a history friendly model of the successive changes in industrial leadership and the catch up by latecomers abstract successive changes in industrial leadership between both firms and countries described here as catch up cycles have been common in several sectors this article develops a history friendly model to explore the role played by technological conditions in the emergence of such leadership changes the model is inspired by two cases where the emergence of disruptively novel technology played an important role mobile phones and semiconductors in the baseline setting the model is able to generate the benchmark case of three cycles with two leadership changes in particular the simulation analysis reveals that a the more disruptive the new technology and the lower the incumbents capabilities the greater the shake up of market shares between incumbents and latecomers b leadership change is more likely to occur when it coincides with certain responses by the actors to the technological disruption such as a high lock in behaviour on the part of incumbents and c a technology driven change of industrial leadership is more likely to occur in the presence of increasing returns to technological investments the counterfactual experiments show that different catch up dynamics can emerge depending on the magnitude of technological disruption the degree of lock ins the shape of technological landscape and incumbents initial capabilities in particular four other types of catch up cycle are generated the aborted cycle persistent leadership return of the old leadership and coexistence in leadership between latecomers and incumbents each of these cycles is identified with a specific historical case of catch up

the effect of preferred stock rating changes on preferred and common stock prices abstract daily returns are used to investigate the effect of preferred stock rating change announcements on preferred and common stock prices announcements that are free of confounding events clean announcements significantly affect preferred stock prices however the effect occurs after the day of announcement mostly on event day 1 conversely there is no evidence clean announcements affect common stock prices larger preferred stock abnormal returns are associated with announcements that are contaminated by confounding events but the abnormal returns appear to be the result of the confounding events more than the rating change

day of the week effects and asset returns the number of empirical studies using daily stock returns is rapidly increasing researchers generally assume that the distribution of stock returns is identical for all days of the week a convenient statistical assumption but not a necessary condition of market equilibrium nevertheless there are reasons to suspect that the distribution of returns may vary according to the day of the week the most obvious is the impact of weekends on monday s return since monday s return is calculated over three instead of one calender day the mean and variance may well be higher on monday compared with any other daily return perhaps three times as large previous research has examined the daily distribution of stock returns for a monday effect while fama 1965 does not compare daily mean returns he does report that monday s variance is about 20o greater than other daily returns with a traditional distributional assumption regarding the returns on a financial asset specifies that the expected returns are identical for all days of the week contrary to this plausible assumption this paper discovers that the expected returns on common stocks and treasury bills are not constant across days of the week the most notable evidence is for monday s returns where the mean is unusually low or even negative several explanations of the results are investigated but none proves satisfactory aside from documenting significant day of the week effects the implications of the results for tests of market efficiency are examined while market adjusted returns continue to exhibit day of the week effects these effects are no longer concentrated on monday during the last year we have had many conversations with our colleagues throughout the professions we are particularly thankful to the participants at sessions of the western and american finance associations where preliminary versions of this paper were presented special thanks are due to gene fama gailen hite jon ingersoll robert jarrow merton miller clifford smith and rex thompson the expert research assistance of frank rabinovitch and youngsup yun is gratefully acknowledged 1 the list of papers using daily stock returns is too long to name recent examples include charest 1978 dodd 1980 banz 1981 and reinganum 1981

value line rank and firm size this paper studies the relation between value line s successful record in predicting relative stock price movements and the firm size effect the data suggest little direct relation between the two phen omena value line tends not to rank small firm stocks and small firm stocks that are ranked are more likely to receive a low rank than la rge firm stocks within each size sorted quintile of the market the mean payoffs on costless positions constructed according to value lin e s recommendations are positive copyright 1987 by the university of chicago

information technology and time based competition in financial markets this paper studies time based competition in imperfect securities markets linking it investment decisions information processing delays and trading strategies at the it investment stage traders trade off the cost of it against their anticipated trading profits at the trading stage each trader devises a trading strategy based on his new information while taking into account the impact of both his own trades and those of other traders in the market our results illustrate how traders react to market imperfections due to trading costs and information processing delays and how superior traders convert a timeliness advantage into higher trading profits they also shed light on the relationship between the price adjustment process and traders information processing delays timeliness imposes an interesting structure on trader competition traders with longer information processing delays trade less frequently submit smaller orders and enjoy lower profits per trade our analysis of traders it investment decisions demonstrates how factors such as it costs number of traders and the frequency and nature of new information affect the level of it investments we further illustrate how improved it infrastructure translates into competitive advantage

