Ratings Quality and Borrowing Choice
研究发现，当发行人付费的评级比投资者付费的基准评级更乐观时，投资者会质疑其质量并提高公司债券收益率，部分企业转而向知情中介借款以规避“柠檬折扣”。
ABSTRACT Past studies document that incentive conflicts may lead issuer‐paid credit rating agencies to provide optimistically biased ratings. In this paper, we present evidence that investors question the quality of issuer‐paid ratings and raise corporate bond yields where the issuer‐paid rating is more positive than benchmark investor‐paid ratings. We also find that some firms with favorable issuer‐paid ratings substitute public bonds with borrowings from informed intermediaries to mitigate the “lemons discount” associated with poor quality ratings. Overall, our results suggest that the quality of issuer‐paid ratings has significant effects on borrowing costs and the choice of debt.