The recent observed decline of business cycle variability suggests that broad macroeconomic risk may have fallen as well. This may in turn have some impact on equity risk premia. We investigate the latent structures in the volatilities of the business cycle and stock market valuations by...

This study extends the traditional set of central bank's interventions to include official announcements in order to provide empirical evidence on two pivotal questions: (i) are FX authorities able to influence market expectations with different instruments? (ii) how should interventions be...

This paper examines open market stock repurchases in France. We find a positive average market reaction to the repurchase announcement. However, the magnitude of the price reaction is found to depend on a number of corporate governance structure measures. The positive aspects of the announcement...

In this paper, we develop a dynamic model that captures the interaction between a firm’s cash reserves, the risk management policy and the profitability of a non-predictable irreversible investment opportunity. We consider a firm that has assets in place generating a stochastic cash-flow...

Open market share repurchases are strictly regulated to prevent companies from profiting from insider information. We examine compliance with these rules in France, where the mandatory disclosure of share repurchases provides detailed information on repurchases actually undertaken. Using a...

Le thème central de cet ouvrage porte sur l'adéquation des représentations théoriques du comportement décisionnel des agents et sur ses implications pour la pertinence des mesures de la juste valeur des instruments financiers. L'ouvrage vise en premier lieu à mettre en perspective le rôle...

Ce papier étudie les aspects de la structure de propriété qui influent la qualité de la communication financière sur un marché où l'actionnariat est concentré. La théorie d'agence propose un cadre de recherche intéressant liant la décision de publication à la structure de...

Stock option plans are used to increase managerial incentives, and business practices usually set the exercise price equal to the stock market price. The purpose of this paper is to underline the importance of a process of negotiation leading to a possible equilibrium contract satisfying both...

French law mandates that employees of large publicly listed companies be allowed to elect two types of directors to represent employees. First, partially privatized companies must reserve two or three (depending on board size) board seats for directors elected by employees by right of...

Research on the impact of open market share repurchases has been hindered by the lack of data available on actual share repurchases in many countries, including the US. Using a previously unused database containing detailed information on 36,848 repurchases made by 352 French firms, we show that...