a reexamination of the conglomerate merger wave in the 1960s an internal capital markets view one possible explanation for bidding firms earning positive abnormal returns in diversifying acquisitions in the 1960s is that internal capital markets were expected to overcome the information deficiencies of the less developed capital markets examining 392 bidder firms during the 1960s we find the highest bidder returns when financially unconstrained buyers acquire constrained targets this result holds while controlling for merger terms and for different proxies used to classify firms facing costly external financing we also find that bidders generally retain target management suggesting that management may have provided companyspecific operational information while the bidder provided capital budgeting expertise

the effect of changes in reserve requirements on bank stock prices abstract the present study re examines the tax burden effects of reserve requirements on bank profitability it differs from previous work in two ways 1 changes in stock prices rather than accounting data are used to measure profitability effects and 2 emphasis is placed on changes in reserve requirements as opposed to their level regarding the latter distinction two kinds of changes are considered 1 temporary changes in reserve requirements for the purpose of discretionary monetary policy and 2 more permanent changes in reserve requirement levels based on the event study methodology temporary changes were found to have little effect on security prices whereas more permanent changes had a stronger influence on bank stock prices reflecting a tax burden effect

effects of announcements of reorganization outcome less is known about whether the market perceives the final resolution of post reorganization filing to be idiosyncratic or to carry endemic implications for the corresponding industries this study observes the presence of intra industry information transfers the magnitude and direction of the reactions in response to three separate resolution outcome differs in a systematic way across industry portfolios specifically portfolio rivals that are affected by competitive realignments in the industry experience stock price reactions in the opposite manner to those of the distressed firms thus suggesting dominant competitive effects in addition this study reveals that the discriminatory power and forecast performance of three hybrid neuro fuzzy models are stable and unimpaired across time and are generally superior in classifying rival cumulative prediction error rcpe candidates

the value of corporate voting rights and control a cross country analysis this paper measures the value of corporate voting rights specifically of the control block of votes in a sample of 661 dual class firms in 18 countries in 1997 a consistent measure across countries is proposed the measure is adjusted for takeover probability block holding costs and dividend and liquidity differences between the share classes the value of controlblock votes varies widely across countries it is close to half of firm market value in south korea andclose to zero in finland the value of control block votes is interpretedas a lower bound for actual private benefits of the controlling shareholder the legal environment law enforcement investor protection takeover regulations andpower concentrating corporate charter provisions explain 68 of the cross country variation in the value of control block votes

optimal strategic oil stockpiling and import tariffs the case of china abstract as two of the most important instruments for dealing with the issues of energy supply security strategic petroleum reserves sprs and oil import tariffs have been proven effective in developed countries while china is currently building up its strategic oil reserves to ensure energy security it is of great importance to investigate china s optimal oil stockpiling policies while taking into account the possibility of imposing an import tariff or quota which can also be used for alleviating the energy insecurity of an oil importing country employing a dynamic programming framework this paper examines the optimal spr policies and oil import tariffs or quotas for china and the interactions between the two instruments under different scenarios for the world oil market the results show that the combination of optimal tariffs and spr policies can substantially reduce the expected oil insecurity cost for china the effect is larger when the probability that a disruption will continue is higher

uk directors trading the impact of dealings in smaller firms this paper reasesses the u k results of significant abnormal returns from directors trading for a new sample of directors trades 1984 86 and finds that abnormal returns tend to be concentrated in smaller firms when an appropriate benchmark portfolio is used it is found that the significance of the abnormal returns is substantially reduced with the implication that directors trading does not yield particularly high profits to either the directors themselves or to an outside investor mimicking those trades coauthors are john matatko ian tonks and richard purkis copyright 1994 by royal economic society

the impact of regulation on input substitution and operating cost we investigate the impact of rate of return regulation on the substitutability between pairs of inputs where substitutability is measured using morishima elasticities of substitution mes and on operating cost theory does not provide a qualitative characterization of the impact of regulation on input substitutability although it does provide a basis for speculation we test our speculation using a 1977 87 panel of 20 u s interstate natural gas pipelines that were subject to rate of return regulation during the period we find that regulation increased the mes of each rate base input for the non rate base input and reduced the mes between the two rate base inputs and of the nonrate base input for each rate base input we also find that the

performance changes around bank mergers revenue enhancements versus cost reductions this paper examines operating performance around commercial bank mergers we find that industry adjusted operating performance of merged banks increases significantly after the merger large bank mergers produce greater performance gains than small bank mergers activity focusing mergers produce greater performance gains than activity diversifying mergers geographically focusing mergers produce greater performance gains than geographically diversifying mergers and performance gains are larger after the implementation of nationwide banking in 1997 further we find improved performance is the result of both revenue enhancements and cost reduction activities however revenue enhancements are most significant in those mergers that also experience reduced costs

innovation and communication signalling with partial disclosure this paper introduces a model of feedback effect equilibrium i e equilibria in which an asymmetrically informed agent is motivated to communicate its privately known attribute but can do so only through channels or signals which convey directly useful information to competing agents this revelation to the competition serves to reduce the value of the private information held by the first agent models of this kind are of obvious relevance to realistic theories of product or financial market disclosure policies of firms patenting and a host of related behavioural and regulatory issues this model is developed in the context of a set of firms engaged in research and development rivalry in which the value of privately held and disclosed information arises from its implications for the likelihood and timing of productive innovation

