Knowledge that Transforms

We find that asset sales lead to an improvement in the operating performance of the seller's remaining assets in each of the three years following the asset sale. The improvement in performance occurs primarily in firms that increase their focus; this change in operating performance is positively related to the seller's stock return at the divestiture announcement. The announcement stock returns are also greater for focus-increasing divestitures. Further, we find evidence that some of the seller's gains result from a better fit between the divested asset and the buyer.

This paper develops a parametric family of models of generalized autoregressive heteroskedasticity (GARCH). The family nests the most popular symmetric and asymmetric GARCH models, thereby highlighting the relation between the models and their treatment of asymmetry. Furthermore, the structure permits nested tests of different types of asymmetry and functional forms. Daily U.S. stock return data reject all standard GARCH models in favor of a model in which, roughly speaking, the conditional standard deviation depends on the shifted absolute value of the shocks raised to the power three halves and past standard deviations.

This paper analyzes stock option awards to CEOs of 792 U.S. public corporations between 1984 and 1991. Using a Black-Scholes approach, I test whether stock options' performance incentives have significant associations with explanatory variables related to agency cost reduction. Further tests examine whether the mix of compensation between stock options and cash pay can be explained by corporate liquidity, tax status, or earnings management. Results indicate that few agency or financial contracting theories have explanatory power for patterns of CEO stock option awards.

On November 17, 1988, the board of directors of Nestlé AG decided to allow foreign investors to hold Nestlé registered stock, reversing a longstanding practice. This decision had a tremendous impact on the prices of the firm's three classes of common stock, as well as on the prices of several other corporations traded on the Zürich stock exchange. These price changes can be explained by the hypothesis that demand curves slope down.

This paper examines CEO pay in the banking industry and the effect of deregulating the market for corporate control. Using panel data on 147 banks over the 1980s, we find higher levels of pay in competitive corporate control markets, i.e., those in which interstate banking is permitted. We also find a stronger pay-performance relation in deregulated interstate banking markets. Finally, CEO turnover increases substantially after deregulation. These results provide evidence of a managerial talent market — one which matches the level and structure of pay with the competitiveness of the banking environment.

We study the managerial labor market's ability to discriminate between good and bad managerial performance. Using a sample of failed and nonfailed Texas banks, we find that the context of job loss affects the manager's ability to regain comparable employment. Managers associated with banks that failed for reasons arguably beyond the managers' control were twice as likely to regain comparable banking posts as managers at other failed banks. We also detect a relation between the probability of post-failure reemployment and a manager's rank within the firm and to proxies for managerial self-dealing and competence.

This paper examines empirically whether the short-swing rule (Section 16b of the Securities Exchange Act) deters managers from trading before mergers. Since a merger forces the sale of the target's outstanding equity, insider purchases within six months before the merger cannot escape this rule. We examine the 1941–1961 period when no other insider trading laws were enforced. Consistent with 16b's deterrent effect, managers' purchases drop significantly before the announcement. Before completion, the decrease occurs only in the 1941–1955 period. Surprisingly, pre-announcement sales do not decline, even though 16b cannot punish deferral of planned sales.

We empirically investigate the relation between corporate value, leverage, and equity ownership. For ‘high-growth’ firms corporate value is negatively correlated with leverage, whereas for ‘low-growth’ firms corporate value is positively correlated with leverage. The results also hint that the allocation of equity ownership among insiders, institutions, blockholders, and atomistic outside shareholders is of marginally greater significance in low-growth than in high-growth firms. The overall interpretation of the results is that debt policy and equity ownership structure ‘matter’ and that the way in which they matter differs between firms with many and firms with few positive net present value projects.

We document problems in measuring raw and abnormal five-year contrarian portfolio returns. ‘Loser’ stocks are low-priced and exhibit skewed return distributions. Their 163% mean return is due largely to their lowest-price quartile position. A $18-th price increase reduces the mean by 25%, highlighting their sensitivity to micro-structure/liquidity effects. Long positions in low-priced loser stocks occur disproportionately after bear markets and thus induce expected-return effects. A contrarian portfolio formed at June-end earns negative abnormal returns, in contrast with the December-end portfolio. This conclusion is not limited to a particular version of the CAPM.

In this paper I find that aggregate security returns are highly correlated with concurrent unexpected cash flows into mutual funds, but unrelated to concurrent expected flows. An unexpected inflow equal to 1% of total stock fund assets ($4.75 billion) corresponds to a 5.7% increase in the stock price index. Further, fund flows are correlated with the returns of the securities held by the funds, but not with the returns of other types of securities. I find evidence of a positive relation between flows and subsequent returns and evidence of a negative relation between returns and subsequent flows.