Purpose: The study's purpose is to examine market returns around dividend announcements that contrast with a pattern of prior dividend announcements. Design/methodology/approach: The paper identifies firms that have a smooth dividend pattern of once-a-year dividend increases but at some point...

Many works have focused on whether intervention into autocratic states by democracies are successful (Peceny 1999; Bueno de Mesquita and Downs 2006; Enterline and Greig 2008). Such analyses have generally revealed that democratic change is not typically a result of such interventions, although in some...

For more than a decade, researchers have debated the prospect of major powers bringing about democratization through military intervention. With the difficulties of the Iraq War, many believe that this idea has fallen out of favor with policy makers. Nonetheless, Afghanistan and other examples...

This thesis investigates firms with patterns of repeated cash dividend increases to answer two research questions. First, are firms rewarded for this particular type of dividend policy, and second, is there any evidence to support the hypothesis that the stock market learns to anticipate a...

In a recent theoretical paper, Sherman [Sherman, A.E., 2005, Global trends in IPO methods: Book building versus auctions with endogenous entry, Journal of Financial Economics 78, 615-649.] proposes that: "If book building leads to greater expected underpricing relative to uniform price or...