This paper analyzes the impact of blockownership dispersion on firm value. Blockholdings by multiple blockholders is a widespread phenomenon in the U.S. market. It is not clear, however, whether dispersion among blockholder is preferable to having a more concentrated ownership structure. To test...

We show that average excess returns during the last two years of the presidential cycle are significantly higher than during the first two years: 9.8 percent over the period 1948 2008. This pattern in returns cannot be explained by business-cycle variables capturing time-varying risk premia,...

Standardmethoden zur Schätzung von Disparitätsmaßen aus klassierten Daten basieren entweder auf der Bestimmung von Schranken, die den wahren Wert des jeweiligen Disparitätsmaßes einschließen (nichtparametrischer Ansatz) oder aber auf Annahmen bezüglich der den Daten zugrunde liegenden...

We propose a novel framework to assess financial system risk. Using a dynamic factor framework based on state-space methods, we construct coincident measures (‘thermometers’) and a forward looking indicator for the likelihood of simultaneous failure of a large number of financial...