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The purpose of this paper is to examine whether credit ratings issued by Fitch predict auditor’s opinion for the Tunisian financial companies. It studies the association between Fitch’s credit rating and the audit opinion.

The whole population was analyzed. It is composed of 35 banks, leasing companies and factoring companies in Tunisia. The hand-collected data over 11 years (2005–2015) were used and a multiple-ordered logistic regression was performed.

The findings show that firms with a high short-term grade, a high long-term grade or a positive outlook are more likely to receive an unqualified audit opinion. In addition, companies with a stable outlook are more likely to receive an explanatory paragraph, a qualification or a going-concern opinion.

Studies examining the relationship between credit ratings and audit opinion are rare. This piece of research adds to knowledge about the relationship between different components of agency ratings and the auditor’s opinion in a developing country. Previous studies have investigated the case of developed countries and have been interested in the only impact of the long-term credit rating. This study analyzes three components of credit rating, namely long-term credit rating, short-term credit rating and rating outlook. In addition, it sheds light on the effect of various rating grades issued by rating agencies on the audit opinion. It gives a broader view of the relationship between credit ratings and audit opinion.

Credit rating agencies (CRAs) are perceived as highly influential in the financial system since their announcements can affect several players in the financial markets, from big private financial and non-financial companies and their financial markets experts to sovereign states. In this sense, this study investigates whether sovereign credit news issued by CRAs (measured by comprehensive credit rating (CCR) variables) affect the uncertainties about the exchange rate in the future (captured by the disagreement about exchange rate expectations). The study is relevant once there is evidence indicating that CRAs' assessments are responsible for affecting international capital flows and, thus, sovereign rating changes can affect the expectations formation process regarding the exchange rate. In addition, there is evidence indicating that the disagreement about exchange rate expectations affects the disagreement about inflation expectations, which brings consequences to policymakers.

The dependent variables are the disagreement in expectations about the Brazilian exchange rate for different forecast horizons, 12, 24 and 36 months ahead and the first principal component of theses series. On the other hand, the CCR variables are built upon the long-term foreign-currency Brazilian bonds ratings, outlooks and credit watches provided by the main CRAs. Estimates are obtained using ordinary least squares (OLS) and generalized method of moments (GMM); a dynamic analysis is performed using vector-autoregressive (VAR) through impulse-response functions.

Negative (positive) sovereign credit news, given by a rating downgrade (upgrade) and/or a negative (positive) outlook/watch status, increase (decrease) the disagreement about exchange rate expectations. This result holds for all disagreement and CCR variables.

The study brings practical implications to both private agents (mainly financial market experts) and policymakers. An important practical implication of the study concerns the ability of CRAs to affect the expectations formation process of financial market experts regarding the future behavior of the exchange rate. When a CRA issues a signal of improvement in a country's sovereign rating, this signal reflects the perception of improvement in macroeconomic fundamentals and reduction of uncertainties about the country's ability to honor its financial obligations, which therefore, facilitates the expectations formation process, causing a reduction in the disagreement about the exchange rate expectations. With respect to the consequences for policymakers, they will have more difficulty in guiding expectations in a country with a worse sovereign risk rating, where agents have difficulties in forming expectations and the disagreement in expectations is greater.

The study is the first to analyze the impact of CRAs' announcements on the disagreement about exchange rate expectations. Moreover, it connects the literature that investigates the effects of sovereign credit news on the economy with the literature that examines the main determinants of disagreement in expectations about macroeconomic variables.

A credit rating, as a single indicator on one consistent scale, is designed as an objective and comparable measure within a credit rating agency (CRA). While research focuses mainly on the comparability of ratings between agencies, this paper additionally questions empirically how CRAs meet their promise of providing a consistent assessment of credit risk for issuers within and between market segments of the same agency.

Exhaustive and robust regression analyses are run to assess the impact of market sectors and rating agencies on credit ratings. The examinations consider the rating level, as well as rating downgrades as a further measure of empirical credit risk. Data stems from a large global sample of Bloomberg ratings from 11 market sectors for the period 2010-2018.

The analyses show differing effects of sectors and agencies on issuer ratings and downgrade probabilities. Empirical results on credit ratings and rating downgrades can then be attributed to investment grade and non-investment grade ratings.

