TOT THE LEAST of the problems involved in reviewing the economic history portions of the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences [5, 1968] is that of determining which portions properly are economic history. Some items easily fall into that category, but many others having such headings as Economic Thought, Poverty, or Slavery frequently provide interesting material though their contents are largely peripheral. In order to keep this review within reasonable bounds, attention will be confined to items specifically classified by the editors as economic history, with only an occasional glance at tempting subjects technically off limits. Some comparisons with the earlier Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences [4, Seligman, 1930] which appeared more than thirty years ago are especially interesting. This earlier work will be referred to i what follows as the Encyclopaedia; the current one as the International Encyclopedia. In actual fact neither encyclopedia is international in any thorough-going sense. Both are written largely by, for, and about Western Europeans and North Americans. The editor of the original fifteen-volume Encyclopaedia made a courageous though not notably successful attempt to define the The tremendous expansion of the social sciences since that time has made the task of definition even more difficult. So the editor of the International Encyclopedia wisely gave up the attempt and merely indicates that the contents of the present work provide sufficient meaning for the term and the best indication of the expanded scope of the field. The heading does appear in the International Encyclopedia and a subtitle, the Philosophy of Science by Michael Scriven (Volume 14, Pp. 83-90), includes an excellent essay on the social sciences. His perceptive statement along with an unusually provactive one by Jack Hexter on the Rhetoric of History (6,368-94) might well be made required reading for all graduate economic history students. As is often true of general reference works, the reader may find most interesting some of the contributions lying outside the field of his own specialty. The editor makes clear that the International Encyclopedia is designed to supplement rather than to replace the earlier work. He also announces the plan to put special emphasis on method. Success in achieving these objectives, although considerable, varies from one subject to another. A general historical introduction, one of the major contributions of the older work, does not appear in the new one. Substantive historical coverage, especially for the years since 1930, is occasionally sketchy in the special topics. The new emphasis on method provides an attractive focus, though many sections and articles fall short of this intention. In its indexing of topics the International Encyclopedia reflects the uneasy position of

We find that the degree of expected idiosyncratic skewness in seasoned equity issuers’ stock returns is an important determinant of flotation costs and subsequent abnormal stock performance. High skewness issuers incur significantly greater offer price discounts, particularly when institutional share allocation is largest, pay higher gross underwriting spreads, and exhibit poorer stock performance in the three years after issuance, all compared to low skewness issuers. These results suggest that skewness-induced overpricing increases the flotation costs of seasoned equity offers and leads to poor subsequent stock performance.

We compare reactions in the prices and trading patterns of common stocks and closed-end funds (CEFs), securities with substantially different investor clienteles, to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. When the market reopened 6 days later, retail investors sold and there were sharp price declines, even in assets with net institutional buying. In the subsequent 2 weeks, price reversals were substantially security specific and thus not simply due to improved systematic sentiment. Consistent with microstructure theory, comparisons between CEFs and common stocks show the speed of these reversals depended significantly on the relative quality and availability of information about fundamental values.

Although managers’ green investments have no impact on future cash flows in our experimental markets, investors respond favorably when managers make and disclose an investment and highlight the societal benefits rather than the cost to the company. Managers anticipate investors’ reaction and therefore often disclose their investment and the associated societal benefits. Managers and other shareholders benefit from investors’ reaction, but the investment cost always exceeds this benefit, demonstrating that managers make green investments because they value the societal benefits. Collectively, our findings show that both investors and managers tradeoff wealth for societal benefits and help explain managers’ corporate social responsibilty disclosures.

We examine how fair value accounting affects debt contract design, specifically the use and definition of financial covenants in private loan contracts. Using SFAS 159 adoption as our setting, we find that a small but significant proportion of loans (14.5%) modify covenant definitions to exclude the effects of SFAS 159 fair values. Only a limited number of these modifications exclude assets elected at fair value (less than 7%), while all exclude liabilities elected at fair value. Notably, we document that covenant definition modification is unassociated with ex ante fair value elections. We find that covenant definition modification positively varies with common incentive problems attributed to fair value accounting and negatively varies with benefits attributed to fair value accounting. Our results suggest that fair value accounting is not uniformly detrimental for debt contracting and fair value adjustments are included when they are most likely to improve performance measurement.