Losing funds or losing face? Reputation and accountability in the credit rating industry
通过实验发现，财务声誉只能部分约束评级机构，而引入问责机制能有效减少评级膨胀，两者结合可形成强有力的控制机制。
Despite widespread criticism, credit ratings continue to be commissioned and paid for by the firms they ought to scrutinize, raising concerns about the reliability of these issuer-paid ratings. We use an experiment to evaluate whether financial reputation concerns can effectively alleviate rating inflation and find that they are only partially sufficient to discipline rating agencies. However, introducing accountability mechanisms into the rating process effectively reduces rating inflation and almost extinguishes it in our model. Our results emphasize that financial reputation and accountability are important but different factors, which combined can effectively alleviate rating inflation and therefore provide a powerful mechanism of control over rating agencies.