Ayash and Rastad (2017) express several concerns about our 2014 analysis of private equity buyouts. We welcome their interest in our work but think their criticisms are off the mark. Some of their claims reflect a misunderstanding of the Census Bureau's Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) and...

<i>In response to a comment on this paper by <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3050984">Ayash and Rastad</a href> the authors have posted a comment which may be found <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3113272">here.</a href></i>