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This paper aims to propose an innovative blockchain-based system enabling implementation of a bond-pays model in credit rating industry. Issuer-pays model has led to conflict of interest resulting in rating shopping and inflation. Alternative business models have their own problems, e.g. investor-pays model suffers from “free rider” and public dissemination challenges, whereas government-controlled business models can lead to market distortion. Bond-pays model has been difficult to implement owing to operational difficulties in managing co-ordination amongst multiple entities involved, often with conflicting goals. Blockchain technology enables inter-organizational systems that foster trust amongst non-trusting entities, facilitating business functions such as credit rating to be carried out.

This paper outlines current processes in credit rating business that has led to repeated rating failures and proposes a new set of processes, leveraging capabilities of blockchain technology to enable implementation of an arms-length bond-pays model.

A proof-of-concept system, namely, rating chain has been designed to implement a small part of the proposed model to establish technical feasibility in a blockchain environment.

A fully functional blockchain-based system on bond-pays business model, if built and adopted, could impact how credit rating market functions currently and could contribute to a reduction in rating-related challenges.

The proposal to adopt blockchain technologies in implementing a bond-pays model in credit rating industry is a novel contribution.

The purpose of the article is to explain the significance of key features of the SEC’s new rules for credit rating agencies. Those rules include three key items: they prohibit the influence of sales or marketing considerations on criteria development; they include guidance that preserves the ability of ratings to serve as relative rather than absolute measures of credit risk; and they require cross-sector consistency of rating symbols. When they were released the significance of the rules was under-appreciated because of other simultaneous regulatory announcements.

The approach is to consider how effectively the rules address their target issues. In doing so the article explores how the final rules evolved from their original proposed form and from the statutory specifications in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act.

The new rules should promote the integrity of credit ratings in the future. They should be effective in reducing the influence of sales and marketing considerations on the development of rating criteria. In addition they should enhance rating integrity through superior cross-sector consistency in the meanings of rating symbols while allowing rating agencies to maintain their traditional emphasis on relative risk.

The authors are not aware of any similar work assessing the selected provisions of the new SEC rules for credit rating agencies.

The internationalization of retailing is increasing throughout the global service markets. Among many retail formats, the discount store is one of the fastest growing formats actively engaging internationalization. In managing retail firms in other cultures, understanding of local customers’ perceptions toward the retail formats is especially important. Shopping motives may be a function of retail format, cultural, economic and social environment. Prior studies on shopping motives, however, have focused on Western cultures and on a shopping mall format. This study provides an exploratory examination of Korean discount shoppers’ shopping motives and their shopping typologies based on their shopping motives. A total of 624 questionnaires were administered to married female discount shoppers in Korea using the intercept survey method, and 467 completed questionnaires were available for data analysis. Factor analysis identified three shopping motives for patronizing discount stores: socialization, diversion and utilitarian. Four groups were identified using cluster analysis and labeled as leisurely‐motivated shoppers (n =152, 34.1 percent), socially‐motivated shoppers (n=49, 11.0 percent), utilitarian shoppers (n=132, 29.6 percent) and shopping‐apathetic shoppers (n=113, 25.3 percent). The four groups significantly differ in their appraisals of patronized store in some of store attributes, repatronage intention, and money spent in a shopping trip. Typologies of each cluster, discount retailing environments and managerial implications are discussed based on findings.

In July 2008 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published three proposals relating to the use of credit ratings in its rules and forms. The proposals were designed to address concerns that the misuse of credit ratings may have contributed to the current crisis. The SEC sought market feedback regarding the effect the removal of credit rating references may produce on the markets.

This article examines the use of ratings by various market constituents, analyzes the details of the SEC proposals, and reviews the provided feedback. The main finding is that the majority of the market participants opposed the SEC proposals. Fiduciaries and regulated entities are looking to regulators to offer a common measure of risk, stable, accurate and free of conflict of interests.

In English valuation practice, when valuing small to medium size (StMS) shops, rental analysis is undertaken using zoning based on the argument that shop fronts including window displays attract customers to shops and that most trading takes place in the internal frontage area making it the most valuable part of shops. Albeit zoning has been critiqued, it remains the preferred method of rental analysis. The paper aims to answer two research questions: are shop fronts including window displays the only factor that attracts customers to shops? And is the frontage space within shops the area most trading takes place?

