We examine the e¤ects of dividend policies on 469 British firms between 1895 and 1905. These firms operated in an environment of very low taxation and an absence of institutional constraints. We find strong support for asymmetric information/signaling theories of dividend policy, and little...

U.K. company insiders, such as directors, were legally allowed to trade in the shares of their own companies up until the Companies Act of 1980. We investigate the trading behaviour of directors over the period 1893 to 1907 in the U.K. Although insider trading was profitable, we find relatively...

The signaling or information content hypothesis is amongst the most prominent theories attempting to explain dividend policy decisions. However, no research has, to date, examined the information content of dividends in conjunction with generalized economic adversity. With the majority of the...

Share repurchase conveys information to investors and influences stock price in capital market. Normally when a company announces share buyback, the company's stock price will rise immediately. Thus, some insiders may take advantage of this pattern and create a fake repurchase event. When the...

The costs and benefits of insider trading is a persistent topic in the economic literature and public discourse alike. Nowadays insider trading is principally illegal and morally banned implying that the costs are supposed to weigh heavier than the potential benefits. We study insider trading...

We analyze the determinants of illiquidity and its impact on asset pricing for purely call-auction traded stocks on Berlin Stock Exchange using 22 years of daily data (1892-1913). We use the Lesmond et al. (1999) measure of transaction costs to proxy illiquidity. We show that transaction costs...

In perfect and complete financial markets Miller and Modigliani (1961) show that a firm's value is unaffected by its dividend policy. Taxation, asymmetric information, incomplete contracts, institutional constraints, and transaction costs make dividend policy important. We examine the effects of...

We employ a conditional event study to analyze managers' motives to announce a share repurchase in the context of a model of economic factors that impact a firm's abnormal announcement return. Firms with greater free cash flow and less debt are more likely to initiate a repurchase. Share...

This paper uses the insider trading direction as a signal to design an optimal wage contract, where the principal-agent problem due to moral hazard is resolved. Insider trading provides the corporation important information about the action of the manager. It is a tough challenge for the owners...

We examine the nature of information contained in insider trades prior to corporate events. Insiders' net buying increases before open market share repurchase announcements and decreases before seasoned equity offers. Higher insider net buying is associated with better post-event operating...