Credit market turmoil is altering the global playing field in buyouts and acquisitions, a field rife with complaints in recent years about too much money chasing too few good deals. The credit shortage puts pressure on pricing and transactional quality, while also giving public companies a better shot at acquisitions that the more aggressive private equity firms might previously have snatched away. These are some practical implications of a paper presented at a recent Wharton conference sponsored by the Weiss Center for International Financial Research whose theme was “A Global Perspective on Alternative Investments.” The paper, titled “Leverage and Pricing in Buyouts: An Empirical Analysis,” documents the pricing anomalies that have characterized private equity transactions in recent years. Chief among them: The greater the leverage applied to a deal, the greater the price it has tended to command.  Acquisition by private equity firms has become increasingly common in recent years in both the U.S.…