The authors use large reductions of import tariffs to examine how incumbent firms modify investment when the threat of entry by foreign rivals intensifies. Incumbents reduce investment by 7.2% of capital in response to higher entry threat. This effect is robust, pervasive, and likely causal....

This paper focuses on the link between the three types of specificity and the complexity of outsourcing contracts because specificity is generally considered as the most important transaction cost attribute. It also integrates external uncertainty in the model. External uncertainty is a...

We examine how mark-to-market accounting affects investment decisions in an agency model with reputation concerns. Reporting the current market value of a firm's assets in the financial statements can serve as a disciplining device because the information contained in the market price provides a...

In an increasingly uncertain context, budgeting faces at least two categories of concerns : how should realistic objectives be set in a poorly predictable context? How should a fair year-end evaluation be performed when uncertainty has affected the results and their controllability? <p> Since...</p>

In this paper, we use the investment fraud of Bernard Madoff to inquire into the production of trust in the context of financial markets. Drawing upon empirical data related to U.S. individual investors (interviews and letters) as well as documentary material, we investigate the mechanisms...

This paper focuses on how forecasts information is disclosed in IPO prospectuses. In France, managers report either detailed forecasts or only a brief summary. We investigate the determinants and consequences of the varying levels of detail provided in these forecasts. Based on a sample of 82...

Designing an investment strategy in transition economies is a difficult task because stock-markets opened through time, time series are short, and there is little guidance how to obtain expected returns and covariance matrices necessary for mean-variance portfolio allocation. Also, structural...

We analyse the conditional versions of two closely connected mean-variance investment problems, the replication of a contingent claim on the one hand and the selection of an efficient portfolio on the other hand, in a general discrete time setting with incomplete markets. <p> We exhibit a positive...</p>

Testing the hypothesis that international equity market correlation increases in volatile times is a difficult exercise and misleading results have often been reported in the past because of a spurious relationship between correlation and volatility. This paper focuses on extreme correlation,...

Correlation in international equity returns is unstable over time. It has been suggested that the international correlation of large stock returns, especially negative ones, differs from that of usual returns. It is in periods of extreme negative returns that the benefits of international risk...