← Search

Journal of Corporate Finance Vol. 12 No. 4 2006

The specification and power of tests to detect abnormal changes in corporate investment

Michael J. Alderson; Brian L. Betker

Saint Louis University

Abstract

We evaluate methods used to measure abnormal changes in capital expenditures. We examine both statistical tests and models of expected capital expenditures. We find that commonly used research designs yield test statistics that are misspecified, even in random samples. In cases where sample firms share a common characteristic such as extremely low or high investment, size, leverage, return on assets or market-to-book ratio, it is very important to match sample firms to a control group that shares this pre-event characteristic. We also find that using control groups, rather than a single control firm, yields more powerful test statistics.

DOI
10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2005.07.001
Volume
12
Issue
4
Pages
738-760
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite