathematical and statistical techniques into two chapters for students without prior econometrics knowledge, and includes a new chapter on advanced methods. Learning outcomes, key concepts and end-of-chapter review questions (with full solutions online) highlight the main chapter takeaways and allow students to self-assess their understanding. Online resources include extensive teacher and student support materials, including EViews, Stata, R, and Python software guides.

/pdf/introductory-econometrics-for-finance-5bha97pwpi.pdf

n recent years, the demand for sovereign credit rat-ings—the risk assessments assigned by the creditrating agencies to the obligations of central govern-ments—has increased dramatically. More govern-ments with greater default risk and more companiesdomiciled in riskier host countries are borrowing in inter-national bond markets. Although foreign government offi-cials generally cooperate with the agencies, ratingassignments that are lower than anticipated often promptissuers to question the consistency and rationale of sover-eign ratings. How clear are the criteria underlying sover-eign ratings? Moreover, how much of an impact do ratingshave on borrowing costs for sovereigns?To explore these questions, we present the firstsystematic analysis of the determinants and impact of thesovereign credit ratings assigned by the two leading U.S.agencies, Moody’s Investors Service and Standard andPoor’s.

/pdf/determinants-and-impact-of-sovereign-credit-ratings-rsmnm45bwd.pdf

Determinants and Impact of Sovereign Credit Ratings

Investors and regulators have been increasing their reliance on the opinions of the credit rating agencies. This article shows that although the ratings provide accurate rank-orderings of default risk, the meaning of specific letter grades varies over time and across agencies. Noting that current regulations do not explicitly adjust for agency differences, the authors argue that a reassessment of the use of ratings and the adequacy of public oversight is overdue.

The Credit Rating Industry

The authors conduct the first systematic analysis of the determinants and impact of the sovereign credit ratings assigned by the two leading U.S. agencies, Moody's Investor Services and Standard and Poor's. Of the large number of criteria used by the two agencies, six factors appear to play an important role in determining a country's credit rating: per capita income, GDP growth, inflation, external debt, level of economic development, and default history. In addition, the authors find that sovereign ratings influence market yields - particularly those on non-investment-grade issues - independently of any correlation with publicly available information.

/pdf/determinants-and-impact-of-sovereign-credit-ratings-386gd4hn39.pdf

Many regulations use private sector credit ratings to determine investment prohibitions and capital requirements for institutional portfolio investments. These regulations implicitly assume that different agencies have equivalent rating scales, despite the fact that some agencies assign systematically higher ratings than others. We assess the appropriateness of these regulatory practices by testing whether observed rating differences reflect different rating scales or simply result from sample selection bias. Our analysis reveals only limited evidence of selection bias. We also ask what types of firms of firms are most likely to seek ratings from the agencies with higher rating scales. Our analysis uncovers no evidence that firms seek ratings from these agencies to clear specific regulatory hurdles or to reduce ex ante uncertainty about default risk.

http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~plegros/documents/classes/finance/Themes/Disclosure%20and%20Ratings/cantor1997jbf.pdf

Richard Cantor

Papers

Determinants and Impact of Sovereign Credit Ratings

The Credit Rating Industry

Determinants and Impact of Sovereign Credit Ratings

Differences of opinion and selection bias in the credit rating industry

The credit rating industry