Using the passage of Dodd‐Frank and the US sovereign downgrade as quasi‐natural experiments, we examine the effect of credit rating conservatism on corporate tax avoidance. We find that treatment firms engage in more tax‐planning activities than control firms in both research settings. We further find that these effects are driven mainly by firms with large existing tax‐planning capacity, firms with decreased use of external financing, firm with more reliance on rating information, and firms with weak external monitoring using the large Dodd‐Frank sample. Overall, the findings provide evidence that credit rating conservatism plays a role in corporate tax‐avoidance decisions.

中文翻译：

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信用评级保守主义是否对企业避税至关重要？

使用多德-弗兰克（Dodd-Frank）和美国主权降级作为准自然实验，我们检验了信用评级保守性对公司避税的影响。我们发现，在这两个研究机构中，处理公司从事的税收筹划活动均比控制公司更多。我们进一步发现，这些影响主要是由现有税收筹划能力较大的公司，外部融资使用减少的公司，对评级信息的依赖度较高的公司以及使用大型Dodd-Frank样本的外部监控薄弱的公司驱动的。总体而言，这些发现提供了证据，表明信用评级的保守性在公司避税决策中发挥了作用。