Despite Standard and Poor's long-standing claim that cash flow is a critical aspect of its rating decisions, the credit rating literature has failed to document a significant relation between credit rating and cash flow measures. A possible explanation of this discrepancy is that the rating agency weighs operating cash flow differently between investment-grade and speculative-grade issuers. Performing an ordered probit analysis of a panel of firms from 1989 to 2006, we find operating cash flow

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... s positively associated with credit ratings for speculative-grade issuers, but not for investment-grade issuers. In contrast, accrual-based earnings are found to be positively associated with credit ratings, but only for investment-grade firms. Our study thus solves a discrepancy between industry documents and the academic literature.