Essays on the impact of financial crises on the reputation and behavior of rating agencies.

Summary This thesis studies the impact of the reputation of rating agencies on investors' perception of their announcements, as well as on their own behavior to disclose accurate and timely information. It consists of four chapters. In the first and second chapters, we study how investors' perceptions of CRA ratings change following the observation of a rating error. The results show that investors react little or not at all to announcement changes after observing erroneous ratings, suggesting that the poor performance of rating agencies negatively affects their reputation. In the third and fourth chapters, we study the determinants of the timeliness and accuracy of financial rating announcements. We find that the reputation of the rating agency affects the quality of the ratings. In particular, the higher the reputation, the more overpriced and untimely the rating appears.