The paper contributes to current finance research and practice by examining the credit rating differences between sectors and agencies and providing assistance to investors and other stakeholders, as well as researchers, how issuers’ sector and rating agency affiliations act as relative metrics.

This paper aims to investigate the relation between the creditworthiness of US institutions of higher education and their student selectivity (i.e. demand and quality).

The authors study whether the impact of student selectivity differs across public vs private universities; across the credit quality of the given public university’s state; and across the level of state appropriations for the given public university.

The authors find that student quality and demand measures are significantly associated with their corresponding institution’s creditworthiness, especially for private universities.

For public universities the association is weak and, contrary to the expectations, does not depend on the state credit quality or level of state funding. The findings are robust to the inclusion of control variables.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether earnings quality attributes are reflected in AM best's financial strength ratings (FSRs), a measure widely used in the insurance industry to assess financial health.

Using a sample of insurance companies during the period 2006-2012, the authors measure the quality of reported earnings using three accounting-based measures: earnings persistence, accrual quality, and earnings smoothness.

The authors find that better earnings persistence, higher accrual quality, and less earnings smoothing are reflected in higher FSRs for both public and private insurers, with the magnitude of the effect greater for private insurers.

This is the first study of which the authors are aware that seeks to understand the impact, if any, of variations in the quality of reported financial information on the perceived financial health of firms by ratings agencies in the insurance industry. The authors also include a novel research design in assessing the determinants of financial health ratings. Users of FSRs should be aware of the impact of ownership structure on ratings agencies’ propensity to incorporate reported earnings attributes in their ratings.

This manuscript reports evidence on how debt-taking decisions of top management in a multi-country setting do affect credit rating scores assigned by credit rating agencies (CRAs) as global monitors of creditworthiness of borrowers. This aspect has been long ignored by researchers in the literature. The purpose of this paper is twofold. A test model is specified first using theories to connect debt-taking behavior to credit rating scores. Once that model helps to identify a number of statistically significant factors, the next step helps to identify threshold values at which the variables driving debt-taking behavior would worsen the credit rating scores as turning points of the thresholds.

The study identifies factors driving creditworthiness scores due to debt-taking behavior of countries and develops a correct research design to identify a model that explains (1) credit rating scores and the factors driving the scores and runs (2) panel-type regressions to test model fit. Having found factors driving debt-taking behavior by observed units, the next step identifies threshold values of factors at which point further debt-taking is likely to worsen credit rating risk of the observed units. This is a robustness test of the methodology used. The observed units are 20 countries with data series across 14 years.

First, new findings suggest there are about six major factors associated with debt-taking behavior and credit rating changes. Second, the model developed in this study is able to account for substantial variability while the identified factors are statistically significant within the normal p-values for acceptance of hypotheses. Finally, the threshold values of factors identified are likely to be useful for managerial decisions to judge the levels at which further debt-taking would worsen the credit rating scores of the observed units.

The observed units are from 20 countries over 14 years of annual data available on credit rating scores (privately obtained from Standard and Poor [S&P]). The sample represents major economies but did not include emerging countries. In that regard, it will be worthwhile to explore the debt-taking behavior of emerging economies in a future study using the methodology verified in this study.

The findings help add few useful guidelines for top management decisions. (1) There are actually factors that are associated with debt-taking behavior, so the authors now know these factors as guides for managerial actions. (2) The authors are free to state that the credit rating changes occur on objective changes in the factors found as significantly related to the debt-taking behavior. (3) The threshold values of key factors are known, so top management could use these threshold values of named factors to monitor if a debt-taking decision is going to push the credit rating to a worse score.

There are society-wide implications. Knowing that the world's debt level is high at US$2.2 for each gross domestic product (GDP) dollar across almost 200 countries, any knowledge on what factors help drive creditworthiness scores, thus credit riskiness, is revealed in this paper. Knowing those factors and also knowing the turning points of the factors – the threshold values – likely to worsen creditworthiness scores is a powerful tool for controlling excessive debt-taking by an observation unit included in this study (The dataset in this research can also be used to see inter-temporal movement on debt-taking in a future study).

In the authors' view, there are many studies on debt-taking behavior. But none has connected debt-taking on how (1) named factors are observable to management that affect credit rating changes and (2) if a factor affects creditworthiness, at which point of the factor value, the creditworthiness will flip to worsen the score. These aspects are seldom found in the literature. Hence, the paper is original with practical value at the global level.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the information spillover of sovereign rating changes on the market valuation of bank stocks in Africa.