pricing option contracts on the strategic petroleum reserve in this article we examine the pricing of option contracts on the strategic petroleum reserve spr and consider how these can be used by both the government and refiners we analyze the interaction between the call and put option contracts taking into account the underlying game in the infinite markov decision process with discounting explaining the relationship between the valuation of options on the spr by refiners and the valuation of financial options on a marker crude in financial markets we conclude that the values of both call and put options on the spr increase with oil prices and decrease with total inventory furthermore our analysis shows that a more active management of the spr creates higher social welfare although refiners profit less from inventories and larger volatility in inventory profits decreasing private investment in petroleum stocks

antitakeover charter amendments and stockholder wealth abstract many large corporations have recently adopted antitakeover charter amendments which make the transfer of corporate control more difficult this paper develops and tests competing theoretical explanations for the passage of these amendments in one view antitakeover provisions are adopted because incumbent management seeks job protection at stockholders expense the alternative hypothesis is that antitakeover provisions benefit stockholders perhaps by extracting greater payment in exchange for corporate control although inconclusive the evidence provides weak preliminary support for the hypothesis that antitakeover amendments are best explained as a device for managerial entrenchment

issuing costs to existing shareholders in competitive and negotiated underwritten public utility equity offerings abstract this paper presents the results of an empirical investigation of whether there is any difference in the cost incurred by public utilities if they issue new equity through a negotiated or competitive underwriting we conclude that the expected cost of a competitive offer is less than the expected cost of a negotiated offer but that the variance of the cost is substantially greater with a competitive offer these results are interesting because most public utilities use negotiated underwriting unless forced by regulation to use competitive offers this paper is also an addition to the growing agency theory literature

competitiveness through management of diversity effects on stock price valuation this study s premise is that firms that can lower their costs and enhance their differentiation through the effective management of their human resources have a competitive advantage using data fr

corporate governance through the proxy contest evidence and implications the current literature concerning proxy contests provides little evidence that shareholders suffer materially from sub par performance prior to a contest furthermore no study has thoroughly examined the long term performance of targeted firms subsequent to a proxy contest using a sample of ninety seven election contests during the period 1968 87 the authors find negative abnormal returns and deteriorating operating performance prior to the announcement of a contest following the contest negative abnormal returns are observed these negative returns are driven by cases in which dissident shareholders successfully acquire board seats the results for accounting based operating performance measures confirm these findings copyright 1993 by university of chicago press

the effect of two tier collective bargaining agreements on shareholder equity this study uses an event time methodology to examine the impact of two tier agreements on shareholder equity from 1981 through 1986 following announcements of two tier agreements about half of the firms in the sample had negative abnormal returns returns with values below the expected market returns and half had positive abnormal returns because the positive returns exceeded the negative returns in absolute value however there was a statistically significant increase in mean firm value the abnormal returns averaged between 2 and 4 over a 10 to 12 week period following the announcement a figure that approximately equals the transactions cost of a stock purchase the authors speculate that this rather low average gain may help explain the marked decline of new two tier agreements during the latter half of the 1980s

a model based on stochastic dynamic programming for determining china s optimal strategic petroleum reserve policy china s strategic petroleum reserve spr is currently being prepared but how large the optimal stockpile size for china should be what the best acquisition strategies are how to release the reserve if a disruption occurs and other related issues still need to be studied in detail in this paper we develop a stochastic dynamic programming model based on a total potential cost function of establishing sprs to evaluate the optimal spr policy for china using this model empirical results are presented for the optimal size of china s spr and the best acquisition and drawdown strategies for a few specific cases the results show that with comprehensive consideration the optimal spr size for china is around 320 million barrels this size is equivalent to about 90 days of net oil import amount in 2006 and should be reached in the year 2017 three years earlier than the national goal which implies that the need for china to fill the spr is probably more pressing the best stockpile release action in a disruption is related to the disruption levels and expected continuation probabilities the information provided by the results will be useful for decision makers

mars venus marriages culture and cross border m a using a sample of over 800 cross border acquisitions during 1991 2004 we find that contrary to general perception cross border acquisitions perform better in the long run if the acquirer and the target come from countries that are culturally more disparate we use mainly the hofstede measure of cultural dimensions to measure cultural distance but also examine alternative proxies the positive relationship of performance to cultural distance persists after controlling for several deal specific variables and country level fixed effects and is robust to alternative specifications of long term performance cash and friendly acquisitions tend to perform better in the long run there is also some evidence of synergies when acquirers are from stronger economies relative to the targets

standstill agreements privately negotiated stock repurchases and the market for corporate control abstract standstill agreements are voluntary contracts which limit a substantial stockholder s ownership interest in a corporation for a specified number of years they are often accompanied by repurchase of the substantial stockholder s shares at a premium above the market price standstills and premium buybacks reduce competition for corporate control and provide differential treatment of large block stockholders the analysis indicates a statistically significant negative average effect on non participating stockholder wealth associated with standstill agreements negotiated premium repurchases are also associated with negative but less significant stockholder returns the evidence is inconsistent with the hypothesis that these management actions are in the best interests of non participating stockholders

