We investigate the stakeholder theory of capital structure from the perspective of a firm's relations with its employees. We find that firms that treat their employees fairly (as measured by high employee[hyphen (true graphic)]friendly ratings) maintain low debt ratios. This result is robust to...

We investigate the stakeholder theory of capital structure from the perspective of a firm's relationships with its employees. We find that firms that treat their employees fairly (as measured by high employee-friendly ratings) maintain low debt ratios. This result is robust to a variety of model...

We examine two competing views regarding the impact of competition among credit rating agencies on rating quality: the view that rating agencies do not sacrifice their reputation by inflating firm ratings and the view that competition among rating agencies arising from the conflict of interest...