This paper examines trades by insiders as a means of providing additional evidence regarding whether mandated accounting standards give rise to economic consequences. It is argued that corporate insiders should possess information on the economic consequences of accounting pronouncements (or lack thereof) that is at least as accurate as that possessed by other security market participants. Therefore, "unusual" insider trading around the time of a mandated accounting change suggests that insiders perceive that there are economic consequences associated with the accounting change. This research approach was used to examine the trades by insiders in the period surrounding the exposure draft for FASB Statement No. 19. The results indicate that full-cost insiders were selling (relative to their historical behavior and the behavior of successful-efforts insiders) in this period. One (although not the only) interpretation of this result is that full-cost insiders perceive that FASB Statement No. 19 is associated with adverse economic consequences for their firms.

The household production literature emphasizes that technical or biological processes condition input selection by households in their production activities, along with prices and income. Exogenous variations in health, to the extent that they are perceived by individuals (heterogeneity), lead to correlations between inputs and health outcomes that cannot be used to derive causal conclusions. Therefore, estimates of health technology must be obtained from a behavioral model in which health inputs are themselves choices. Consistent estimates are reported of the effect of endogenous inputs, such as medical care, smoking, and fertility, on birth weight and fetal growth in the presence of health heterogeneity.

In empirical studies of differences between firms which are acquired and those which are not, researchers typically divide firms into two groups‐acquired and nonacquired. In this paper, we argue that cash takeovers may be sufficiently different from noncash acquisitionst hat failure to distinguish between them may lead to inappropriateg eneralizations. We provide evidence from the mid 1970s that three categories of firms can be distinguished:n onacquireda, cquiredi n a cash takeover, and acquired in an exchange of securities.