المستخلص: |
Credit rating agencies have become an essential part of the financial landscape. These private companies assess credit risk for companies and governments seeking to take out loans and issue fixed-income securities, such as bonds. Reliance on these agencies is so entrenched that prospective borrowers often must obtain a credit rating before they try to raise money in capital markets. This study complements previous research on the effects of credit ratings agencies on financial markets in emerging Economies. It attempts to examine the effects of sovereign rating changes on the stock markets of selected Arab league countries. We used a sample of 126 sovereign rating changes of ten rated Arab League countries since the first rating assigned to the country from 1996 till March 2011. To capture the dynamic effects around the time of changes in ratings, we use the technique of event studies. Insignificant abnormal returns were recorded either for each country or across all countries, suggesting that sovereign ratings are not considered as new information for stock market participants. We assumed that these results can be either attributed to inefficiency of the studied stock markets or the lag of the Credit Rating Agencies.
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