the rule 415 experiment equity markets rule 415 allows a firm to register all the securities it reasonably expects to sell over the next two years and then at the management s option to sell those securities over these two years whenever it chooses this paper examines whether equity offerings made under rule 415 shelf offerings differ in issuing costs from equity offerings not sold under this rule we find that shelf offerings cost 13 less for syndicated issues and 51 less for nonsyndicated issues we also investigate the empirical relevance of the market overhang argument which suggests that shelf registrations depress the price of the registering firm s shares more than traditional registrations our data does not support the market overhang argument the securities and exchange commission s sec rule 415 which was permanently adopted for large firms in november 1983 allows a firm to register all the securities that it reasonably expects to sell over the next two years and then sell those securities whenever it chooses this procedure is known as shelf registration investment bankers securities regulators and corporate issuers vigorously debate the effect of rule 415 on firms issuing cost for new securities some mostly investment bankers argue that rule 415 increases new issue costs while others mostly issuers argue that rule 415 decreases new issue costs in addition many investment bankers argue that placing common stock on the shelf depresses the price of a firm s outstanding shares of stock most issuers

syndicated loan announcements and the the market value of the banking firm this paper examines valuation effects on the stocks of fifteen participating money center banks of 774 announcements of syndicated loans representing announcements of investment decisions for the lenders the authors find that announcements of ldc loans in the 1970s especially those to latin american borrowers are associated with negative abnormal returns to the lending banks while announcements of loans to u s corporate borrowers in the 1980s especially those for takover finance are associated with positive abnormal returns while a number of testable predictions are consistent with the negative abnormal returns for latin american loans they explain response to takeover loans with a return to liquidity hypothesis copyright 1995 by ohio state university press

excess asset reversions and shareholder wealth the ownership of pension assets in a defined benefit pension plan is an unresolved issue in corporate finance the issue is important because it defines the appropriate investment policy for a pension fund in this paper we summarize the ownership debate in the form of two mutually exclusive theories we then focus on a recently popular event in pension finance excess asset reversions our paper demonstrates the valuation effects associated with this event in a stochastic dominance framework under certain conditions a reversion constitutes an expropriation of wealth from the participants and beneficiaries of the plan to the firm using data provided by the pension benefit guaranty corporation and the center for research in security prices tape we examine the returns to the shareholders of 58 companies which conducted excess asset reversions between 1980 and 1984 our results show that large abnormal returns accrued to these shareholders around the time of the reversion these findings have implications both for the appropriate investment policy of pension funds and for public policy with respect to plan terminations

optimal strategic petroleum reserve policies a steady state analysis a simple model is presented which allows us to determine the optimal size fillup and drawdown rates for a strategic petroleum reserve spr under a variety of supply and demand conditions the optimal policy variables are determined by minimizing an analytic expression which we derive for the expected insecurity cost rate to the u s due to uncertainty in supply of imported oil the oil market is modeled in terms of an elastic demand curve and two levels of supply which alternate according to a stationary continuous time markov process the spr policy is characterized by a fixed fillup rate up to the reserve s capacity when supply is at its normal level and a fixed drawdown rate during shortages the insecurity cost rate being minimized includes consumer welfare loss due to price hikes reserve holding cost and capital appreciation of the reserve base case results and sensitivity analysis are presented and compared to results obtained by previous approaches these comparisons suggest that the proposed model can reasonably approximate the more computationally demanding stochastic dynamic programming formulation the main advantage of the new approach is that it permits extensive sensitivity analysis which is important given the quality of the data

elasticities of substitution for a regulated cost function abstract this paper proposes a modification to the uzawa 1962 characterization of the allen partial elasticity of substitution under cost minimization to take account of the behavioral properties of the cost function for a firm subject to rate of return regulation

stockpile strategy for china s emergency oil reserve a dynamic programming approach abstract china is currently accelerating construction of its strategic petroleum reserves how should china fill the spr in a cost effective manner in the short run how might this affect world oil prices using a dynamic programming model to answer these questions the objective of this paper is to minimize the stockpiling costs including consumer surplus as well as crude acquisition and holding costs the crude oil acquisition price in the model is determined by global equilibrium between supply and demand demand in turn depends on world market conditions including china s stockpile filling rate our empirical study under different market conditions shows that china s optimal stockpile acquisition rate varies from 9 to 19 million barrels per month and the optimal stockpiling drives up the world oil price by 3 7 the endogenous price increase accounts for 52 of total stockpiling costs in the base case when the market is tighter or the demand function is more inelastic the stockpiling affects the market more significantly and pushes prices even higher alternatively in a disruption drawdown from the stockpile can effectively dampen soaring prices though the shortage is likely to leave the price higher than before the disruption