the limits of capital transcending the public financer private producer split in industrial r d abstract a near consensus has emerged supporting the public funding of industrial r d as a solution to a host of market failures however the common policy prescription urges government to go no further than minimal market enhancing intervention largely keeping the state to the role of financer of privately conducted r d by focusing on three general issues in the context of industrial r d trust coordination and motivation this article develops an argument for a more expansive government role two models of state intervention are at the center of the analysis public production of r d and state sponsorship of inter firm and inter organizational networks it is argued that both these models have distinct advantages as well as weaknesses in addressing common challenges to industrial r d production informed by the positive experiences of different states that have moved in recent years from high technology industries periphery to the center this article explains how the two models of state intervention address the various problems associated with pure private production it is concluded that while even advanced countries with well developed markets might find it advantageous to actively intervene in industrial r d the two models should especially be considered in cases of economies that suffer from weak market signals low retention of value added functions limited professional capacities and limited institutional thickness and networks

from hybrids to hierarchies shareholder wealth effects of joint venture partner buyouts this study examines the parent firm performance implications of joint venture jv partner buyouts which involve the conversion of a hybrid governance structure to an internal unit within the firm s hierarchy transaction cost theory as developed and applied in the international literature and market entry research is extended to the post entry investment setting to isolate sources of value creation or dissipation from the governance changes effected by jv partner buyouts the evidence complements recent research on jv longevity and its determinants copyright 2001 john wiley sons ltd

the relation between marginal product and price in us energy markets implications for climate change policy abstract this paper reports an empirical test of the axioms that describe the relationship between the marginal product and price of factor inputs in us energy markets to do so i estimate a reduced form of a production function that represents the amounts of various energy types that are required to produce a given level of output the partial derivative of this production function is used to calculate the change in output that is generated by a marginal change in the use of coal oil natural gas or electricity a partial adjustment model is used to estimate the relation between the marginal product and price of coal oil natural gas and electricity the results indicate that rational agents manipulate their use of coal oil natural gas and electricity so that the marginal product of these energies adjust to changes in the relative prices of these energies because the marginal products of oil and natural gas are greater than coal less than one heat unit of oil or natural gas is needed to substitute for one unit of coal and this increases the quantity of carbon emissions that can be abated by interfuel substitution the time required to achieve these reductions may be longer than thought previously because of the slow rate at which the relative marginal product adjusts to relative price

the effect of value line investment survey rank changes on common stock prices abstract the information content of value line investment survey rank changes is investigated the results suggest rank changes affect common stock prices but the effect varies by the type of rank change changes from rank 2 to rank 1 have the most dramatic impact on prices a cross sectional analysis finds small firms have a greater reaction to a rank change than larger firms which supports theories on the frequency of report arrival and precision of information a speed of adjustment test concludes the prices of individual securities adjust to the information in a rank change over a multiple day period

public sector organizations and agricultural catch up dilemma in emerging markets the orchestrating role of embrapa in brazil abstract how can an emerging economy beset by political economic and resource challenges jump start the technology catch up process in the agricultural sector and then forge an ecosystem to facilitate the continual generation and dissemination of innovations equally important how can it maintain the viability and salience of its catch up initiatives subsequent to the entry and inevitable dominance of multinational companies we answer these questions by studying catch up in brazil s soy seeds sector over four decades 1973 2015 in an environment of political and economic uncertainty embrapa a public sector organization forged partnerships to first develop absorptive capacity and innovation capabilities and then build an ecosystem of diverse organizations to generate and disseminate catch up outcomes to farmers and other end users embrapa also developed critical tacit knowledge and complementary assets that along with its emphasis on environmental sustainability and protecting national interests helped maintain its salience even after the entry and market dominance by multinational agribusinesses in addition to demonstrating critical roles for public sector organizations and public private networks in technological catch up in an emerging economy s agricultural sector our study calls into question the prevalent notion of technological catch up as a rush to reach the technological frontier at any cost

market efficiency and value line s record the value line investment record is frequently interpreted as evidence of market inefficiency this article reconciles the record with market efficiency as one implication of a model that assumes a semistrong form of market efficiency and autoregressive state variables which need not be identified in the model expected returns on assets depend on these state variables and can vary over time value line s rankings are assumed to reflect knowledge of these state variables the value line data are consistent with the model s implications suggesting the value line s rankings predict systematic marketwide factors the purported abnormal returns of positions based on value line s rankings are seen as compensation for the systematic risk associated with these positions copyright 1990 by the university of chicago

