Turner Broadcasting illustrates how organizational mechanisms can be adapted to prevent a majority owner from imposing costs on minority shareholders through inept management or opportunistic behavior. These mechanisms involve issuing preferred stock with unusual features, concentrating its ownership among a small group of investors, allowing the new preferred shareholders to elect several directors, and requiring supramajority approval of major management decisions by a reconstituted board of directors. The alienability of the preferred stock is restricted to help insure that its ownership stays concentrated and in the hands of those with the specific knowledge and incentives to be effective monitors.

This paper provides evidence that repurchase tender offer announcements convey favorable information about the level and riskiness of future earnings. We show that analysts revise their forecasts of earnings per share upward following repurchase announcements. Repurchase announcement stock price reactions are positively correlated with revisions in short-term forecasts, but not correlated with revisions in long-term forecasts. Thus, the information is primarily about transitory changes in earnings. We also provide evidence that equity betas decline after repurchases. Our findings indicate that the equity beta decreases are due to decreases in the underlying riskiness of the firm's assets.

The paper presents empirical tests of the (S, s) model of inventory behavior using aggregate retail trade data. Estimation and testing are based on the probability distributions of inventories derived by Caplin [1985]. The excess volatility of retailers' demand over their consumers' demand, and the "forgetfulness" of inventories under (S, s) are emphasized. Test results indicate that the time series properties of deliveries and sales are consistent with (S, s) and not a quadratic cost model. Finally, when autoregressions of inventories are given an (S, s) rather than a stock adjustment interpretation, traditional empirical problems such as low speeds of adjustment are explained.

Analyst forecasts, Analyst forecast accuracy, Analyst competence, Systematic optimism

This paper extends recent developments in general equilibrium theory and applies them to the problem of measuring the real output of an economy's insurance sector. These developments permit a priced commodity to be a complex incentive-compatible contract. These contracts are not bundles of more basic commodities. These contracts are elementary in the same sense that event-contingent goods deliveries are elementary in the Arrow- Debreu framework.