Accounting Information Quality,Credit Rating And Bond Credit Spread

In recent years,the bond market has developed rapidly and the scale of issuance has been expanding.Its development improves the proportion of direct financing of enterprises,alleviates the financing difficulty of enterprises,and makes enterprises full of vitality.But at the same time,the problem of credit risk can not be ignored.In the bond market,we mainly measure credit risk by bond credit spread.In order to ensure the healthy development of bond market,bond credit spread can effectively reflect the quality of accounting information is a big premise.Generally speaking,bond investors will evaluate their credit risk and the investment value of the issued bonds with reference to the accounting information of the issuing company,and high-quality accounting information will make investors trust the information more.But in fact,most bond investors can't study the relevant information one by one for the sake of cost-effectiveness.In this case,the involvement of credit rating agencies as information intermediaries is particularly important.The rating agency will collect,analyze and process the relevant information of the issuing company,give the rating judgment,and guarantee the reliability of the information provided by the issuing company to a certain extent,reduce the information asymmetry between the issuing company and the investors,so that the accounting information quality can be reasonably reflected in the bond credit spread,and alleviate the adverse effects of agency problems.However,we find that there is a prevalence of rating buying in the current market,and there is a phenomenon of high rating or even bubble.This makes investors question the quality of credit rating.Therefore,does the quality of accounting information affect the bond credit spread? Does credit rating really play an intermediary role? All these problems need to be examined.This paper selects the listed companies that issued corporate bonds on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange from 2012 to 2018 as the initial samples.After making theoretical analysis on the agency problem of bond market and the intermediary function of credit rating,according to the three steps of the intermediary effect test procedure,we choose earnings quality to reflect the quality of accounting information,use subject credit rating to reflect credit rating,and discuss the relationship between accounting information quality and bond credit spread,the relationship between accounting information quality and credit rating,and the intermediary effect of credit rating in the relationship between accounting information quality and bond credit spread.The conclusions are as follows:(1)The quality of accounting information has a negative correlation with bond credit spread.High quality accounting information can alleviate the problem of information asymmetry faced by investors,help them make more accurate judgment on the risk and value of corporate bonds,and then narrow the bond credit spread.(2)The quality of accounting information is positively correlated with credit rating.This shows that credit rating agencies can recognize the distortion of accounting information caused by earnings management to a certain extent,and reflect the quality of accounting information on the level determination.(3)Credit rating has some intermediary effect in the relationship between accounting information quality and bond credit spread.Although credit rating reflects the quality of accounting information in some aspects,it does not fully show it.(4)On the basis of the above conclusions,we further find that the degree of intermediary effect of credit rating under state-owned property right is greater than that of non-state-owned property right.Finally,this paper puts forward corresponding suggestions for investors,credit rating agencies and bond companies,and also provides useful reference for the development of bond market.