Johannes Ottmar Beyenbach, Marc Steffen Rapp, Christian Strenger, Michael Wolff

• The Code Compliance Study 2019 examines the acceptance level of the current version of the German Corporate Governance Code (GCGC) within DAX and MDAX firms. The study analyses overall compliance, as well as the firms’ compliance behavior on the level of chapters, items and even single GCGC recommendations. In addition, the study examines the firms' governance quality based on four specially constructed governance indices that represent the key areas of governance (transparency, monitoring/control, incentives and diversity). Moreover, compliance behavior with respect to GCGC's suggestions as well as the relationship between firm characteristics and compliance levels is analyzed. Overall, the study presents a broad and comprehensive view on code compliance behavior of German listed firms. Keywords: corporate governance, German Corporate Governance Code, compliance, governance rating, Germany