This paper finds that the returns of the world's 14 major stock markets are not normally distributed, and that the correlation matrix of these stock markets was stable during the January 1988–December 1993 time period. Polynomial goal programming, in which investor preferences for skewness can be incorporated, is utilized to determine the optimal portfolio consisting of the choices of 14 international stock indexes. The empirical findings suggest that the incorporation of skewness into an investor's portfolio decision causes a major change in the construction of the optimal portfolio. The evidence also indicate that investors trade expected return of the portfolio for skewness.

We identify the first and subsequent acquisitions made by U.S. firms that conduct multiple cross-border acquisitions and provide robust evidence that shareholders realize a statistically significant three-day cumulative abnormal return (CAR) of 1% around the announcement of their first international acquisition. The CAR for the first acquisition is significantly higher than the CAR around the announcement of subsequent cross-border acquisitions and is unique to cross-border acquisitions. Our findings indicate that shareholders of U.S. firms attach a premium to the firm's initial effort to globalize via international acquisitions.