the capm and equity return regularities differential returns on dividend and capital gains income systematic abnormal returns surrounding ex dividend dates excess returns on small versus large capitalization stocks excess returns on low versus high price earnings ratio stocks these are among the recent findings that cast doubt on the traditional capital asset pricing model and tease investors with the promise of systematic excess returns some of these effects are undoubtedly related tests indicate for example that the higher a portfolio s price to book ratio the higher the corresponding values of market capitalization pie and stock price furthermore p e dividend yield price and pie effects all experience significant january seasonals what has not been conclusively determined is whether the effects are additive so far it appears that the dividend yield and size effects are not mnutually exclusive investors may want to use a strategy employing several of these characteristics rather than one efforts to explain the size effect have focused on january because the effect is concentrated in that month the most common hypothesis attributes this to year end tax loss selling but the evidence is less than conclusive evidence strongly suggests however that among small firms those with the largest abnormal returns tend to be the firms that have recently become small that either don t pay dividends or have higher dividend yields and that have lower prices and low pie ratios

public policy and catching up by developing countries in global industries a simulation model this paper examines the effects of different public policies strengthening capability building favouring firms learning protectionism and support of entry of new domestic firms on the catch up of a latecomer with respect to an incumbent country in changing and uncertain technological environments the effects of these policies are analysed with a simulation model first separately and then jointly to assess possible complementarities we reach several results first we confirm that capability building and firms learning are important drivers of catch up second we find that when a large technological discontinuity takes place entry support favours catch up while protectionism has the opposite effect protectionism favours catch up only when no technological discontinuity opens up third we find that depending on the technological conditions different policy complementarities exist therefore different policy mixes should be at the base of a country catch up strategy these results add to the previous literature on public policy and catching up by developing countries in an industry by distinguishing the different effects of various types of public policy and relating them to the technological conditions that are present in an industry

the effect of the information environment on the relationship between financial disclosure and security price variability abstract this study provides a test of the relationship between changes in a firm s disclosure environment and its security price behavior the initiation of interim reporting is examined theory suggests that the marginal information content of an annual report is greater when it has not been preceded by interim reports and that greater return variability will be observed at the annual report announcement date the variance of returns upon release of the annual report is compared in the annual report only and annual plus quarterly reports environments as predicted by the theory variability is significantly greater in the annual report only environment

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

aggregation and the role of energy in the economy methods for investigating the role of energy in the economy involve aggregating different energy flows a variety of methods have been proposed but none has received universal acceptance this paper shows that the method of aggregation has crucial effects on the results of the analysis we review the principal assumptions and methods for aggregating energy flows the basic heat equivalents approach economic approaches using prices or marginal product for aggregation emergy analysis and thermodynamic approaches such as exergy we argue that economic approaches such as the index or marginal product method are superior because they account for differences in quality among fuels we apply various economic approaches in three case studies in the us economy in the first we account for energy quality to assess changes in the energy surplus delivered by the extraction of fossil fuels from 1954 to 1992 the second and third case studies examine the importance of energy quality in evaluating the relation between energy use and gdp first a quality adjusted index of energy consumption is used in an econometric analysis of the causal relation between energy use and gdp from 1947 to 1996 second we account for energy quality in an econometric analysis of the factors that determine changes in the energy gdp ratio from 1947 to 1996 without adjusting for energy quality the results imply that the energy surplus from petroleum extraction is increasing that changes in gdp drive changes in energy use and that gdp has been decoupled from between aggregate energy use all of these conclusions are reversed when we account for changes in energy quality 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

public research institutions and economic catch up abstract public research institutions often but not always connected with universities have been in the past important elements of the structures supporting economic catch up recent changes in the international economic environment and the growing scientific basis for contemporary technologies will make those institutions even more important in the future universities and public labs have contributed to the development of technological capabilities in different forms across countries and economic sectors in contrast with current emphasis on university based embryonic inventions and fundamental research effective research programs have predominantly occurred in the application oriented sciences and engineering and have been oriented towards problem solving and the advancement of technologies of interest to a well defined user community

substitution of information for energy conceptual background realities and limits abstract the substitution of information for energy is a dominant phenomenon in economic activities but this substitution is very particular compared to the substitution among factors of production because information does not have the properties of a factor of production this article attempts to understand how information substitutes for energy