optimal path for china s strategic petroleum reserve a dynamic programming analysis abstract this paper proposes a dynamic programming model to explore the optimal stockpiling path for china s strategic petroleum reserve before 2020 the optimal oil acquisition sizes in 2008 2020 under different scenarios are estimated the effects of oil price risks and elasticity value on inventory size are further investigated it is found that the optimal stockpile acquisition strategies are mainly determined by oil price and total inventory costs while oil supply disruption is not considered china s optimal stockpile acquisition rate increases from 19 2 to 52 million barrels from 2008 to 2020 if an oil supply disruption occurs the oil acquisition rate will be reduced significantly however it may not be a good strategy to interrupt oil reserve activities in order to minimize the total costs for the entire planning period

elasticity of substitution in a regulated firm abstract we derive the analogue of the morishima elasticity of substitution for a regulated firm and show that it is simpler yet more informative than the corresponding analogue of the allen uzawa elasticity derived by v k smith

security price reactions to initial reviews of common stock by the value line investment survey this study examines daily price reactions to initial reviews of securities by the value line investment survey the reviews are found to convey information to the market as significant abnormal returns are found over a 3 day period around release of the information furthermore there is no statistically significant subsequent price reation after this 3 day period consistent with market efficiency

ethical aspects of investor behavior the neoclassical paradigm assumes that shareholders utility is solely a function of their wealth and prescribes that management should act in a manner consistent with share price maximization the stakeholder view also assumes that shareholders utility derives from wealth but prescribes that managers must balance the shareholder wealth maximization objective against the rights of other constituencies thus while neoclassicists and stakeholder theorists have different prescriptives for management behavior their definitions of the shareholders interest are consistent shareholders are self interested economic agents whose utility is best served by share price maximization however if shareholders are other interested and attack importance to ethical and moral values then both the neoclassical and stakeholder view derive from invalid assumptions in this paper i present evidence that much shareholder behavior is ethically motivated as a result the basis for both the neoclassical and the stakeholder view are weakened

an empirical analysis of the dynamic programming model of stockpile acquisition strategies for china s strategic petroleum reserve abstract the world s future oil price is affected by many factors the challenge therefore is how to select optimal stockpile acquisition strategies to minimize the cost of maintaining a reserve this paper provides a new method for analyzing this problem using an uncertain dynamic programming model to analyze stockpile acquisition strategies for strategic petroleum reserve using this model we quantify the impact of uncertain world oil price on optimal stockpile acquisition strategies of china s strategic petroleum reserve for the period 2007 2010 and 2011 2020 our results show that the future stockpile acquisition is related to oil prices and their probability and if not considering the occurrence of oil supply shortage china should at least purchase 25 million barrels when world oil price is at an optimal level the optimal price of stockpile acquisition of every year has a stronger relationship with the probability of high price and the optimal expected price and size of stockpile acquisition is different in each year

proxy contests and the governance of publicly held corporations abstract analysis of 60 proxy contests for seats on the boards of exchange listed firms during 1978 1985 shows that three years after the contest less than one fifth of the sample firms remain independent publicly held corporations run by the same management team proxy contests are typically followed by managerial resignations even when dissidents fail to obtain a majority of board seats and are often followed by sale or liquidation of the firm the average stockholder wealth gains associated with proxy contests are largely attributable to gains by companies in which dissident activity leads to sale or liquidation

oil stockpiles and import reductions a dynamic programming approach this paper analyzes oil stockpiling policies using models in which u s policy choices are restricted to just two instruments stockpiles and disruption tariffs the model considers the influence of u s and in general oecd import demands upon the opec price for oil and the duration and severity of oil disruptions induced by disturbances among the opec nations our development is based upon a probabilistic view of disruptions analyzed by applying dynamic programming

toehold acquisitions shareholder wealth and the market for corporate control this study examines the valuation consequences of control related outcomes that fol low toehold acquisitions we find evidence that toehold acquisitions facilitate valueenhancing control transfers the types of control transfers not only include takeovers but also internal mechanisms such as proxy fights and management turnovers we find that toehold targets experiencing such control transfers exhibit an abnormal increase in share value while those not experiencing such control transfers exhibit an abnormal de crease in share value the results suggest that the positive valuation effect associated with toehold acquisitions reflects the expected benefits of subsequent control transfers

real options for risk management in petroleum development investments irreversible investments made with incomplete information are the mainstay of the petroleum industry sequential non repetitive investment decisions with alternative pathways associated with exploration through full field development are common we demonstrate a policy development approach that combines the bellman equation for dynamic programming with a real options valuation algorithm this represents the first demonstration of the mathematical union of the two techniques for branching decision pathways producing a generalized policy development framework that provides risk management of investments production expansion investment decisions for a central asian gas condensate field are analyzed using the framework

communication costs information acquisition and voting decisions in proxy contests this article synthesizes some recent progress in the theories of corporate control and political lobbying to model the proxy campaign as a political campaign the model yields a number of testable implications only some of which have been examined in the literature for example if the loss from voting for a bad dissident exceeds the gain from voting for a good dissident the model predicts that as communication costs fall the number of proxy fights increases announcement day returns decrease and the fraction of dissident wins first increases and then decreases article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

