We hypothesize that the root cause of many goodwill write-offs - managers' public admission of ill-advised corporate acquisitions - is the overpriced shares of buyers at acquisition. Overpriced shares provide managers with strong incentives to invest, and particularly to acquire businesses, even...

The absence of organized markets in intangibles has been a major hindrance to their recognition as assets in financial reports. Economic conditions, however, change fast and markets in intangibles, particularly in patents and know-how, are operating both off and on-line (Internet). We examine...

Financial scholars who research the initial underpricing and long-term underperformance of IPOs generally attribute these phenomena to information asymmetry and investors' misevaluations. Here, we identify, on a sample of 2,696 US IPOs issued during 1980-1995, a widespread source of information...