The use of judgmental anchors or reference points in valuing corporations affects several basic aspects of merger and acquisition activity including offer prices, deal success, market reaction, and merger waves. Offer prices are biased towards the 52-week high, a highly salient but largely...

Prior stock price peaks of targets affect several aspects of merger and acquisition activity. Offer prices are biased toward recent peak prices although they are economically unremarkable. An offer's probability of acceptance jumps discontinuously when it exceeds a peak price. Conversely, bidder...

A number of studies have identified patterns of positive correlation of returns, or comovement, among different traded securities. We distinguish three views of such co- movement. The traditional quot;fundamentalsquot; view explains the comovement of securities through positive correlations in...

We consider two broad views of return comovement: the traditional view, derived from frictionless economies with rational investors, which attributes it to comovement in news about fundamental value, and an alternative view, in which market frictions or noise-trader sentiment delink it from...

A number of studies have identifed patterns of positive correlation of returns, or comovement, among different traded securities. We distinguish three views of such comovement. The traditional quot;fundamentalsquot; view explains the comovement of securities through positive correlations in the...

The use of judgmental anchors or reference points in valuing corporations affects several basic aspects of merger and acquisition activity including offer prices, deal success, market reaction, and merger waves. Offer prices are biased towards the 52-week high, a highly salient but largely...