Dear all,

I am currently working with a dataset involving firms credit ratings (dependent variable) and a list of firm characterisitcs (independent variables). The dataset contains yearly data for several companies covering a 20 years period. Since credit rating is an ordinal variable I would like to run an ordered probit regression as it was done in many studies in the past. What I was wondering is if due to the panel nature of my data I must use xtoprobit or if I can also use a normal oprobit. It seems to me that in previous studies the normal ordered probit was used rather than the random effect ordered probit and therefore I would like to hear your opinion on what would be better to use. Just to be clearer my data contains ID Company, Year, numerical credit rating, VAR1, VAR2, etc

I thank you very much in advance for your precious help and support.