This paper examines the information content of firm ratings. We disentangle the relative contribution to firms' ratings of sovereign risks and of the individual firms' performance indicators employed by rating agencies. We reach three conclusions. First, the contribution of sovereign risk to...

Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have become quite profitable recently. As the largest shareholder, the state has not asked SOEs to pay dividends in the past. Therefore, some have suggested that the state should ask SOEs to pay dividends. Indeed, the Chinese government has adopted this...