Comparison of Country Ratings of Credit Rating Agencies with MOORA Method

The three main credit rating agencies, Standard and Poor's, Moody's and Fitch, use a combination of economic, social and political factors to determine the capacity and current and future debt obligation of countries. This study contributes to literature in two ways. The first one is comparison of results obtained by rating countries on various macroeconomic variables using credit scores given by the three main credit rating agencies and using the MOORA method. The second one is the determination of how optimistic or pessimistic country-based results the three main credit rating agencies yield according to their estimates by macroeconomic variables. Among the three rating agencies, Moody's make the most optimistic estimates in terms of its rating of countries. Moody's is followed by Standard and Poor's, and the credit rating agencies that make the most pessimistic estimates is observed to be Fitch.