the value line enigma extended an examination of the performance of option recommendations the authors extend the research on the value line enigma by examining the performance of call recommendations in value line options d galai s hedge decomposition procedure identifies the components of the calls returns abnormal call returns were most pronounced immediately following the purchase which is consistent with studies of value line s stock rankings the largest and most significant abnormal performance was by calls assigned the highest rank written on stocks judged by value line to be correctly priced abnormal call return performance by joint call and stock ranks was consistent with hypothesis that value line identifies underpriced call options copyright 1993 by university of chicago press

the informative role of the value line investment survey evidence from stock highlights i examine abnormal stock returns associated with stock highlights published by the value line investment survey at the time of their publication stock highlights elicit strong positive abnormal returns they also have positive abnormal returns at the time of the earnings announcement preceding stock highlight publications post earnings announcement drift is present but is much too small to explain abnormal returns at the time of the publication of stock highlights thus value line stock highlights provide useful information to investors this information is rapidly reflected in stock prices consistent with market efficiency

earnings surprise research synthesis and perspectives an investigation of the relation between earnings surprise and three empirical anomalies the p e effect the size effect and the value line enigma indicates that the standardized unexpected earnings sue effect appears to be separate and distinct from each of the three the relations between the sue phenomenon and firm risk the appropriateness of the earnings expectations model and the role of transaction costs are also investigated the sue phenomenon is not attributable to inappropriate risk adjustment use of the wrong earnings expectations model or ignoring transaction costs the sue effect may be partly explained by analysts behavior and is both predictable and profitable the sue effect has also been observed in japan

a critical review of iea s oil demand forecast for china abstract china has a rapidly growing economy with a rapidly increasing demand for oil the international energy agency iea investigated possible future oil demand scenarios for china in the 2006 world energy outlook the debate on whether oil supplies will be constrained in the near future because of limited new discoveries raises the concern that the oil industry may not be able to produce sufficient oil to meet this demand this paper examines the historical relationship between economic growth and oil consumption in a number of countries logistic curve characteristics are observed in the relationship between per capita economic activity and oil consumption this research has determined that the minimum statistical lower bound annual oil consumption for developed countries is 11 barrels per capita despite the increase reported in total energy efficiency no developed country has been able to reduce oil consumption below this lower limit indeed the iea projections to 2030 for the oecd countries show no reduction in oil demand on a per capita basis if this lower limit is applied to china it is clear that the iea projections for china are under estimating the growth in demand for oil this research has determined that this under estimation could be as high as 10 million barrels per day by 2025 if proponents of peak oil such as laherrere campbell and deffeyes are correct about the predicted peak in oil production before 2020 then the implications of this reassessment of china s oil demand will have profound implications for mankind

a note on testing an aggressive investment strategy using value line ranks one of the better known investment advisory services is the value line investment survey an unresolved debate has been in progress in the literature for a decade as to whether the performance of the value line investment service is inconsistent with the efficient market hypothesis for example black 2 states that the vl system can produce extra returns even when transaction costs are considered but he does not report his exact test procedure or any quantitative results of his study on the other hand kaplan and weil 10 11 do not believe that vl can generate abnormal returns we shall show in the following sections that the vl system represents a borderline case when transaction costs are neglected abnormal returns are obtained when realistic transaction costs are used active trading according to vl recommendations does not yield abnormal returns for a buy and hold policy however vl recommendations do yield abnormal returns even when transaction costs are considered

a comparison of single and multifactor portfolio performance methodologies a comparison of single and multifactor portfolio performance methodologies using value line and size ranked portfolios indicates that although both methodologies provide unbi ased estimates of portfolio performance there are systematic differences in the power of the two methodologies the predictive power of the multifactor methodology is superior for well diversified portfolios but inferior for less diversified portfolios

on the sources and significance of interindustry differences in technological opportunities abstract the set of technological opportunities in a given industry is one of the fundamental determinants of technical advance in that line of business we examine the concept of technological opportunity and discuss three categories of sources of those opportunities advances in scientific understanding and technique technological advances originating in other industries and in other private and governmental institutions and feedbacks from an industry s own technological advances data from the yale survey on industrial research and development are used to measure the strength of various sources of technological opportunity and to discern interindustry differences in the importance of these sources we find that interindustry differences in the strength and sources of technological opportunities contribute importantly to explanations of cross industry variation in r d intensity and technological advance

