The positive relation between dividend yields and stock returns in the US market is well documented in recent research. However, the cause(s) of the dividend yield effect is still unknown. On the one hand, the effect can be attributed to tax as predicted in the Brennan CAPM (Brennan (1970)). On...

We specify a simple structural model to isolate the economic determinants of managerial ownership and board structure in a value-maximizing contracting environment. The optimal firm size, level of managerial ownership, and the proportion of outsiders on the board is jointly determined by the...

We estimate fundamental and sentiment components of consumer confidence. In a time-series framework, we model the returns of equity portfolios sorted on various characteristics as a function of the market factor, allowing market beta to vary with the fundamental component of confidence. After...

A recent paper by Bloomfield and Hales (2002) reports results of laboratory experiments with MBA-student participants that support the existence of regime-shifting beliefs of the type theorized by Barberis, Shleifer, and Vishny (1998). Specifically, they find a strong tendency for subjects to...

In this paper, we develop and test a theoretical model of multi-market trading to explain the differences in the foreign share of trading volume of internationally cross-listed stocks. The model derives an equilibrium which predicts that, under fairly general conditions, the distribution of...

Public firms that place equity privately experience positive announcements effects, with negative post-announcement stock-price performance. This finding is inconsistent with the underreaction hypothesis. Instead, it suggests that investors are overoptimistic about the prospects of firms issuing...

This paper examines the relationship between book-to-market equity, distress risk, and stock returns. Among firms with the highest distress risk as proxied by Ohlson's (1980) O-score, the difference in returns between high and low book-to-market securities is more than twice as large as that in...

We use a sample of 800 firms in eight East Asian countries to study the effect of ownership structure on value during the region's financial crisis. The crisis negatively impacted firms' investment opportunities, raising the incentives of controlling shareholders to expropriate minority...

We analyze several hundred firms that expand via acquisition and/or increase their reported number of business segments. The average combined market reaction to acquisition announcements is positive but, according to the Berger and Ofek (1995) method for valuing conglomerates, the excess values...

Zero-cost collars and equity swaps provide insiders with the opportunity to hedge the risk associated with their personal holdings in the company's equity. Consequently their use has important implications for incentive-based contracting and for understanding insider-trading behavior. Our...