strategic oil stockpiling for energy security the case of china and india abstract compared with the developed countries the developing countries could be more vulnerable to oil supply disruptions due to their lack of strategic petroleum reserves sprs several developing countries including china and india are establishing their sprs to ensure energy security in the common world oil market one country s spr decisions can be affected by the decisions of other countries this paper investigates the spr policies of china and india two of the largest developing countries in a game theoretic framework where the interactions between the two countries are taken into account the results show that players equilibrium stockpiling strategies and total expected costs could vary significantly with the initial oil market state stockpile acquisition capacity and the probabilities for disruptions to persist

the timing of option repricing we investigate whether executive stock option repricings are systematically timed to coincide with favorable movements in the company s stock price for a sample of 236 repricing events we observe sharp increases in stock price in the 20 day period following the repricing date in addition repricing dates tend to either precede the release of good news or follow the release of bad news in the quarterly earnings announcements since information about stock option repricing is not generally released to the public around the repricing date these findings suggest that ceos opportunistically manage the timing of the option repricing date

short sale restrictions and market reaction to short interest announcements according to the diamond verrecchia hypothesis if increases in short interest are correlated with information that is not yet public they should precipitate a price adjustment stocks with unexpected increases in short interest are found to generate statistically significant but small negative abnormal returns for a short period around the announcement date when the sample is divided into stocks with and without tradable options nonoptioned stocks closely mimic these results but the optioned stocks do not in a cross sectional analysis of individual firms the short term negative abnormal returns are found to be 1 more negative the higher the degree of unexpected short interest and 2 less negative if the firm has tradable options

a stochastic dynamic nash game analysis of policies for managing the strategic petroleum reserves of consuming nations in this paper we present a nash dynamic game model of interactions among oil inventory and tariff policies for oil importing countries the inventory policies consist of the rates for building up and drawing down strategic oil reserves while the tariff policies consist of setting tariffs as a function of the state of the world oil market the model represents a stochastic game in which countries are grouped into two players where each player in the game chooses its individual policies to maximize expected social welfare we use the model to present empirical results about the sizes of the stockpiles as a function of disruption probabilities tariff policies and cooperation versus noncooperation between nations in addition to results regarding the build up and draw down rates as a function of the amount of disruption or probability of future disruption our central conclusion is that build up and drawdown policies are essentially the same with or without international cooperation due to the current inventory limits on u s and foreign strategic petroleum reserves

china s optimal stockpiling policies in the context of new oil price trend abstract optimizing the size of oil stockpiling plays a fundamental role in the process of making national strategic petroleum reserve spr policies there have been extensive studies on the operating strategies of spr however previous literatures have paid more attention to a booming or stable international oil market while few studies analyzed the impact of a long term low oil price on spr policy as a supplement this paper extends a static model to study china s optimal stockpiling policy under different oil price trends and in response to different current oil prices a new variable fc which demonstrates the appreciation and depreciation of the reserved oil economic value has been taken into account to assess the optimal size of spr in this paper a more multi perspective of view is provided to consider the policies of china s spr especially under the different trend of international oil price fluctuations

voting power in the proxy process abstract the likelihood that a firm will enact a management sponsored antitakeover charter amendment depends on ownership structure this implies that the adoption of antitakeover amendments may be anticipated then announcement returns provide a biased estimate of wealth effects an estimator that corrects for the bias induced by anticipation indicates that the enactment of an antitakeover amendment is associated with a statistically significant decrease in shareholder wealth the voting power of employee stock ownership plans and the chief executive officer plays a prominent role in determining whether a firm will adopt this type of takeover defense

a real options evaluation model for the diffusion prospects of new renewable power generation technologies this study presents a policy planning model that integrates learning curve information on renewable power generation technologies into a dynamic programming formulation featuring real options analysis the model recursively evaluates a set of investment alternatives on a year by year basis thereby taking into account that the flexibility to delay an irreversible investment expenditure can profoundly affect the diffusion prospects of renewable power generation technologies price uncertainty is introduced through stochastic processes for the average wholesale price of electricity and for input fuel prices demand for electricity is assumed to be increasingly price sensitive as the electricity market deregulation proceeds reflecting new options of consumers to react to electricity price changes such as time of use pricing unbundled electricity services and choice of supplier the empirical analysis is based on data for the turkish electricity supply industry apart from general implications for policy making it provides some interesting insights about the impact of uncertainty and technical change on the diffusion of various emerging renewable energy technologies

on corporate governance a study of proxy contests abstract this paper examines a sample of firms experiencing proxy contests for seats on their board of directors dissident shareholders usually fail to obtain a majority of board seats nevertheless they capture some seats via mechanisms such as cumulative voting in over half of the sample contests regardless of proxy contest outcome positive and statistically significant share price performance is associated with the contest that finding is predicted by the standard economic analysis of proxy contests in which the challenges benefit shareholders by improving corporate performance the finding runs counter to the claim of berle 1962 that the economists view of proxy contests is a wholly imaginary picture a portion of the positive share price changes taking place in the early stages of some proxy contests is not permanent however and as suggested by manne 1962 is at least partially attributable to temporary increases in the market value of the vote attached to corporate shares

a dynamic nash game model of oil market disruptions and strategic stockpiling in this paper we present and analyze a nash dynamic game model for investigating public and private sector oil inventory policies in unstable world oil markets conceptual results about the model include simple verifiable conditions for uniqueness and stability of solutions along with characterizations of optimal policies we also present results and discuss computational issues that arise in determining subgame perfect infinite horizon equilibria using a steady state policy iteration approach

