文档介绍：3 Overview of Credit Reporting Systems
There are several different types of information intermediaries in financial
markets such as rating agencies, commercial reporting agencies or public
credit registries. Standard & Poor’s, Fitch or Moody’s are rating agencies
in capital markets that evaluate large corporate borrowers or even countries
(see Estrella et al. 2000, Hickman 1958, Sylla 2002). In most cases, these
agencies rely on publicly available information that is evaluated quantita-
tively and qualitatively. The historical research on these agencies is more
advanced than that on consumer credit reporting agencies. For this matter,
these types of information intermediaries are excluded from the following
discussion. Another type of registry is mercial reporting agency
that collects information on firms. Madison (1974) identifies the English
Guardians Society for the Protection of Trade against Swindlers and
Sharpers of 1776 as predecessor of such agencies. The Mercantile Agency,
mercial reporting firm, opened its doors in 1841 in New York
(Madison 1974: 164). Before this kind of service arrived, gossip among
bankers as well as relationship lending prevailed. panies are
also excluded from this analysis as there are already many accounts on
these types of intermediaries (Kallberg and Udell 2003, Madison 1974,
Norris 1978, and Olegario 2003). There are three different types of credit
reporting systems identifiable:
¾ Dual systems: public credit register and private credit bureaus;
¾ Private systems: only private credit bureaus; and
¾ Public systems: only a public register.
What path a country takes in terms of the development of a credit reporting
system depends on historical factors that will be explained in greater detail
below. In general, it holds that public and private credit registers are in
many plementary and do play different roles. As will be clearer
below both are different in terms of their