著者

永野 護

出版者

一般財団法人 アジア政経学会

雑誌

アジア研究 (ISSN:00449237)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.51, no.4, pp.50-64, 2005

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Reflecting on recent efforts to promote bond market development in East Asia, this paper focuses on the determinants of corporate credit rating behavior of US and regional credit rating agencies. The following implications are derived from an empirical analysis using corporate data from 1998 to 2002. First, the corporate interest coverage ratio is significantly related to the corporate rating behavior of US rating agencies, but is insignificant with respect to the rating decisions of local agencies. On the other hand, firm size significantly influences the rating decisions of regional agencies while it is insignificant with respect to US agencies. Furthermore, each of the four local credit agencies has an individual factor that determines corporate bond credit rating. This paper infers that this difference in determinants originates from various factors such as long-term experience in the rating business, ownership structures and historical business backgrounds.