deal structuring in philanthropic venture capital investments financing instrument valuation and covenants philanthropic venture capital phvc is a financing option available for social enterprises that like traditional venture capital provides capital and value added services to portfolio organizations differently from venture capital phvc has an ethical dimension as it aims at maximizing the social return on the investment this article examines the deal structuring phase of phvc investments in terms of instrument used from equity to grant valuation and covenants included in the contractual agreement by content analyzing a set of semi structured interviews and thereafter surveying the entire population of phvc funds that are active in europe and in the united states findings indicate that the non distribution constraint holding for non profit social enterprises is an effective tool to align the interests of both investor and investee this makes the investor behaving as a steward rather than as a principal conversely while backing non profit social ventures philanthropic venture capitalists structure their deal similarly as traditional venture capital as the absence of the non distribution constraint makes such investments subject to moral hazard risk both in terms of perks and stealing and social impact focus

changes in organizational structure and shareholder wealth the case of limited partnerships this paper analyzes the consequence for shareholders of a change in organizational form the conversion of a corporation or the spin off of a unit into a limited partnership theory suggests that prior to the tax reform act of 1986 the tax benefits of conversion to a limited partnership and the creation of a new entity separate from the parent corporation should have a positive effect on shareholder wealth on the other hand the increase in agency costs of such an organizational change should decrease the wealth of shareholders empirical results lend support to hypotheses that predict an increase in stock price at the announcement of the conversion but cannot identify the source of the gain

managerial ownership of voting rights abstract managers of firms with dual classes of common stock can choose different quantities of votes for a given cash flow interest by choosing different quantities of the two securities we study managerial stock holdings in 45 dual class firms and find that vote ownership per se is an important motivation for these holdings in that corporate officers and their families hold a median 56 9 of the votes and 24 0 of the common stock cash flows we also find significant family involvement in many sample firms and document four case studies in which explicit acquisition premiums were paid for superior voting shares

corporate earnings and financings an empirical analysis this article examines the long term behavior of corporate earnings around three corporate financing events sales of common stock convertible bonds and straight bonds the article shows that earnings declined for all issuers and that more capital is raised the larger the earnings decline these findings indicate that external financings are motivated by earnings declines no evidence is found of a relationship between the size of the subsequent earnings downturn or the amount of capital raised and stock price reactions to the financing announcements these findings suggest that security sales did not systematically provide new information about either the magnitude of subsequent earnings downturn or the amount of financing copyright 1990 by the university of chicago

shareholder wealth effects of directors liability limitation provisions the adoption of liability limitation provisions llps is associated with insignificant stock price reactions for all firms but with positive stock price reactions for poorly performing firms this result is consistent with the hypothesis that the net benefit of llps is larger for financially troubled firms than for other firms because outside directors are valuable to the distressed firm and llps substantially affect experts expected costs of serving as directors

the social construction of market value institutionalization and learning perspectives on stock market reactions this study advances a social constructionist view of financial market behavior the paper suggests that the market s reaction to particular corporate practices such as stock repurchase plans are not as financial economists contend simply a function of the inherent efficiency of such practices rather stock market reactions are also influenced by the prevailing institutional logic and the degree of institutionalization of the practice the theory first predicts that the emergence of the agency perspective on corporate governance in the mid 1980s represented a powerful new institutional logic that would lead the market to reverse its prior aggregate reaction to stock repurchase plans in the united states the paper then considers the potential for institutional decoupling of repurchase plans and develops competing hypotheses about how the market value of these policies might have changed as more firms formally adopted but did not implement the plans over time in contrast to a financial economic pers

the impact of antitrust litigation on shareholder return the hypothesis that antitrust litigation will redistribute economic power is examined using an event study framework district and appellate court findings involving firms litigating antitrust issues and the telex v ibm case are examined the results indicated that shareholders of firms involved in the litigation experienced decreases increases in return when either court finding was unfavorable favorable the telex v ibm results indicated that the district court s finding against ibm resulted in significant positive abnormal returns for computer industry firms abnormal negative returns were also found in the period surrounding the appellate court reversal copyright 1989 by blackwell publishing ltd

inventory optimization in the u s petroleum industry empirical analysis and implications for energy emergency policy much of the rapid increases in the price of crude oil during two of the last three supply shocks has been attributed to increased private inventory demand stimulated by the expectation of speculative profits government intervention in any future disruption is likely to take the form of releases from the strategic petroleum reserve spr given that the spr accounts for but a small fraction of u s oil inventories the reaction of the private sector is critical in evaluating its impact we incorporate inventory behavior in a model of the world oil market which is then linked to a short run macroeconometric model of the u s economy our model simulations support the view that substantial inventory accumulation accompanies a supply disruption in the debate over whether the spr is potentially a potent or impotent resource in an emergency we lean toward potency our model suggests that public releases will not be absorbed in private stockpiles indeed their dampening price effects will serve albeit slig

