We examine the disclosure of size revisions of seasoned stock offerings to see what information revisions impart to investors. Revisions could deliver firm-originated information, which discloses something managers know about the firm. Alternatively, they could disseminate market-originated...

We want to know whether and in what sense traders on the Swiss Stock Exchange (SWX) are influenced by what happens on Wall Street. According to the results, the SWX reacts strongly when U.S. macroeconomic news relevant to Wall Street is disclosed. Moreover, SWX traders seem to wait with...

We examine the board overlap among firms listed in Switzerland. Collusion, managerial entrenchment, and financial participation cannot explain it. The overlap appears to be induced by banks and by the accumulation of seats by the most popular directors. We also document that seat accumulation is...

This paper surveys the currency risk management practices of Swiss industrial corporations. We find that industrials do not quantify their currency risk exposure and investigate possible reasons. One possibility is that firms do not think they need to know because they use on-balance-sheet...

We study the implementability of Black's (1988) elegant discounting rule. The rule overcomes thorny problems that traditional valuation approaches struggle with, namely identifying the market portfolio, measuring project risk, and assessing the market risk premium. We offer new theory, showing...

We ask whether corporations pay out the cash that shareholders anticipate and find consistent evidence. We study the firms traded on the NYSE, the AMEX, and the Nasdaq in 1926 to 2004. Over 30-year investment horizons, corporate cash distributions are commensurate with initial stock prices,...

We rely on a survey of Swiss firms to document deviation from first-best for reasons of internal quot;fairnessquot; when allocating resources. This quot;socialistquot; practice is more widespread in smaller than in larger firms. It ignores the reputation and past performance of the managers who...

This paper examines whether Swiss firms maximize shareholder value. To find out, we survey the goals of 313 listed and unlisted firms. We then examine whether managers' decisions are consistent with their goals and analyze whether performance corresponds to intentions. Our results show that most...