Patrycja Chodnicka-Jaworska

The aim of the study is to examine the impact of the financial crisis caused by COVID-19 on chang­es in outlooks and credit ratings of major rating agencies. The research hypothesis was as follows: the financial crisis caused by COVID-19 negatively affected the change in outlooks and credit ratings of countries. The study used long-term and short-term credit ratings and outlooks collected from the Thomson Reuters / Refinitiv database regarding liabilities expressed in foreign currency and macroeconomic data from the International Monetary Fund databases, for 2010–2021. The analysis was carried out using ordered logit panel models. The presented results showed a weak significant im­pact of the COVID-19 pandemic on credit rating. The agency that changed its notes in connection with this situation is Standard & Poor’s (S&P). However, the attitude responded to the situation un­der investigation. During the crisis, country ratings have become less sensitive to growing debt, which may be dictated by widespread loosening of fiscal policy. The rate of GDP growth has a par­ticular impact during the COVID-19 period in the event of a change of outlook. Rising inflation is particularly dangerous in the age of pandemics. It may be related to monetary policy easing.

The basic goal of the article is to analyse the impact of the changes of banks’ credit ratings on the rates of return of banks’ shares. The following hypotheses have been formulated: first, a downgrade of a credit rating exerts statistically significant negative influence on the rate of return of banks’ shares. Secondly, the impact of the changes of credit ratings is greater in developed countries. The analysis has been conducted for European banks for the period of 1980–2015 using an event study method. The sample has been divided into subsamples according to: the downgrade and upgrade of credit ratings, membership in politico-economic institutions, and the development status of countries, on the basis of the data collected from Thomson Reuters. Dependent variables are taken as daily rates of returns and independent variables are the long-term issuer credit ratings proposed by S&P.