In the course of the European sovereign debt crisis, the question has arisen as to whether the soundness of the US banking and financial system could be harmed by contagion effects. Considering the numerous downgradings of European countries in recent years, the current paper examines price...

Gerade in Zeiten der globalen Finanzkrise eignen sich Earn-out-Vereinbarungen in besonderem Maße, um den gesteigerten Informationsasymmetrien im Rahmen einer Unternehmensübernahme begegnen zu können. Doch wie stark profitieren die Käufer vom Einsatz eines solchen Instrumentes und was...

Das Vertrauen der Konsumenten in gesunde Nahrungsmittel wird regelmäßig durch Lebensmittelskandale erschüttert. Im Zusammenhang mit der Diskussion von Maßnahmen, die seitens der Produzenten und/oder des Staates ergriffen werden, um Nahrungsmittelsicherheit zu gewährleisten, stellt sich die...

While companies have emerged as very proactive donors in the wake of recent major disasters like Hurricane Katrina, it remains unclear whether that corporate generosity generates benefits to firms themselves. The literature on strategic philanthropy suggests that such philanthropic behavior may...

This paper reconsiders the effect of investor sentiment on stock prices. Using survey-based sentiment indicators from Germany and the US we confirm previous findings of predictability at intermediate time horizons. The main contribution of our paper is that we also analyze the immediate price...

Generally, information provision and certification have been identified as the major economic functions of rating agencies. This paper analyzes whether the watchlist (rating review) instrument has extended the agencies' role towards a monitoring position, as proposed by Boot, Milbourn, and...

This paper investigates the investment value of individual investors’ stock recommendations within online communities. We find that aggregated recommendations contain no explicit investment value and that following these recommendations may have a negative impact on investment performance. Our...

In this paper, we explore the cumulative and interactive effects from being listed on one or more of four popular annual surveys (Fortune’s “Most Admired Companies” and “100 Best Companies to Work For,” Business Ethics “Best Corporate Citizens,” and Working Mother’s “100 Best...

This paper investigates how the announcement of negative information about a celebrity endorser impacts firm value, as measured by abnormal stock returns. The unique data sample consists of 93 celebrity disgraces that occurred between 1986 and 2011, affecting firms listed on US stock exchanges....