The Credit Rating Industry: An Industrial Organization Analysis

Abstract

The June 1999 and January 2001 proposals by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Basel Committee on Banking Supervision to include borrowers' credit ratings in assessments of the adequacy of banks' capital have heightened general interest in the credit rating industry: Who the industry's firms are; what they do; how they do it; and what the consequences of their actions are. This paper uses the structure-behavior-performance paradigm of ``industrial organization'' to shed light on the credit rating industry and to provide a framework for arranging initial observations and developing questions for further analysis.