Estimates of the expected return on equities are of central importance for capital budgeting purposes, actuarial calculations (expected wealth) and, in countries with regulated utilities, for setting the allowed rate of return. The starting point for any of these purposes is the simple annual...

Renneboog, Ter Horst and Zhang (2008) highlight that the question of whether or not corporate social responsibility (CSR) is priced remains an open one. In this paper, using a comprehensive set of KLD indicators in Ohlson-model framework with robust two-way cluster analysis of standard errors,...

We examine performance, and persistence in the performance, of UK 'ethical' or SRI funds and find that performance appears to be time-varying, showing that conclusions on performance itself are influenced by whether a static or time varying model is employed. Given evidence that many UK funds...

Purpose – This paper investigates the Jensen's free cash flow (FCF) hypothesis in the context of UK cash acquisitions. Under this hypothesis, financial slack induces mangers to acquire targets for cash if such behaviour generates either pecuniary or non-pecuniary rewards for them, giving rise...

This paper examines the performance of personal pensions (exempt unit trusts) in the UK 1980-2000. Unitised personal pension schemes are a type of mutual fund that is constituted as a contractual savings scheme, whose value can only be accessed at retirement. By studying the performance of these...

This paper examines the patterns of security returns around trades by corporate insiders in the shares of their own company. We find patterns in abnormal returns in the days around a directors trade that are consistent with directors engaging in short-term market timing: they sell (buy) after an...

This paper explores the industry cost of equity capital for the UK. We replicate the <link rid="b10">Fama and French (1997)</link> US analysis for UK industries, but additionally investigate the industry cost of equity capital obtained from a conditional CAPM, the <link rid="b3">Cahart (1997)</link> four factor model, and the <link rid="b1">Al-Horani,...