Can the dual-rating regulation improve the rating quality of Chinese corporate bonds?

We developed a dual-reputational rating shopping model to introduce public and institutional reputations. Investor’s and regulator’s penalty rates are described as public and institutional reputations, respectively. We achieved the available conditions of single-rating and dual-rating regulations to prevent rating inflation in this model. To examine the regulatory effects of different types of regulations on Chinese corporate bond ratings, we utilize panel ordered logit models. Theoretical analysis and empirical tests show that, when the reputation effect is low, the single-rating regulation is better at improving rating quality, and when the reputation effect is high, the dual-rating regulation induces rating agencies to provide more accurate ratings. Compared to the regulatory effects of the single-rating and the multi-rating regulations, the dual-rating regulation most effectively improves the rating quality of corporate bonds and prevents rating inflation.