We report on the current state and important older findings of empirical studies on corporate credit ratings and their relationship to ratings of other entities. Specifically, we consider the results of three lines of research: The correlation of credit ratings and corporate default, the...

With a large sample of public-to-private leveraged buyouts from 1980 to 2006, we find that LBO targets are equally likely to hold patents as other publicly-traded firms. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that LBOs reduce patent flows by one third. This reduction results from a...

The central aim of the article is company governance, i.e., researching governance of a company that does not want to be only financially successful but also direct its governance toward socially responsible governance. The article begins with the definition of "theoretical backgrounds," in...