Do credit ratings affect the information content of corporate disclosure? Using novel data on rating analysts to obtain exogenous variation in rating information, we find that greater uncertainty in credit ratings increases the quality of information disclosed by the firm. This is consistent with the firm attempting to reduce overall uncertainty about value by improving the quality of its own disclosure. We further show that improved disclosure is beneficial to firms. Our results are consistent with theories in which improvements in one type of information can crowd out other types, and they suggest that policies aimed at improving rating accuracy may, in fact, reduce the quality of corporate disclosure.

中文翻译：

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信用评级信息对披露质量的影响

信用评级是否会影响公司披露的信息内容？使用评级分析师的新数据来获得评级信息的外生变化，我们发现信用评级的更大不确定性会提高公司披露的信息质量。这与公司试图通过提高自身披露的质量来降低价值的整体不确定性是一致的。我们进一步表明，改进的披露对公司有利。我们的结果与理论一致，其中一种信息的改进可以排挤其他类型的信息，并且它们表明旨在提高评级准确性的政策实际上可能会降低公司披露的质量。