This paper studies the long-term effect of hedge fund activism on the productivity of target firms using plant-level information from the U.S. Census Bureau. A typical target firm improves its production efficiency within two years after activism, and this improvement is concentrated in...

Statistical inference in long-horizon event studies has been hampered by the fact that abnormal returns are neither normally distributed nor independent. This study presents a new approach to inference that overcomes these difficulties and dominates other popular testing methods. I illustrate...

Using a large database of analysts' target prices issued over the period 1997-1999, we examine short-term market reactions to target price revisions and long-term comovement of target and stock prices. We find a significant market reaction to the information contained in analysts' target prices,...

The authors investigate the long-run underperformance of recent initial public offering (IPO) firms in a sample of 934 venture-backed IPOs from 1972 to 1992 and 3,407 nonventure-backed IPOs from 1975 to 1992. They find that venture-backed IPOs outperform nonventure-backed IPOs using equal...

The contest between rational and behavioral finance is poorly understood as a contest over 'testability' and 'predictive success.' In fact, neither rational nor behavioral finance offer much in the way of testable predictions of improving precision. Researchers in the rational paradigm seem to...