Incentive and constraint regulations of rating inflation in collusion over the separation of economic cycles - Markov rating shopping dual reputation model

PLoS One. 2018 Oct 17;13(10):e0205415. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0205415. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

Economic cycles may lead to changes in corporate bond credit ratings. This paper utilizes the Markov model to describe transition probability matrixes of economic states for the separation of economic cycles. We develop a new model, which we term the Markov rating shopping dual reputation model, incorporating two reputation effects. This model is well suited to analyze the conditions of the dual rating incentive regulation and the constraint regulation for preventing rating inflation in collusion among credit rating agencies. Then, we apply the Markov regime switching-vector auto-regression (MS-VAR) to estimate the transition probability matrixes of America, England, Japan and China. Based on the numerical analysis and the simulations, the results show that a dual rating regulation can prevent the collusion of inflated ratings, as well as increased rating fees with the separation of economic cycles; additionally, when separating the economic cycles, a constraint regulation is more effective at reducing the risk of rating inflation in collusion and regulatory cost.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • China
  • England
  • Gross Domestic Product / legislation & jurisprudence*
  • Humans
  • Inflation, Economic / legislation & jurisprudence*
  • Japan
  • Markov Chains
  • Models, Economic*
  • United States

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the National Social Science Fund (Research on Aggregation, Diffusion and Evolution of Chinese Economic Shocks from Sovereign Credit Rating Downgrade and Policy Choices (14BJY174) and Sichuan Province Training Project of Academic and Technological Leaders in 2016 (Y02028023601044). Additional funding was provided by Purdue Technology Company Ltd of Shenzhen in the form of salary to PZ. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. No additional external funding received for this study.