Investor-driven "short-termism" is said to harm EU public firms' ability to invest for the long term, prompting calls for the EU to better insulate managers from shareholder pressure. But the evidence offered---rising levels of repurchases and dividends---is incomplete and misleading: it ignores...

This Article identifies a cost to public investors of tying executive pay to the future value of a firm's stock - even its long-term value. In particular, such an arrangement can incentivize executives to engage in share repurchases (when the current stock price is low) and equity issuances...

This Article identifies a cost to public investors of tying executive pay to the future value of a firm's stock - even its long-term value. In particular, such an arrangement can incentivize executives to engage in share repurchases (when the current stock price is low) and equity issuances...

A U.S. firm buying and selling its own shares in the open market can trade on inside information more easily than its own insiders because it is subject to less stringent trade- disclosure rules. Not surprisingly, insiders exploit these relatively lax rules to engage in indirect insider trading:...

This statement presents my views on buybacks and my general reactions to provisions in four pieces of legislation relating to stock buybacks. Part I describes the role of stock buybacks in the economy and offers some “investor-benign” explanations for firms' use of repurchases rather than...

This paper challenges a persistent and pervasive view in corporate law and corporate governance: that a firm's managers should favor long-term shareholders over short-term shareholders, and maximize long-term shareholders' returns rather than the short-term stock price. Underlying this view is a...

Public companies in the United States and elsewhere increasingly use open market stock buybacks, rather than dividends, to distribute cash to shareholders. Academic commentators have emphasized the possible benefits of such repurchases for shareholders. However, little attention has been paid to...

Managers conduct open market repurchases (OMRs) for a number of different reasons, including to distribute excess cash. However, the most widely discussed explanation for OMRs is the signaling theory: that managers announce OMRs to signal that the stock is underpriced. The first purpose of this...