John L. Evans, The Random Walk Hypothesis, Portfolio Analysis and the Buy-and-Hold Criterion, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 3, No. 3, Special Issue: Random Walk Hypothesis (Sep., 1968), pp. 327-342

We examine the relationship between allegations of corporate misconduct and changes in profitability and risk of the alleged offender. Profitability is measured as reported earnings and analysts’ earnings forecasts. Risk is measured as stock return volatility and concordance among analysts’ forecasts. Decreases in earnings and increases in risk are found to accompany allegations of misconduct, and although the results are somewhat sensitive to the earnings and risk metrics used, the changes are found to be consistently greater for related-party offenses. The importance of reputational penalties is underscored by analysis of the association between allegation-related changes in firm value and changes in earnings and risk.

Several studies indicate the presence of large abnormal returns accruing to shareholders of merged firms in the period immediately before the merger. For example, Mandelker [18] reports that stockholders of acquired firms earn abnormal returns of approximately 14 percent in the seven months preceding merger. Franks, Broyles, and Hecht [15] find abnormal returns of 26 percent for British firms during the four months prior to merger; Elgers and Clark [11] report 43 percent abnormal returns accruing over two years before merger to shareholders of acquired firms.

Rodney L. Roenfeldt, Gary L. Griepentrog, Christopher C. Pflaum, Further Evidence on the Stationarity of Beta Coefficients, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Mar., 1978), pp. 117-121

Christian T. L. Janssen, Comment: Deposit Insurance in the United States--Evaluation and Reform, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 7, No. 2, Supplement: Outlook for the Securities Industry (Mar., 1972), pp. 1613-1618

We trace directors through time and across firms to study whether acquirers’ access to nonpublic information about potential targets via their directors’ past board service histories affects the market for corporate control. In a sample of publicly traded U.S. firms, we find acquirers about 4.5 times more likely to buy firms where their directors once served. Effects are stronger when the acquirer has better corporate governance, the interlocked director has a larger ownership stake at the acquirer, or the director played an important role during past service. The findings are robust to endogeneity of board composition and controls for contemporaneous interfirm interlocks.

It is well known that stock returns, on average, are negative on Mondays. Yet, it is less well known that this finding is substantially the consequence of returns in prior trading sessions. When Friday's return is negative, Monday's return is negative nearly 80 percent of the time with a mean return of −0.61 percent. When Friday's return is positive, the subsequent Monday's mean return is positive, 0.11 percent. This relationship is stronger than for any other pair of trading days and is most acute in small- and medium-size companies. The trading behavior of individual investors appears to be at least one factor contributing to this pattern. Individual investors are more active sellers of stock on Mondays, particularly following bad news in the market.

Shelby L. Brumelle, Bernhard Schwab, Capital Budgeting with Uncertain Future Opportunities: A Markovian Approach, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Jan., 1973), pp. 111-122

The current literature or business finance states that debt is a cheaper source of capital than stock (tending to reduce the firm's cost of capital), because interest is deductible for income tax purposes while the return to common stockholders is subject to tax. It is even possible to issue debt without increasing the risk to the owners (the debt is issued to stockholders in proportion to the ownership of stock, or equivalently investors buy a mixture of stocks and bonds on the market). However, it is argued in this paper that if we assume that the present stockholders have no further resources available for investment in the firm, but the enterprise needs additional resources, then the present stockholders have to make a basic decision about whether to issue stock or debt to raise the additional needed capital. The issuance of debt in this situation increases risk, and the issuance of stock dilutes ownership. Even when bondholders require a much lower contractual return than the expected annual return of stockholders, the issuance of more stock may be preferred to the issuance of debt.

When shareholders have different plans to sell their shares, they will, in general, have different preferences concerning the firm's decision to pay out cash using dividends or share repurchase. We illustrate these different preferences and explore a model of payout policy that highlights the adverse selection costs of repurchases when managers have superior information about the value of the firm. We show that, in the absence of fixed costs to repurchasing shares, there is a separating equilibrium in which managers use taxable dividends to signal the quality of the firm, with better firms paying lower dividends, using repurchases for the remainder of the payout. With fixed costs to repurchasing, small payouts are made via dividend and large payouts are divided between repurchases and dividends, as in the no-fixed cost case. In both cases, the percentage of shares repurchased increases with the size of the payout and larger repurchases are better news.