cross sectional association between abnormal returns and firm specific variables abstract abnormal returns market model prediction errors are the subject of many event studies in accounting and finance literature conditional on the event of interest researchers have recently used cross sectional regressions to examine relations between abnormal returns and firm specific variables this paper demostrates that non constant variences and covariances in market model residuals across firms introduced bias in the estimated slope coefficients of the independent variables i e the expected signs of the estimated slope coefficients can be predicted a priori a method is develope to removed the bias in the estimated slope coefficiets and is found to be effective this method explicitly takes the dependence among abnormal returns across firms into account methods that assume abnormal returns across firms to be independent do not control for such bias

market reactions to messages from brokerage ratings systems one dimension of the strategies investment houses use to present investment advice is the number of categories in their rating systems we studied three four and five level systems and found that in all rating systems upgrades outnumber downgrades price reactions are more pronounced to multiple level than to single level recommendation changes and to recommendation upgrades to the highest rating category these price reactions confirm that the market gleans new information from analysts research but suggest that investors at least partially recognize analysts tendency toward optimism and thus react more strongly to downgrades the price effects also show that adding more rating categories is not simply a way to portion out information in smaller bits some of the largest price reactions are to changes between the top two categories in a five level system even though the descriptions of the categories would not signal a portfolio action our results are consistent with the view that firms try to

what are the most promising conduits for foreign knowledge inflows innovation networks in the chinese pharmaceutical industry we study innovation networks in emerging markets where foreign actors have been identified as key sources of knowledge spillovers as well as progenitors of industry clusters focusing on connectivity as a channel for international knowledge sourcing we widen our lens beyond mnes to include critical innovative actors such as research institutions i e universities and research centers we examine the geographic dispersion of co inventor networks generated by us patents associated with the chinese pharmaceutical industry previous research has highlighted the role of organizationally driven mne networks as enablers of foreign knowledge inflows to less developed countries however our results emphasize the critical role of individually motivated networks arising from advanced economy research institutions in connecting china to global knowledge networks

universities in emerging economies bridging local industry with international science evidence from chile and south africa emerging economies are now becoming more central in global competition to achieve this many countries have invested to develop into knowledge economies universities have a role to play in this transformation both as generators of new knowledge as well as actors that can interact with the local industry and contribute to its innovativeness this paper explores using two case studies in the chilean and south african wine industry how universities connect international science to domestic industry it finds that this connection occurs through a few bridging researchers who display particular characteristics compared with their colleagues bridging researchers are more talented than average researchers both because they publish more in international journals and or because they have received awards for their academic work this finding may have significant policy implications as policies aimed at strengthening the skills of these researchers should be welcomed in catching up industries copyright the author 2012 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

making sense of institutions as a factor shaping economic performance abstract there has recently been a resurgence of interest in how institutions affect economic performance a review of this literature reveals that the concept of an institution means different things to different scholars both within economics and across the social sciences we discuss what factors unify the different definitions of institutions and develop a concept of institutions useful for the analysis of economic performance and economic growth in particular specifically we develop the notion of institutions as standard social technologies economic growth results from the co evolution of physical and social technologies

thirty years of agricultural growth in brazil crop performance regional profile and recent policy review the postwar economic growth of brazil has received much attention in specialized and general literature on development structural change associated with rapid and sustained industrialization with strong backward linkages into intermediate capital goods sectors has been the focus of much of this work the costs benefits and distortions growing out of this secular process of economic growth have been documented highlighting the unusual performance of the brazilian economy among the middle income developing countries finally the important shift in policy regimes from import substitution in the 1950s to export substitution beginning in the late 1960s has been analyzed adding a rich base of data and results with which to evaluate the brazilian performance and test various hypotheses concerning the impact of selected policy parameters on efficiency growth and distribution 2 however until recently less attention has been devoted to a review of the performance of the agricultural sector within this scenario of rapid change and growth 3 this becomes important in interpreting trends in income distribution in the 1970s this article is directed toward filling this gap in part through reviewing the empirical record on the aggregate and regional performances of output area and yield of the cropproducing sector of brazilian agriculture over the 30 year period 195080 this is possible through the extensive time series on crop output in metric tons area in hectares and physical yields generated by the annual crop reporting series of the brazilian institute of geography and statistics fibge a series that accounts for 98 of all crop output in brazil during this period