the outsourcing of r d through acquisitions in the pharmaceutical industry abstract we examine the performance of 160 pharmaceutical acquisitions from 1994 to 2001 and find evidence that on average acquirers realize significant positive returns these returns are positively correlated with prior acquirer access to information about the research and development activities at target firms and a superior negotiating position a unique desperation index is employed to determine the current status of a firm s internal productivity we find that firms experiencing declines in internal productivity or which are more desperate are more likely to engage in an outsourcing type acquisition in an effort to replenish their research pipelines

direct equity financing a resolution of a paradox when raising new equity capital managers have historically rejected the direct offer method favoring instead the seemingly more expensive underwritten public issue this paper provides a resolution for this equity financing paradox by demonstrating empirically that firms which engage in direct offers enjoy a comparative cost advantage that is more than sufficient to account for the absolute reported cost differences between the two methods of equity financing

the effect of management s choice between negotiated and competitive equity offerings on shareholder wealth this paper investigates the effect on shareholder wealth of two events that change management s choice between negotiated and competitive underwritten equity offerings these two events are the suspension and termination of suspension of rule 50 this rule is based on the public utility holding company act of 1935 and requires certain utilities to use the competitive method the results indicate that the shareholders of the affected utilities experience an abnormal negative return on the announcement of the suspension of rule 50 and an abnormal positive return on the announcement of the termination of suspension this evidence is consistent with the joint hypothesis i competitive offerings are less costly than negotiated offerings and ii manager shareholder agency costs are a determinant of the corporate choice between these two methods of raising equity

the effect of private antitrust litigation on the stock market valuation of the firm the authors study the implications for shareholder wealth of interfirm antitrust litigation and how the costs of the dispute affect the propensity to settle upon filing defendants experience significant wealth losses that are ten million dollars larger than the wealth gains of plaintiffs financial distress behavioral constraints and follow on suits are sources of wealth leakage and influence settlement behavior since the threat of a monetary transfer has little power to explain either wealth effects or the likelihood of settlement the central concern of defendants may be the potential prohibition of profitable business practices copyright 1995 by american economic association

energy security coping with multiple supply risks this study starts from the observation that today s western trading nations are exposed to multiple risks of energy supplies eg simultaneous shortage of oil and gas supplies to cope with these risks both oil and gas can be stockpiled adopting the viewpoint of a policy maker who aims at minimizing the expected cost of security of supply optimal simultaneous adjustments of oil and gas stocks to exogenous changes such as an increase in the probability of supply disruption are derived against this benchmark one dimensional rules such as oil reserves for 90 days turn out to be not only suboptimal but also to suggest adjustments exacerbating suboptimality

the competitive impact of air crashes stock market evidence abstract we examine stock market reactions to commercial air crashes to test the hypothesis that consumers respond by switching to rival airlines and or flying less we focus on the stock price reactions of airlines not involved in the crash if switching occurs noncrash airlines should benefit to the extent that they are direct competitors of the crash airline we develop a measure of market overlap and regress individual non crash airline abnormal returns on this measure allowing the constant term to capture any negative spillovers the evidence supports both a switching effect and a spillover

using stockpile delegation to improve china s strategic oil policy a multi dimension stochastic dynamic programming approach abstract there has been much attention paid to oil security in china in recent years although china has begun to establish its own strategic petroleum reserve spr to prevent potential losses caused by oil supply interruptions the system aiming to ensure china s oil security is still incomplete this paper describes and provides evidence for the benefits of an auxiliary strategic oil policy choice which aims to strengthen china s oil supply security and offer a solution for strategic oil operations with different holding costs in this paper we develop a multi dimension stochastic dynamic programming model to analyze the oil stockpile delegation policy which is an intermediate policy between public and private oil stockpiles and is appropriate for the chinese immature private oil stockpile sector the model examines the effects of the oil stockpile delegation policy in the context of several distinct situations including normal world oil market conditions slight oil supply interruption and serious oil supply interruption operating strategies that respond to different oil supply situations for both the spr and the delegated oil stockpile were obtained different time horizons interruption times and holding costs of delegated oil stockpiles were examined the construction process of china s spr was also taken into account

why regulate insider trading evidence from the first great merger wave 1897 1903 we use event time methodology to study legal insider trading associated with mergers circa 1900 for mergers with prospective disclosures similar to today s we find substantial value gains at announcement implying participation by outside shareholders despite the absence of insider constraints furthermore preannouncement stock price runups relative to total value gain are no more than those observed for modern mergers insider regulation apparently has produced little benefit for outsiders with the inside information pricing function and related gains shifting to external information specialists other results suggest market penalties for nondisclosure i e insider trading is less successful in a restricted information environment

