We test if issuers of asset- and mortgage-backed securities receive rating favors from agencies with which they maintain strong business relationships. Controlling for issuer fixed effects and a large set of credit risk determinants, we show that agencies publish better ratings for those issuers that provide them with more bilateral securitization business. Such rating favors are larger for very complex structured debt deals and for deals issued during the credit boom period. Our analysis is based on a new deal-level rating statistic that accounts for the full distribution of tranche ratings below the AAA cut-off point of a structured debt deal.
This article presents a theoretical framework that combines virtues and strengths of the Capability Approach (CA) and Equality of Opportunity (EOp) approach for analyzing public policies that aim to improve individual wellbeing and social justice. We show that neither approach is sufficient on its own for this goal. It is particularly useful to combine the two approaches because the CA offers a positive way of thinking about what wellbeing is, while the EOp Approach provides more formal insights on how to configure public policies to achieve social justice and increase individual wellbeing from a normative perspective. We make the case that EOp in its original (ex-post) conception is too heavily centered on lifestyle outcomes and oblivious to individual heterogeneity. However, we argue that it contains elements that are compatible with the CA rationale from an ex-ante point of view. Individual efforts play a crucial conceptual role in our proposed combination because they influence and are influenced by individual capabilities. Our optimal policy for improving wellbeing with EOp is one that aims to equalize expected capabilities across different groups, characterized by circumstances, through a maximin algorithm. We provide a technical analysis of our optimal policy taking into account the influence of circumstances and policies on efforts and capabilities.
This paper assesses the impact of internal infrastructure and landlockedness on Central Asian trade. The impact of landlockedness on Central Asian's trade costs is split into several components, using a panel gravity equation estimated on a large sample of countries (167 countries over 1992-2004). Our findings highlight that an improvement in the own infrastructure of Central Asian countries from the level of the median Central Asian country to that of other landlocked countries would raise exports (imports) by a modest 2.4% (3.1%). By contrast, an improvement in Central Asian transit-country infrastructure to the level of the other landlocked countries would raise the representative CAC's exports by a whopping 49%. Other dimensions of landlockedness considered in this study are also great impediments to trade. Either diminishing the extra overland costs or enhancing the ability to negotiate sea access would significantly increase Central Asian trade, ‘'transit monopolies'' (single transit corridors) reducing trade significantly.
This paper provides evidence for a causal effect of equity prices on corporate investment and employment. We use fire sales by distressed equity funds during the 2007–2009 financial crisis to identify substantial exogenous underpricing. Firms whose stocks are most under- priced have considerably lower investment an d employment than industry peers not subject to any fire sale discount. The causal effect of underpric ing on investment is found to be largely concentrated on the most financially constrained firms.