the dartboard column second hand information and price pressure this study analyzes the effect of second hand information on the behavior of security prices and volume using analysts recommendations published in the monthly dartboard column of the wall street journal for the two days following the publication of the recommendations average positive abnormal returns of 4 percent nearly twice the level of abnormal returns documented in previous research on analyst recommendations and average volume double normal volume levels on the two days following publication of the recommendations are documented the positive abnormal return on announcement is partially reversed within 25 trading days the authors conclude that the positive abnormal return on announcement of the recommendations is a result of naive buying pressure as well as the information content of the analysts recommendations

the national system of innovation in historical perspective contrary to some recent work on so called globalisation this paper argues that national and regional systems of innovation remain an essential domain of economic analysis their importance derives from the networks of relationships which are necessary for any firm to innovate whilst external international connections are certainly of growing importance the influence of the national education system industrial relations technical and scientific institutions government policies cul tural traditions and many other national institutions is fundamental the historical examples of germany japan and the former ussr illustrate this point as well as the more recent contrast between east asian and latin american countries introduction the national system of friedrich list according to this author s recollections the first person to use the expression national system of innovation was bengt ake lundvall and he is also the editor of a highly original and thought provoking book 1992 on this subject however as he and his colleagues would be the first to agree and as lundvall himself points out the idea actually goes back at least to friedrich list s conception of the national system of political economy 1841 which might just as well have been called the national system of innovation the main concern of list was with the problem of germany overtaking england and for underdeveloped countries as germany then was in relation to england he advocated not only protection of infant industries but a broad range of policies designed to accelerate or to make possible industrialisation and economic growth most of these policies were concerned with learning about new technology and applying it the racialist and colonialist overtones of the book were in strong contrast to the inter nationalist cosmopolitan approach of the classical free trade economists and list s belief that holland and denmark should join the german bund and acquire german nationality because of their descent and whole character reads somewhat strangely in the european community of today nevertheless despite these unattractive features of his outlook he clearly anticipated many contemporary theories after reviewing the changing ideas of economists about development in the years since the second world war the world bank 1991 concludes that it is intangible investment in knowledge accumulation which is decisive rather than physical capital investment as was at one time believed pages 33 35 the report cites the new growth theory

innovation catch up and leadership in science based industries in this paper we seek to shed new light on the sources of industrial leadership and catch up in science based industries we propose an evolutionary model which incorporates scientists training and migration endogenous r d decisions and the possibility of funding capital accumulation through debt the analysis of the model allows us to characterize a robust pattern of industrial catch up likewise the sensitivity analysis shows which parameters act as pro catch up factors or slow down the process the identification of stationary state conditions of the model helps us to interpret the simulations and highlights crucial interactions between technology supporting institutions and market demand at the basis of industrial catch up finally the robustness analysis reveals further interdependencies among

innovation procurement as capability building evaluating innovation policies in eight central and eastern european countries abstract after decades of impressive growth the new member states of the european union are once again in transition but this time from imitation to innovation driven competitiveness this paper evaluates the relationship between both public funding and public procurement for innovation ppi and firm level innovation output and outcome additionality in eight central and eastern european countries matching estimates on a sample of 41 623 firms suggest that ppi has a large effect on innovation and output and the highest additionality is sometimes achieved when firms receive both financial support and innovation oriented public procurement we argue that policy makers aiming to strengthen indigenous innovation capabilities should place stronger emphasis on ppi

stock price reactions to the wall street journal s securities recommendations this paper examines the impact of the heard on the street hots column of the wall street journal on common stock prices the results of the study indicate that the hots column appears to have an impact on stock prices on the publication day however we also find a smaller but statistically significant impact on two days preceding the pub lication the significant abnormal returns on these days are associated with higher trading volume the reaction of stock prices is symmetric with respect to the buy and sell recom mendations and the impact of single company recommendations is greater than the im pact of the multi company recommendations i introduction the efficient market hypothesis assumes that security prices fully and instantaneously reflect all available information considerable evidence has been accumulated during the past decades in support of the hypothesis the acceptance of the hypothesis has raised questions about the economic value of professional investment advice if the market is efficient then the management of port folios based on these recommendations should not consistently outperform the market why then are investors still willing to pay for this information examples of the advice include low cost financial publications brokerage house rec ommendations and subscription financial newsletters that sell for hundreds of dollars recent studies argue that investment advisors can provide information to investors at a lower cost than the investors cost of information production millon and thakor 1985 develop a model that explains the existence of investment advisory agencies they argue that if the information of investment advisory agencies permits security analysts to share information about common uncertainties that affect the value of firms as a whole such as the return on the market portfolio then investment advisory agencies can produce information more cheaply than individual investors this model is consistent with the study of