In the period 1991-2010, the S&P 500 destroyed value for the shareholders ($4.5 trillion). In 1991-1999 it created value ($5.1 trillion), but in 2000-2010 it destroyed $9.6 trillion. The market value of the S&P 500 was $2.8 trillion in 1991 and $11.4 trillion in 2010.We also calculate the...

The average MRP used by analysts in the USA (5.1%) was similar to the one used by their colleagues in Europe (5.0%). But the average MRP used by companies in the USA (5.3%) was smaller than the one used by companies in Europe (5.7%), and UK (5.6%).The dispersion of the MRP used was high, but...

The purpose of this study is to identify the value creators and destroyers in the Sensex. The study has used similar methodology discussed and applied by Farnandez Pablo (2002) in his book “Valuation methods and Shareholder value creation.” During 2010, the 30 companies of the BSE-Sensex...

The untenable volatility of financial markets and fleeting nature of stock ownership on one side and corporate scandals, high-risk managerial whims and empire-building attitudes of corporate managers on the other have rekindled a three-decade-old debate on whether financial markets, especially...

We introduce a new, market-based and forward looking measure of political risk derived from the yield spread between a country's U.S. dollar debt and an equivalent U.S. Treasury bond. We explain the variation in these sovereign spreads with four factors: global economic conditions,...

Measuring the impact of political risk on investment projects is one of the most vexing issues in international business. One popular approach is to assume that the sovereign yield spread captures political risk and to augment the project discount rate by this spread. We show that this approach...

We examine the in- and out-of-sample behavior of two popular trading systems, Alexander and Double MA filters, for fourteen developed-country currencies using daily data with bid-ask spreads. We find significant in-sample returns in the early periods. But out-of-sample returns are lower and only...

In 2009, the promise of a comprehensive federal cap and trade bill to address climate change fell apart. At least in part, this was due to the fears that exotic 'carbon' financial instruments might cause more financial crises. As California launches it economy wide carbon trading system, and...

On September 3-4, 2009 SUERF and Utrecht University School of Economicsorganized the Colloquium "The Quest for Stability" in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The papers included in this SUERF Study are based on contributions to the Colloquium.

Investors' incentive to acquire private information—and the extent it is reflected in price—is a function of disclosure processing costs. Theory predicts that if these costs change, the amount the manager can learn from price will also vary. To provide evidence on this issue, we exploit the...