Are more informative credit ratings always preferred and how should regulators intervene to promote investment efficiency? To answer these questions, we develop a model in which a manager seeks financing for a project. The main frictions are that the manager is privately informed about the project’s quality and cannot commit not to divert resources away from it. This setting gives rise to a feedback effect in which creditors’ beliefs about whether the manager diverts resources can become self-fulfilling. A critical consequence of this feedback effect is that more precise ratings can be detrimental for investment efficiency. Intuitively, by revealing that a firm is of worse quality and increasing its cost of finance, more informative ratings strengthen the manager’s incentive to withdraw resources away from the project and default. We show that the regulation of credit rating agencies should be lenient during good times and strict during bad times.

是否总是优先选择提供更多信息的信用评级，监管机构应如何干预以提高投资效率？为了回答这些问题，我们开发了一个模型，在该模型中，经理寻求项目的融资。主要的摩擦是，经理会私下了解项目的质量，并且不能承诺不从中挪用资源。此设置会产生反馈效果，债权人对管理者是否转移资源的信念可以变成自我实现。这种反馈效应的一个关键后果是，更精确的评级可能会损害投资效率。直观地，通过揭示一家公司的质量较差并增加其融资成本，提供更多信息的评级会增强经理人从项目中撤出资源并违约的动力。