We want to know whether and in what sense traders on the Swiss Stock Exchange (SWX) are influenced by what happens on Wall Street. According to the results, the SWX reacts strongly when U.S. macroeconomic news relevant to Wall Street is disclosed. Moreover, SWX traders seem to wait with...

On November 17, 1988, the board of directors of Nestle' AG decided to allow foreign investors to hold Nestle' registered stock, reversing a longstanding practice. This decision had a tremendous impact on the prices of the firm's three classes of common stock, as well as on the prices of several...

We examine the disclosure of size revisions of seasoned stock offerings to see what information revisions impart to investors. Revisions could deliver firm-originated information, which discloses something managers know about the firm. Alternatively, they could disseminate market-originated...

Over time, firms increasingly focus on their core competences. This evolution impairs their ability to manage noncore assets, which they should therefore divest. We test this prediction and find consistent evidence. Moreover, mature firms divest more in response to exogenous technology shocks....

Failure to correct for pension risk leads to upward-biased discount rate estimates in firms with pension risk exposure. The result is a negative and economically significant relation between pension risk and corporate investment. The effect is confined to investment decisions that require...

This paper is about shareholder value. We examine whether welfare considerations justify that target and whether competitive markets force firms to pursue it. We also argue that shareholder value is strictly an ill-defined goal. We report evidence from a large sample of listed firms across the...

We study the implementability of Black's (1988) elegant discounting rule. The rule overcomes thorny problems that traditional valuation approaches struggle with, namely identifying the market portfolio, measuring project risk, and assessing the market risk premium. We offer new theory, showing...

We ask whether corporations pay out the cash that shareholders anticipate and find consistent evidence. We study the firms traded on the NYSE, the AMEX, and the Nasdaq in 1926 to 2004. Over 30-year investment horizons, corporate cash distributions are commensurate with initial stock prices,...

We rely on a survey of Swiss firms to document deviation from first-best for reasons of internal quot;fairnessquot; when allocating resources. This quot;socialistquot; practice is more widespread in smaller than in larger firms. It ignores the reputation and past performance of the managers who...

This paper examines whether Swiss firms maximize shareholder value. To find out, we survey the goals of 313 listed and unlisted firms. We then examine whether managers' decisions are consistent with their goals and analyze whether performance corresponds to intentions. Our results show that most...