Cette thèse examine les dossiers de crédit produits entre 1847 et 1872 par la succursale montréalaise de la Mercantile Agency, l’une des plus célèbres et puissantes agences d’évaluation de crédit en Amérique du Nord au 19e siècle. Le 19e siècle est notamment caractérisé par l’accélération de la commercialisation transatlantique. Montréal étant située géographiquement plus ou moins entre la Grande-Bretagne et les États-Unis, elle est au coeur des transformations économiques. Les institutions légales, commerciales et financières de la métropole doivent s’ajuster au contexte généralement associé à l’entrée dans le capitalisme. Le climat économique bouillonnant force effectivement les gouvernements à faire adopter des lois sur les faillites pour amoindrir les effets négatifs des créances irrécouvrables et pour encourager et soutenir la diffusion du crédit commercial. Plusieurs raisons, liées par exemple aux problèmes d’accessibilité, à la complexité et aux coûts engendrés par les procédures, font en sorte que les lois sont pourtant, aux yeux de la communauté marchande qui bénéficie des législations, inaptes à garantir pleinement le recouvrement du crédit. La thèse soutient que les agences d’évaluations constituent une réponse des gens d’affaires aux problèmes de l’asymétrie d’information que les gouvernements n’ont pas été en mesure de régler par la législation. Les agences établissent une forme d’autorégulation du crédit marchand. Elles proposent une estimation des risques que pose un potentiel débiteur. Pour conduire leur expertise, les enquêtes de crédit ont pour méthode de recueillir puis de faire une synthèse de l’opinion publique commerciale. Elles traduisent textuellement ce qui se dit sur les commerçants qui font l’objet d’une enquête. Les bureaux de crédit organisent, gèrent et diffusent à son réseau d’abonnés la réputation des commerçants qu’elle évalue. Ce système mène à la création d’une économie des réputations. À l’intérieur de cette structure, les réputations retranscrites dans les dossiers de crédits prescrivent les conditions d’emprunt aux yeux des créditeurs qui souscrivent aux services offerts par la Mercantile Agency. L’analyse, qui s’appuie sur les postulats de la « nouvelle histoire du capitalisme », explore cette économie des réputations construites par les agences qui influence les relations de crédits entre les prêteurs et l’emprunteur. Les dossiers de crédit conçoivent une forme de savoir qui a l’ambition d’avantager les conditions d’asymétrie de l’information en faveur des créditeurs. Dans les dossiers de crédit de cette époque, la réputation traduit donc le degré de solvabilité. Les différents chapitres décortiquent les modalités de cette forme d’organisations des réputations, les variables évoquées dans les évaluations, les principes et les vertus définissant la réputation commerciale et les tensions qui découlent de cet encadrement pionnier du crédit marchand. / This thesis examines the credit records between 1847 and 1872 of the Montreal branch of the Mercantile Agency, among the most important credit bureaus in 19th century North America. The 19th century saw the acceleration of transatlantic trade. Montreal, located between Great Britain and the United States, was at the crossroads of the economic expansion. In this period, commonly referred to as the transition to capitalism, the legal, commercial and financial institutions of the metropolis were forced to adjust. In the financial sector, the state was compelled to adopt bankruptcy laws to lessen the negative effects of bad debts and to encourage and support the spread of commercial credit. However, because of limited accessibility, and the complexity and costs of the procedure, the laws were unable to fully guarantee the recovery of loans and were deemed unsatisfactory by the business community. The thesis claims that the emergence of credit agencies responded to the needs of the business community to address problems of information asymmetry. These agencies, like the Mercantile Agency, established a type of self-regulation of commercial credit. They provided information on risk to lenders. To a large extent, the information gathered represented the opinion of the Montreal merchant community. The credit offices of the Mercantile Agency used this information to generate rankings of the credit worthiness of merchants. The information was disseminated to the Agency’s network of subscribers. In this fashion, the Agency contributed to the construction of an economy of reputations. The research, which is inspired by contributions to the new history of capitalism, explores the effects of the construction of the economy of reputations on the relationship between lenders and borrowers. I find that the structure of the relationship favored creditor over debtors. The chapters of the thesis describe the role of reputation in the creditor-debtor relationship, the determinants adopted to measure credit worthiness, and the tensions and conflicts that emerged in the economy of reputations.

This thesis consists of four independent chapters on bank capital regulation and the issue of unsolicited ratings.<p><p>The first chapter is introductory and reviews the motivation for regulating banks and credit rating agencies while providing a detailed overview of the thesis.<p><p>The second chapter uses a simultaneous equations model to analyze how banks from six G10 countries adjusted their capital to assets ratios and risk-weighted assets to assets ratio between 1988 and 1995, i.e. just after passage of the 1988 Basel Accord. The results suggest that regulatory pressure brought about by the 1988 capital standards had little effect on both ratios for weakly capitalized banks, except in the US. In addition, the relation between the capital to assets ratios and the risk-weighted assets to assets ratio appears to depend not only on the level of capitalization of banks, but also on the countries or groups of countries considered.<p><p>The third chapter provides Monte Carlo estimates of the amount of regulatory capital that EMU banks must hold for their corporate, bank, and sovereign exposures both under Basel I and the standardized approach to credit risk in Basel II. In the latter case, Monte Carlo estimates are presented for different combinations of external credit assessment institutions (ECAIs) that banks may choose to risk weight their exposures. Three main results emerge from the analysis. First, although the use of different ECAIs leads to significant differences in minimum capital requirements, these differences never exceed, on average, 10% of EMU banks’ capital requirements for corporate, bank, and sovereign exposures. Second, the standardized approach to credit risk provides a small regulatory capital incentive for banks to use several ECAIs to risk weight their exposures. Third, the minimum capital requirements for the corporate, bank, and sovereign exposures of EMU banks will be higher in Basel II than in Basel I. I also show that the incentive for banks to engage in regulatory arbitrage in the standardized approach to credit risk is limited.<p><p>The fourth and final chapter analyses the effect of soliciting a rating on the rating outcome of banks. Using a sample of Asian banks rated by Fitch Ratings, I find evidence that unsolicited ratings tend to be lower than solicited ones, after accounting for differences in observed bank characteristics. This downward bias does not seem to be explained by the fact that better-quality banks self-select into the solicited group. Rather, unsolicited ratings appear to be lower because they are based on public information. As a result, they tend to be more conservative than solicited ratings, which incorporate both public and non-public information.<p> / Doctorat en sciences économiques, Orientation économie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished