We examine changes in equity mutual funds' investment advisory contracts. Contracts generally pay the advisor a fee which is a percentage of the fund's total net assets. We find that high asset growth increases the likelihood of a contract change. Advisory rate changes occur in both directions...

The number of published event studies exceeds 500, and the literature continues to grow. We provide an overview of event study methods. Short-horizon methods are quite reliable. While long-horizon methods have improved, serious limitations remain. A challenge is to continue to refine...

This paper studies the association between a firm's stock returns and subsequent top management changes. Consistent with internal monitoring of management, there is an inverse relation between the probability of a management change and a firm's share performance. This relation can result from...

We study standard mutual fund performance measures, using simulation procedures combined with random and random-stratified samples of NYSE and AMEX securities. We track simulated fund portfolios over time. These portfolios' performance is ordinary, and well-specified performance measures should...

New issues of public high yield debt, or junk bonds, reached record levels in the 1990s. This paper studies transactions where firms issue junk bonds and use the proceeds to repay their bank debt. These substitutions represent the most frequent use of junk bonds. Our analysis suggests that firms...

This paper studies the specification of tests for long-horizon (i.e., multiyear) abnormal security returns around firm-specific events, using samples of randomly selected securities and simulated event dates. The main result is that typical long-horizon tests are misspecified. The tests have a...

We study innovation and product differentiation using a uniqueness measure based on textual analysis of prospectuses. We find that small and startup families have higher start rates than larger families and their products are more unique. Unique strategies attract more inflows in the first three...

We study put option sales undertaken by corporations during their repurchase programs. Put sales' main theoretical motivation is market timing, providing an excellent framework for studying whether security issues reflect managers' ability to identify mispricing. Our evidence is that these bets...

This issue of the Journal of Financial Economics contains the first set of studies in the new Clinical Papers section. The objective of this section is to provide a high-quality professional outlet for scholarly studies of specific cases, events, practices, and specialized applications. By...

This article surveys the seventeen papers in this special issue of the Journal of Financial Economics, and related work. The major findings are: (1) patterns of stock ownership by insiders and outsiders can influence managerial behavior, corporate performance, and stockholder voting in election...