This paper tests a new hypothesis that bank managers issue public debt, at least in part, to convey positive, private information and refrain from issuance to hide negative, private information. This “positive selection” hypothesis is tested against the traditional “adverse selection” hypothesis. We find evidence for “positive selection,” using ratings migrations, equity returns, bond issuance, and balance sheet data for US bank holding companies. The results add to our understanding of “market discipline” in monitoring bank holding companies and also inform upon how proposed regulatory requirements that banking organizations frequently issue public debt might augment “market discipline.”

This paper examines the relation between expected stock returns and their conditional volatility over different holding periods and across different states of the economy. Seminonparametric density estimation and Monte Carlo integration are used to obtain the expected returns and conditional volatility at various holding intervals. We uncover a significantly positive risk and return relation at long holding intervals, such as one and two years, which is nonexistent at short holding periods such as one month. We also show that the existing finding in the literature of a negative risk and return relation may be attributable to misspecification.

Abstract Behavioral aspects of production variance investigations have been the focus of several recent articles. This research reports on a field experiment designed to obtain empirical evidence concerning the initial attributions made by a superior and a subordinate upon the occurrence of an unfavorable variance, as well as the processes they utilize when testing their initial attributional hypotheses. Evidence indicated that superiors made initial attributions that were internal relative to the subordinates, and also tended to seek additional information which was internal relative to the subordinates. This observed confirmatory hypothesis testing procedure is consistent with other research in non-accounting related settings. Implications for the design of accounting information systems are briefly discussed.