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| Fixed Collocation of Intermediaries: “Cooperation” or “Collusion” ——Empirical Evidence from Bond Credit Ratings |
| DING Xuan, YANG Daoguang, ZHANG Xinmin
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Business School, Tianshui Normal University;
Business School, University of International Business and Economics;Beijing Enterprises’Global Management Research Centre, University of International Business and Economics |
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Abstract During the bond issuance process, intermediaries play an irreplaceable and significant role in addressing information asymmetry and reducing transaction costs. Meanwhile, their behavior has also affected the healthy and orderly development of the bond market. Since the implementation of the registration system for public issuance of corporate bonds in China on March 1, 2020, regulatory authorities have placed greater emphasis on the behavior of intermediaries, emphasizing the improvement of their professional quality and clarifying the division of responsibilities among intermediaries. Intermediaries are precisely the important link in maintaining the order of the financial market.
This paper focuses on the fixed collocation of intermediaries in China's bond market. It selects all corporate bonds, enterprise bonds and medium-term notes issued in China's exchange market and inter-bank market from 2008 to 2022 as the research objects, and explores in detail how the stable partnerships between credit rating agencies and accounting firms impact bond credit ratings. Empirical research has found that consistent with the more frequently a credit rating agency and an accounting firm collaborate, the lower the bond credit rating tends to be. Moreover, this conclusion still exists after controlling for endogeneity and conducting a series of robustness tests. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that when credit rating agencies have foreign capital backgrounds, the influence of the fixed collocations of intermediaries on bond credit ratings diminishes. Conversely, when accounting firms are among the international "Big 4", the impact of the fixed collocation of intermediaries on bond credit ratings is enhanced. Further research indicates that the greater fixed collocation between credit rating agencies and accounting firms, the higher information content in bond credit ratings, the fewer rating errors in bond credit ratings.
The theoretical and policy contributions of this research are as follows. First, it enriches the literature on the bond rating behavior of credit rating agencies. Different from the existing literature, this paper focuses on how the fixed collocation of bond market intermediaries affects the bond rating behavior of credit rating agencies, and proves that the fixed collocation of credit rating agencies and accounting firms is based on the cooperative effect theory, positively influence the bond rating behavior of credit rating agencies. Second, it has expanded the research on the consequences of the fixed allocation behavior of intermediaries in the capital market. This article, based on the Chinese bond market, elaborately explores the impact and consequences of the fixed collocation of credit rating agencies and accounting firms on bond credit ratings, which is conducive to revealing the crucial roles those intermediaries play in the bond market. Third, the research conclusions of this paper have significant implications for bond market intermediaries and regulatory authorities. For bond market intermediaries such as credit rating agencies and accounting firms, they should fully utilize the information advantages brought by intermediary cooperative relationships, optimize information communication channels, reduce transaction costs, improve service quality, and provide more genuine and effective decision-making references for bond market participants. For regulatory authorities, it is appropriate to encourage long-term cooperation between credit rating agencies and accounting firms,while also strengthen the supervision of intermediaries' behavior,in orderto enhance the quality of bond credit ratings and alleviate the long-standing phenomenon of credit rating inflation in China's bond market.
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Received: 29 July 2024
Published: 14 August 2025
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