The paper argues that the market signifficantly overvalues firms with severely underfunded pension plans. These companies earn lower stock returns than firms with healthier pension plans for at least five years after the first emergence of the underfunding. The low returns are not explained by...

Emerging market crises are characterized by large swings in both macroeconomic fundamentals and asset prices. The economic significance of observed movements in macroeconomic variables is obscured by the brief and extreme nature of crises. In this paper we propose to study the macroeconomic...

We derive an international asset pricing model that assumes local investors have preferences of the type "keeping up with the Joneses." In an international setting investors compare their current wealth with that of their peers who live in the same country. In the process of inferring the...

We develop a coordination game to model interactions between fundamentals and liquidity during unstable periods in financial markets. We then propose a flexible econometric framework for estimation of the model and analysis of its quantitative implications. The specific empirical application is...

This paper examines the value of connections between German industry and the Nazi movement in early 1933. Drawing on previously unused contemporary sources about management and supervisory board composition and stock returns, we find that one out of seven firms, and a large proportion of the...

Gazelle companies are relevant because they generate much more employment than other companies and deliver high returns to their shareholders. This paper analyzes their behavior in the years of high growth and their evolution in the following years. The main factors that explain their success...

In 1990 a new Spanish 'Plan General de Contabilidad' (PGC) implemented the requirements of the EU 4th and 7th Directives in Spain. Included in the PGC is the requirement, derived from the 4th Directive, that accounts should present a 'true and fair view', in Spanish 'imagen fiel'. Where the term...

The term 'creative accounting' can be defined in a number of ways. Initially we will offer this definition: 'a process whereby accountants use their knowledge of accounting rules to manipulate the figures reported in the accounts of a business'. To investigate the ethical issues raised by...

Comparative national management accounting is the least developed aspect in the field of international accounting. Only during the second half of the 1990's some comparisons of national management accounting practice have appeared published but only at the regional level. In this paper a range...