This study examines, month-by-month, the empirical relation between abnormal returns and market value of NYSE and AMEX common stocks. Evidence is provided that daily abnormal return distributions in January have large means relative to the remaining eleven months, and that the relation between abnormal returns and size is always negative and more pronounced in January than in any other month — even in years when, on average, large firms earn larger risk-adjusted returns than small firms. In particular, nearly fifty percent of the average magnitude of the ‘size effect’ over the period 1963–1979 is due to January abnormal returns. Further, more than fifty percent of the January premium is attributable to large abnormal returns during the first week of trading in the year, particularly on the first trading day.

This paper compares the durability of goods produced in competitive and monopolistic markets. Durability is chosen to minimize the cost of providing a given present value of flow of services over the life of the durable. As pointed out by Swan, under constant returns to scale, the cost-minimizing durability is independent of the level of output; thus competitive firms will choose the same durability as a monopolist, even though they would produce different levels of output. In this paper, we relax the assumption of constant returns to scale and derive more general conditions under which optimal durability is independent of the level of output. We also demonstrate that with a particular specification of external diseconomies of scale, the monopolist will produce goods with greater durability than would be produced by competitive firms. 1.

This paper considers the wide class of problems in which a searcher can choose his sample size and whether or not to stop search at each of a sequence of decision points. Sequential search problems are the special cases in which the sample size chosen at each decision point is unity. Several properties of the optimal sample size sequence are established, with particular attention being paid to the effects of recall, decision horizons and fallback utilities. These properties yield necessary and sufficient conditions for the optimality of sequential search strategies within the class of problems considered. 1.

This paper examines the problem of estimating the parameters of an underlying linear model using data in which the dependent variable is only observed to fall in a certain interval on a continuous scale, its actual value remaining unobserved. A Least Squares algorithm for attaining the Maximum Likelihood estimator is described, the asymptotic bias of the OLS estimator derived for the normal regressors case and a "moment" estimator presented. A "two-step estimator" based on combining the two approaches is proposed and found to perform well in both an economic illustration and simulation experiments.

In 1976, the U. S. Senate Subcommittee on Reports, Accounting, and Management (Metcalf Committee) provided data indicating that the eight largest auditing firms in the country (the Eight) are overwhelmingly the major suppliers of audit services to the largest corporations in the United States. The Subcommittee concluded from these data that monopolistic practices by the Big Eight have led to a two-tier structure in the audit industry-one tier consisting of the eight largest auditors and the second tier consisting of all other auditors, with the Big Eight dominating the industry. In the light of these findings, the committee suggested that more activist regulation of the audit industry was needed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Dopuch and Simunic [1980] examined a wide variety of evidence that might tend to support or refute allegations of a lack of competition in the auditing profession. They (D-S) concluded that the industry was competitive, and in a subsequent paper [1982] they argued that many of the apparent monopolistic characteristics of the industry could be explained by a product-differentiation hypothesis. More specifically, they hypothesized that different auditing firms provide auditing services which are perceived by investors to be different in quality, and in particular, that the Big Eight auditors are perceived as being more credible than non-Big Eight auditors. If this is the case, the Big Eight firms would be

Journal Article Tax Neutrality in the Presence of Adjustment Costs Get access Andrew B. Abel Andrew B. Abel Harvard University and National Bureau of Economic Research Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 98, Issue 4, November 1983, Pages 705–712, https://doi.org/10.2307/1881785 Published: 01 November 1983

Earlier models of innovation under oligopolistic rivalry are modified to include a “share parameter” σ, describing the manner in which profits are divided among rivals when one firm is successful in its search for a valuable resource stock. There is a unique value of σ that maximizes expected industry profits, by “guiding” noncooperative oligopolists to choose the profit-maximizing exploration rate. Moreover, setting σ at this maximizing value—which always allocates some share of industry profits to the “losers” in the exploration race—leads to an exploration rate identical to what would be chosen by a jointly managed cartel.

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.