We study the pricing effects of dividend and earnings announcements by taking advantage of the unique setting in Japan where managers simultaneously announce the current year's dividends and earnings as well as forecasts of next year's dividends and earnings. Defining surprises as deviations from analysts' forecasts, we find that share price reactions are significantly affected by earnings surprises, especially management forecasts of next year's earnings. The information content of dividends is marginal and is restricted to announcements of next year's dividends. Consistent with Modigliani and Miller's dividend irrelevance proposition, current dividend surprises have no material impact on stock prices in Japan.

I show that the effect of option introductions on underlying stock prices is best described by a two‐regime switching means model whose optimal switch date occurs in 1981. In accordance with previous studies, I find positive abnormal returns for options listed during 1973 to 1980. By contrast, I find negative abnormal returns for options listed in 1981 and later. Possible causes for this switch include the introduction of index options in 1982, the implementation of regulatory changes in 1981, and the possibility that options expedite the dissemination of negative information.

I survey and assess the development of continuous‐time methods in finance during the last 30 years. The subperiod 1969 to 1980 saw a dizzying pace of development with seminal ideas in derivatives securities pricing, term structure theory, asset pricing, and optimal consumption and portfolio choices. During the period 1981 to 1999 the theory has been extended and modified to better explain empirical regularities in various subfields of finance. This latter subperiod has seen significant progress in econometric theory, computational and estimation methods to test and implement continuous‐time models. Capital market frictions and bargaining issues are being increasingly incorporated in continuous‐time theory.

Individual investors who hold common stocks directly pay a tremendous performance penalty for active trading. Of 66,465 households with accounts at a large discount broker during 1991 to 1996, those that trade most earn an annual return of 11.4 percent, while the market returns 17.9 percent. The average household earns an annual return of 16.4 percent, tilts its common stock investment toward high‐beta, small, value stocks, and turns over 75 percent of its portfolio annually. Overconfidence can explain high trading levels and the resulting poor performance of individual investors. Our central message is that trading is hazardous to your wealth.

This paper examines long‐term block ownership by corporations and performance changes in firms with corporate block owners. We also examine potential reasons for corporate ownership including benefits in product market relationships, alleviation of financing constraints, and board monitoring by corporate owners. We find the largest significant increases in targets' stock prices, investment, and operating profitability when ownership is combined with alliances, joint ventures, and other product market relationships between purchasing and target firms, especially in industries with high research and development. Our findings are consistent with the conclusion that block ownership by corporations has significant benefits in product market relationships.

This study shows that past trading volume provides an important link between “momentum” and “value” strategies. Specifically, we find that firms with high (low) past turnover ratios exhibit many glamour (value) characteristics, earn lower (higher) future returns, and have consistently more negative (positive) earnings surprises over the next eight quarters. Past trading volume also predicts both the magnitude and persistence of price momentum. Specifically, price momentum effects reverse over the next five years, and high (low) volume winners (losers) experience faster reversals. Collectively, our findings show that past volume helps to reconcile intermediate‐horizon “underreaction” and long‐horizon “overreaction” effects.

This paper documents some empirical facts about ex‐day abnormal returns to high dividend yield stocks that are potentially subject to corporate dividend capture. We find that average abnormal ex‐dividend day returns are uniformly negative in each year after the introduction of negotiated commission rates and that time variation in ex‐day returns during the negotiated commission rates era is consistent with corporate tax‐based dividend capture. Ex‐day returns are more negative when the tax advantage to corporate dividend capture is greatest and more positive when increases in transaction costs and risk reduce incentives to engage in corporate tax‐based dividend capture.