First, the authors apply event study methodology to evaluate the stock market reaction of African bank stocks on the announcement of sovereign rating changes. Second, the cross sections of the abnormal returns are examined by multivariate regression analyses. Third, the findings are proved for robustness.

The authors investigate how 37 African banks react to 203 African sovereign rating announcements from the three leading credit rating agencies over the period 2010-2016 and find that negative announcements trigger the significant positive stock reactions of African banks, especially contributed by banks in the non-reviewed African countries. These unusual reactions can be explained by the low integration and the severe information asymmetry of African capital markets. The authors further locate the influencing factors of banks’ reactions and show that rating downgrades magnify the abnormal effects while the membership of the African Free Trade Zone mildens the stock market reactions.

Limitations are given by the limited sample size. There are only limited numbers of publicly listed African banks with sufficient trading data.

The paper argues for a critical dependency of African bank equity valuation in the case of sovereign debt rating changes in neighbor countries. This observation is important for the risk assessment of African banking assets.

The paper is the first to examine stock market reactions on sovereign rating announcements for the evaluation of capital market integration in Africa. It thereby underlines the usefulness of this simply to apply approach as an instrument for ongoing examining the progress in capital market development in emerging countries.

This study is a comparative analysis of the magnitude of economic growth as a key determinant of long-term foreign currency sovereign credit ratings in 30 countries in Africa, Europe, Asia and Latin America from 2010 to 2018.

The analysis applies the fixed effects (FE) and random effects (RE) panel least squares (PLS) models.

The authors find that the magnitude economic coefficients are marginally small for African countries compared to other developing countries in Asia, Europe and Latin America. Results of the probit and logit binary estimation models show positive coefficients for economic growth sub-factors for non-African countries (developing and developed) compared to negative coefficients for African countries.

These findings mean that, an increase in economic growth in Africa does not significantly increase the likelihood that sovereign credit ratings will be upgraded. This implies that there is lack of uniformity in the application of the economic growth determinant despite the claims of a consistent framework by rating agencies. Thus, macroeconomic factors are relatively less important in determining country's risk profile in Africa than in other developing and developed countries.

First, studies that investigate the accuracy of sovereign credit rating indicators and risk factors in Africa are rare. This study is a key literature at the time when the majority of African countries are exploring the window of sovereign bonds as an alternative funding model to the traditional concessionary borrowings from multilateral institutions. On the other hand, the persistent poor rating is driving the cost of sovereign bonds to unreasonably high levels, invariably threatening their hopes of diversifying funding options. Second, there is criticism that the rating assessments of the credit rating agencies are biased in favour of developed countries and there is a gap in literature on studies that explore the whether the credit rating agencies are biased against African countries. This paper thus explores the rationale behind the African Union Decision Assembly/AU/Dec.631 (XXVIII) adopted by the 28th Ordinary Session of the African Union held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in January 2017 (African Union, 2017), directing its specialized governance agency, the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), to provide support to its Member States in the field of international credit rating agencies. The Assembly of African Heads of State and Government highlight that African countries are facing the challenges of credit downgrades despite an average positive economic growth. Lastly, the paper makes contribution to the argument that the majority of African countries are unfairly rated by international credit rating agencies, raising a discussion of the possibility of establishing a Pan-African credit rating institution.

The creditworthiness of corporates is most visible in credit ratings. This paper aims to present an alternative credit rating measure independently of credit rating agencies. The credit rating score (CRS) is based on the credit default swap (CDS) market trading.

A CRS is developed which is a linear function of logarithmized CDS spreads. This new CRS is the first one that is completely independent of the rating agency. The estimated ratings are compared with ratings provided by Fitch Ratings for 310 European and US non-financial corporates.

The empirical analysis shows that logarithmized CDS spreads and issuer credit ratings by agencies have a linear relationship. The new CRS provides market participants with an alternative risk assessment, which is solely based on market factors, and does not rely on credit rating analysts. The results indicate that our CRS is able to anticipate agency ratings in advance. Moreover, the analysis shows that the trading volume has only a limited influence in the anticipation of rating changes.

This study shows a new approach to measure the creditworthiness of firms by analyzing CDS spreads. This is highly relevant for regulation, firm monitoring and investors.