We investigate the determinants of short term wealth effects for both public acquiring and target shareholders following the announcement of UK acquisitions over the period 1990–2005. Regardless of their nationality, overall acquirers incur losses, with domestic acquirers’ under-performing...

This paper argues the case that tests of how investors value corporate social performance (CSP) based upon realised stock market returns are liable to be weak tests if markets are efficient and firms change CSP policies infrequently. We provide a theoretical explanation of why this will be the...

This paper investigates the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on firm value and seeks to identify the source of that value, by disaggregating the effects on forecasted profitability, long-term growth and the cost of capital. The study explores the possible risk (reducing) effects...

This paper examines the performance of personal pensions (exempt unit trusts) in the UK 1980-2000. Unitised personal pension schemes are a type of mutual fund that is constituted as a contractual savings scheme, whose value can only be accessed at retirement. By studying the performance of these...

This paper explores the industry cost of equity capital for the UK. We replicate the <link rid="b10">Fama and French (1997)</link> US analysis for UK industries, but additionally investigate the industry cost of equity capital obtained from a conditional CAPM, the <link rid="b3">Cahart (1997)</link> four factor model, and the <link rid="b1">Al-Horani,...

This paper reassesses the UK results of significant abnormal returns from directors trading for a new sample of directors trades 1984-1988, and finds that abnormal returns tend to be concentrated in smaller firms. When an appropriate benchmark portfolio is used, it is found that the significance...

The focus of this paper is to motivate the application of transitional phase polynomials to a model of trade union growth in Canada. The advantage and limitations of this approach to capture the effects of a gradual structural change are compared with the more traditional dummy variable...