The exploratory qualitative research methodology was used, and primary data collected by observing 178 shops in selected five shopping areas. The observational data were complemented with the use of secondary data.

The study has shown that shop fronts are not the only factor attracting clientele to shops as there are other varied factors including location, availability of Internet and hoardings. There is no evidence to suggest most goods in shops are displayed at the frontage space that attract most customers to that area, thereby, making the area the most valuable part, which decreases backwards.

These findings coupled with extant research evidence implies zoning can lead to under or over valuation of StMS shops (which is not good for retail real estate (RE) management or market), and turnover generated from shops is the overarching determinant of rental values in valuation.

This is the first time the very foundation/underpinning principles of zoning have been subjected to scrutiny in England.

Rising occupational costs, unit shop oversupply and falling retail sector profits have generated demands for changes to the current valuation and leasing procedures. Tests the accuracy of rental value estimation at review by identifying the actual residual value of occupation to existing tenants, and quantifies demand volume requirements at different levels of rental increase so that the interpretation of transactional evidence can be set in an actual demand volume context by selecting two shopping centres – Brent Cross and MetroCentre – for audit. Concludes that the long‐running dispute between landlords and tenants over rent review valuations is a market information problem that can be resolved only by the release of local sales data.

Going shopping is a major source of relaxation as well as a household chore. Associated with females, the activity is under pressure due to time constraints, changing social roles and technological advances. In this paper, the impact of changing social pressures on going shopping is examined among married households. Key constructs are sex and shopping context which determine shopping responsibility among household members. Based on a large scale survey that included statistically viable numbers of male as well as female respondents, the study finds a great deal of consensus regarding shopping responsibility among the sampled households. Although men are playing a significant role in shopping activities, particularly shopping for household groceries, shopping remains a gendered activity but it is not a pleasureless activity. We conclude that the supermarket is likely to be the retail setting where the changing roles will make the greatest impact.

This chapter differentiates the effect of solicited credit ratings (SCRs) and unsolicited credit ratings (UCRs) on bank leverage decision before and after the credit rating change. We find that banks with UCRs issue less debt relative to equity when the credit rating changes are approaching. Such findings are also prominent when bank credit rating moves from investment grade to speculative grade. After credit rating upgrades (downgrades), banks with unsolicited (solicited) credit ratings are inclined to issue more (less) debt relative to equity than those with solicited (unsolicited) credit ratings. We conclude that SCR and UCR changes lead to significantly different effects on bank leverage decision.

The current crisis in the mortgage securitization industry highlights significant failures in our models of how markets work and our political will, organizational capability, and ideological desire to intervene in markets. This article shows that one of the main sources of failure has been the lack of a coherent understanding of how these markets came into existence, how tactics and strategies of the principal firms in these markets have evolved over time, and how we ended up with the economic collapse of the main firms. It seeks to provide some insight into these processes by compiling both historical and quantitative data on the emergence and spread of these tactics across the largest investment banks and their principal competitors from the mortgage origination industry. It ends by offering some policy proscriptions based on the analysis.

This paper aims to provide a theoretical explanation of why credit rating agencies typically disclose credit risk of issuers in classes rather than publishing the qualitative ranking those classes are based upon. Thus, its goal is to develop a better understanding of what determines the number and size of rating classes.

Investors expect ratings to be sufficiently accurate in estimating credit risk. In a theoretical model framework, it is therefore assumed that credit rating agencies, which observe credit risk with limited accuracy, are careful in not misclassifying an issuer with a lower credit quality to a higher rating class. This situation is analyzed as a Bayesian inference setting for the credit rating agencies.

A disclosure in intervals, typically used by credit rating agencies results from their objective of keeping misclassification errors sufficiently low in conjunction with the limited accuracy with which they observe credit risk. The number and size of the rating intervals depend in the model on how much accuracy the credit rating agencies can supply.

The paper uses Bayesian hypothesis testing to illustrate the link between limited accuracy of a credit rating agency and its disclosure of issuers’ credit risk in intervals. The findings that accuracy and the objective of avoiding misclassification determine the rating scale in this theoretical setting can lead to a better understanding of what influences the interval disclosure of major rating agencies observed in practice.