empirical evidence on on vertical foreclosure i introduction prior to the 1980s the united states department of justice and the federal trade commission actively challenged vertical mergers on the theory that such mergers foreclosed unintegrated rivals in the downstream market from access to inputs supplied by the merged firm this policy changed when critics of the foreclosure theory claimed that vertically integrated firms have no incentive to transfer products between the upstream and downstream markets at a price other than the market price and therefore vertical mergers have no effect on the price charged to consumers 1 the arguments against attacking vertical mergers were also supported by research that demonstrated that vertical integration can enhance efficiency 2 as a result vertical mergers currently receive very little if any attention from the enforcement agencies recent contributions by ordover saloner and salop 1990 krattenmaker and salop 1986 and salinger 1988 1989 have reopened the debate about the competitive effects of vertical mergers they each use theoretical models to show that vertical foreclosures can raise costs to unintegrated rivals and lead to higher prices for consumers although these models demonstrate that foreclosure can be a profitable strategy that injures competition to date these theories have not been tested empirically if vertical foreclosure rarely occurs or if it occurs only in a narrow set of circumstances changes in current policy on vertical mergers may not be justified a necessary but not sufficient condition for anticompetitive foreclosure is that the vertical merger cause the unintegrated rivals to be less profitable this result from previous theoretical work is tested here on a sample selected from all vertical merger cases challenged by the justice department and the federal trade commission during the period 1963 to 1982 we find no evidence of anticompetitive market foreclosure for the sample of cases challenged by the antitrust agencies one possible explanation for our results is that the tests over the entire sample are significantly affected by a few weak cases brought by the government during a period of aggressive antitrust enforcement we test this by examining variables that have been identified by krattenmaker and salop 1986 and the department of justice merger guidelines as being conducive to foreclosure such as barriers to entry and industry concentration even the cases with high industry concentration and barriers to entry which potentially should exhibit substantial market power provide no evidence of foreclosure while this does not preclude anticompetitive foreclosure as a possibility it does call into question the cases brought by the antitrust agencies during the 1960s and the 1970s until the proponents of the more rigorous economic version of the foreclosure theory provide clearer guidelines about the conditions under which vertical mergers are likely to injure competition continuation of the current policy of not contesting these mergers seems justified ii theory of anticompetitive foreclosure the foreclosure arguments used to challenge vertical mergers during the 1950s and 1960s were easily discredited because no formal theory was used to support them more recent attempts to reconstruct the foreclosure theory have used economic models to demonstrate that vertical foreclosure can reduce competition the key to each of these models is that foreclosure raises the costs to the unintegrated rivals of the merged firm and this under certain conditions raises the price of the final product to the consumer the legal definition of foreclosure focuses on the ability of unintegrated firms to buy from or sell to integrated rivals while the economic definition of anticompetitive foreclosure focuses on whether prices to consumers increase salinger 1988 has provided a model that demonstrates the conditions under which anticompetitive foreclosure will occur

event studies in management research theoretical and empirical issues we examined the use of event studies in management research and found that there was inadequate attention paid to theoretical and research design issues this lack of attention may lead to false in

the effect of pre emptive right amendments on shareholder wealth abstract pre emptive rights allow existing shareholders to purchase a new offering of shares before the general public this paper investigates the effect on shareholder wealth of removing pre emptive rights from corporate charters two hypotheses are constrasted 1 shareholder wealth maximization suggests that management uses this extra degree of freedom to pick the least cost method for raising new equity hence the amendment increases shareholder wealth 2 management welfare maximization holds that management will use the passage of the amendment to maximize their own welfare sometimes to the detriment of shareholders hence the amendment decreases shareholder wealth the evidence indicates that the amendment decreases shareholder wealth

interpreting common stock returns around proxy statement disclosures and annual shareholder meetings numerous studies have analyzed the stock market reaction to information released in proxy statements two possible biases in proxy statement research are suggested frequently misspecification of the return benchmark and a sample selection bias from analyzing only clean events this paper presents evidence that most of the conclusions of existing studies are not affected by these potential biases a significantly positive abnormal return was found around a random sample of shareholder meeting dates the result indicates that interpreting event study results for announcements occurring around annual shareholder meetings must be conducted carefully the results are consistent with the findings of kalay and loewenstein 14 who argue that risk and expected return can increase around predictable information producing events alternatively the study can be viewed as being consistent with several recent studies that find anomalous results using daily return data and large samples

empirical analysis of optimal strategic petroleum reserve in china abstract the chinese government began to prepare for the establishment of strategic petroleum reserve in march 2004 therefore answering the question of what level of strategic petroleum reserve would be suitable for china s future economic development becomes essential using a decision tree model based on a cost function this paper quantifies china s optimal strategic petroleum reserve for the period 2005 2020 this approach provides a methodology reference for further quantified discussion on china s spr our results show that for economic development and security of the energy supply the strategic petroleum reserve should be the equivalent of 30 60 days of net oil import for an optimal solution when the oil price is 50 bbl with a reserve of an equivalent of 60 90 days of net oil import to have an optimal solution when oil price is 20 35 bbl

an empirical investigation of the impact of antitakeover amendments on common stock prices abstract antitakeover amendments are amendments to a corporation s charter that impede the ability of an outsider to gain control of the firm a number of individuals and institutions have onjected to such amendments on the grounds that they are not in the best interests of the shareholders of the firms that adopt them this paper employs event time methodology to investigate the impact of antitakeover amendments on the common stock prices of firms that adopt them the results indicate that the announcement of such amendments is associated with a positive revaluation of stock price contrary to the concerns of their critics we conclude that antitakeover amendments are proposed by managers who seek to increase the value of the firm and are approved by stockholders who share that objective