We analyze the impact of sovereign wealth fund (SWF) investments on firm values and provide evidence consistent with the tradeoff between the monitoring and lobbying benefits versus tunneling and expropriation costs of SWFs as blockholders. The data show significant positive (negative) returns to announcements of SWF investments (divestments). The returns are non-monotonic, first rising (falling) and then falling (rising) with the share sought (sold) for investments (divestments). Moreover, we find that SWFs are often active investors. Slightly more than half of the target firms experience one or more events indicative of SWF monitoring activity or influence.

We study the compensation and productivity of more than 2,000 Methodist ministers in a 43‐year panel data set. The church appears to use pay‐for‐performance incentives for its clergy, as their compensation follows a sharing rule by which pastors receive approximately 3% of the incremental revenue from membership increases. Ministers receive the strongest rewards for attracting new parishioners who switch from other congregations within their denomination. Monetary incentives are weaker in settings where ministers have less control over their measured performance.

[When a developed-country multinational firm acquires majority control of a firm in an emerging market, there is an economically large and statistically significant increase in the acquiring firm's stock price. In 1986-2006, developed-market acquirers experienced positive and significant abnormal returns of 1.16%, on average, over a three-day event window. Positive acquirer returns and dollar value gains appear unique to emerging-market mergers and acquisitions and are not replicated when the same developed-market acquirers take over firms in developed markets. The size of the stock price increase is more pronounced (a) the weaker the contracting environment in the emerging market and (b) for industries with high asset intangibility.]

Dividend reductions have long been considered a “last resort” action for firm managers. Managerial reluctance to reduce dividends emanates from the view that dividend drops signal managerial pessimism regarding future earnings. Contrary to expectations, studies show that earnings rebound significantly following a dividend reduction; yet investors react negatively to the dividend-drop announcement. We present an explanation for the anomalous behavior of earnings and returns around the time of a dividend drop. Our evidence suggests that a reduction in a firm's established dividend coincides with a decrease in the value of the firm's real options. Earnings rebound following the dividend reduction due to the savings that result as the firm allows growth options to expire; however, announcement period returns suggest that investors recognize the lost value associated with the forthcoming expiration of growth options.

We use daily short-selling data to examine whether short selling around seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) reflects informed or manipulative trading. Around SEO announcements, we find no evidence of informed short selling. Around issue dates, higher levels of pre-issue short selling are significantly related to larger issue discounts for non-shelf-registered offerings. This evidence is consistent with manipulative trading. We show that SEC Rule 105 constrains some but not all manipulative trading. Our results reverse previous research that uses monthly short-interest data, because daily data allow more powerful tests. Our evidence helps explain the increased popularity of shelf registrations. Although short selling usually enhances price efficiency, we document a situation where short selling reduces price efficiency.

Between 1999 and 2007, WR Hambrecht completed 19 initial public offerings (IPOs) in the US using an auction mechanism. We analyze investor behavior and mechanism performance in these auctioned IPOs using detailed bidding data. The existence of some bids posted at high prices suggests that some investors (mostly retail) try to free-ride on the mechanism. But institutional demand in these auctions is very elastic, suggesting that institutional investors reveal information in the bidding process. Investor participation is largely predictable based on deal size, and demand is dominated by institutions. Flipping is at most as prevalent in auctions as in bookbuilt deals. But, unlike in bookbuilding, investors in auctions do not flip their shares more in “hot” deals. Finally, we find that institutional investors, who provide more information, are rewarded by obtaining a larger share of the deals that have higher 10-day underpricing. Our results therefore suggest that auctioned IPOs can be an effective alternative to traditional bookbuilding.

This paper studies seasonal predictability in the cross section of international stock returns. Stocks that outperform the domestic market in a particular month continue to outperform the domestic market in that same calendar month for up to 5 years. The pattern appears in Canada, Japan, and 12 European countries. Global trading strategies based on seasonal predictability outperform similar nonseasonal strategies by over 1% per month. Abnormal seasonal returns remain after controlling for size, beta, and value, using global or local risk factors. In addition, the strategies are not highly correlated across countries. This suggests they do not reflect return premiums for systematic global risk.

We examine the impact of explicitly incorporating a measure of debt capacity in recent tests of competing theories of capital structure. Our main results are that if external funds are required, in the absence of debt capacity concerns, debt appears to be preferred to equity. Concerns over debt capacity largely explain the use of new external equity financing by publicly traded firms. Finally, we present evidence that reconciles the frequent equity issues by small, high-growth firms with the pecking order. After accounting for debt capacity, the pecking order theory appears to give a good description of financing behavior for a large sample of firms examined over an extended time period.

When a developed-country multinational firm acquires majority control of a firm in an emerging market, there is an economically large and statistically significant increase in the acquiring firm's stock price. In 1986–2006, developed-market acquirers experienced positive and significant abnormal returns of 1.16%, on average, over a three-day event window. Positive acquirer returns and dollar value gains appear unique to emerging-market mergers and acquisitions and are not replicated when the same developed-market acquirers take over firms in developed markets. The size of the stock price increase is more pronounced (a) the weaker the contracting environment in the emerging market and (b) for industries with high asset intangibility.

A rich literature argues that stock repurchases often serve as positive economic signals beneficial to investors. Yet due to their inherent flexibility, open-market repurchase programs have long been criticized as weak signals lacking commitment. We evaluate whether some managers potentially use buyback announcements to mislead investors. We focus on cases where managers were seemingly under heavy pressure to boost stock prices and might have announced a repurchase only to convey a false signal. For suspect cases, the immediate market reaction to a buyback announcement does not differ from that generally observed. However over longer horizons, suspect firms do not enjoy the improvement in economic performance otherwise observed. Suspect firms repurchase less stock. Further, managers in suspect firms have comparatively higher exposure to stock options, a potentially endogenous result suggesting greater sensitivity to both stock valuation and to future equity dilution. Overall, the results suggest only a limited number of managers may have used buybacks in a misleading way as “cheap talk.” Yet as theory also suggests, we find no long-run economic benefit to this behavior.