Intellectual structure, themes and disciplines of credit rating determination by rating agencies - a bibliometric analysis

Credit ratings, given by credit rating agencies, are the opinion about the creditworthiness and the likelihood of timely payment by the issuer. Various factors are analysed by rating agencies to assess the financial soundness of the debt issuer and arrive at ratings. This study presents a bibliometric review of the literature on determinants of corporate credit rating on a sample of 135 articles from January 2001 to June 2021. The articles are analysed to delineate influential aspects, themes, and conceptual, intellectual, and social structure of the knowledge base using different bibliometric techniques. The findings highlight the multi-disciplinary nature of the literature and theoretical foundation based on bankruptcy studies. Further, the keyword co-occurrence analysis suggests corporate social responsibility (CSR), environmental, social and governance (ESG), machine learning, managerial ability, and sustainability as emerging research topics in this field. The study explains the direction and future research scope that will be helpful for academicians, investors, regulators and policy formulators.