This research concerns relationships between effective IR and stock pricing andstock liquidity and analyst coverage. This thesis develops the IR literature byusing an original and focused measure of IR performance, numbers of firms'nominations for the Investor Relations Magazine IR awards...

The finance literature suggests that analysts’ stock recommendations have negligibleimpact on market prices. Some studies suggest this lack of market impact may be partlydriven by the affiliations between investment banks and the firms their brokerage armscover (conflicts of interest)....

This thesis examines the motivation by UK firms for one aspect for corporate philanthropy – support for the arts. The literature has shown that there is an increase in strategic philanthropy – business giving which is designed to meet the objectives of business and society, yet there is no...

The seminal market efficiency paradigm in finance is being increasingly challengedby evidence apparently inconsistent with its predictions. Such "anomalies" tend toshow that the market does not fully incorporate information upon its release in anunbiased way. Recent literature in finance...

This paper explores the market response to two apparently similar but in fact very different firm-specific bad-news events: 1) filing a strategic Chapter 11, and 2) filing a financially-motivated Chapter 11. We find that the market is unable to distinguish between the two in both the pre-event,...

Between June 2005 and October 2007, when it peaked, the Chinese stockmarket went up five-fold; it then went into freefall losing 70% of its value over the following year. Such a market price trajectory represents that of a classic stockmarket bubble. This paper seeks to explain what was going on...

Bankrupt firms' stock displays unique lottery-like characteristics: for only a few cents per stock one can engage in an investment strategy that offers a low probability of huge future reward, and a very high probability of a small loss. Kumar (2009 a) shows that this type of stock is likely to...

This paper brings together the evidence on two asset pricing anomalies - continuation of prior returns (momentum) and the market pricing of distressed firms. Our empirical analysis demonstrates both these effects are driven by market underreaction to bad news, and that momentum is largely...

Recently developed corporate bankruptcy prediction models adopt a contingent-claims valuation approach. However, despite their theoretical appeal, tests of their performance compared with traditional simple accounting-ratio-based approaches are limited in the literature. We find the two...

We explore the medium-term market reaction to going-concern modified audit opinions and their withdrawal for a large sample of firms from 1994 to 2002. Results show asymmetric market response to these accounting system disclosures. The market underreacts to going-concern opinions, resulting in a...