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Author: Sheran Deng Publisher: ISBN: Category : Corporate governance Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
ESSAY 1: Using a Department of Justice policy change intended to increase individual responsibility of managers for corporate offenses (e.g., pollution) as a natural experiment, I find that firms with a high ex-ante probability of regulatory violations ("exposed firms") reduce investment, sales, and employment. Such reductions in reduce shareholder value. Exposed firms suffer an abnormal return of -1% around the event date on average. The negative value effects are concentrated in exposed firms with low agency costs. Exposed firms have lower cash salaries for managers after the policy intervention. Various tests support the causal effect of the policy intervention on firm behavior. These findings suggest that most regulatory offenses do not represent an agency cost on shareholders when fines are paid by shareholders. Instead, fines on shareholders allow a manager to pursue potentially harmful projects whose value to shareholders outweighs fines borne by them. ESSAY2: We present a model on regulating externalities of a firm run by a manager and owned by shareholders. In equilibrium, optimal regulation in the presence of an agency conflict can take two forms. In one regulatory strategy, a fine is imposed on the manager, and no firing takes place. Alternatively, a fine is imposed on the firm (i.e., shareholders), and the fine is lower if the manager is fired. As the agency conflict becomes more severe fining the manager becomes more attractive. Finally, we find that regulation costs are lower when the manager and shareholders are separate entities. ESSAY3: This paper studies the impact of disclosure on short selling. Using a confidential dataset on shorts on stocks traded in the Dutch stock market including both short positions large enough to trigger public disclosure and positions not large enough, we find that the quality of shorts increases discontinuously at the reporting threshold. we find strong evidence that short sellers increase security selection intensity when their short positions approach the reporting threshold. We rule out several alternative explanations These results suggest that transparency disincentivizes shorting on noisy information.
Author: Sheran Deng Publisher: ISBN: Category : Corporate governance Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
ESSAY 1: Using a Department of Justice policy change intended to increase individual responsibility of managers for corporate offenses (e.g., pollution) as a natural experiment, I find that firms with a high ex-ante probability of regulatory violations ("exposed firms") reduce investment, sales, and employment. Such reductions in reduce shareholder value. Exposed firms suffer an abnormal return of -1% around the event date on average. The negative value effects are concentrated in exposed firms with low agency costs. Exposed firms have lower cash salaries for managers after the policy intervention. Various tests support the causal effect of the policy intervention on firm behavior. These findings suggest that most regulatory offenses do not represent an agency cost on shareholders when fines are paid by shareholders. Instead, fines on shareholders allow a manager to pursue potentially harmful projects whose value to shareholders outweighs fines borne by them. ESSAY2: We present a model on regulating externalities of a firm run by a manager and owned by shareholders. In equilibrium, optimal regulation in the presence of an agency conflict can take two forms. In one regulatory strategy, a fine is imposed on the manager, and no firing takes place. Alternatively, a fine is imposed on the firm (i.e., shareholders), and the fine is lower if the manager is fired. As the agency conflict becomes more severe fining the manager becomes more attractive. Finally, we find that regulation costs are lower when the manager and shareholders are separate entities. ESSAY3: This paper studies the impact of disclosure on short selling. Using a confidential dataset on shorts on stocks traded in the Dutch stock market including both short positions large enough to trigger public disclosure and positions not large enough, we find that the quality of shorts increases discontinuously at the reporting threshold. we find strong evidence that short sellers increase security selection intensity when their short positions approach the reporting threshold. We rule out several alternative explanations These results suggest that transparency disincentivizes shorting on noisy information.
Author: Martin Shubik Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 9780262693110 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 472
Book Description
This first volume in a three-volume exposition of Shubik's vision of "mathematical institutional economics" explores a one-period approach to economic exchange with money, debt, and bankruptcy. This is the first volume in a three-volume exposition of Martin Shubik's vision of "mathematical institutional economics"--a term he coined in 1959 to describe the theoretical underpinnings needed for the construction of an economic dynamics. The goal is to develop a process-oriented theory of money and financial institutions that reconciles micro- and macroeconomics, using as a prime tool the theory of games in strategic and extensive form. The approach involves a search for minimal financial institutions that appear as a logical, technological, and institutional necessity, as part of the "rules of the game." Money and financial institutions are assumed to be the basic elements of the network that transmits the sociopolitical imperatives to the economy. Volume 1 deals with a one-period approach to economic exchange with money, debt, and bankruptcy. Volume 2 explores the new economic features that arise when we consider multi-period finite and infinite horizon economies. Volume 3 will consider the specific role of financial institutions and government, and formulate the economic financial control problem linking micro- and macroeconomics.
Author: Charles Chang-Yi Wang Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
This dissertation consists of three distinct essays. "Measurement Errors of Expected Returns Proxies and the Implied Cost of Capital" studies the properties of measurement errors for a class of expected return proxies, and addresses inference issues when proxies of expected returns are dependent variables in regressions. I develop a novel diagnostic procedure to estimate the associations between measurement errors of expected returns proxies and firm characteristics, when measurement errors are AR(1). Application to GLS, a popular implementation of the implied cost of capital ("ICC"), yields the first direct empirical evidence that ICC measurement errors i) are persistent, ii) can be associated with ... firms' risk or growth characteristics, and therefore iii) can lead to spurious inferences in regressions. I devise a novel methodology to account for the influence of ICCs measurement errors in regression settings, and show that its application i) can explain some puzzling associations between GLS and ... firm characteristics and ii) can improve upon GLS, by forming new ICCs that better sort realized returns. Together, the innovations of this paper allow researchers to better understand ICC measurement errors and provide a robust empirical strategy for future research. "Can Implicit Regulation Change Financial Market Behavior? Evidence from Spitzer's Attack on Market Timers" explores a natural experiment setup from the 2003-2004 U.S. mutual fund scandals to evaluate the effectiveness of implicit regulation and the role of a strong monitor on ... financial markets behavior. On average, buy-and-hold investors lost 218 basis points annually from 1998 to 2002 to market timers' exploitation of stale-priced mutual funds. Buy-and hold investors suffered further economic losses from higher cash holdings, portfolio turnover, fund fees, and lower performance that resulted from market timing fund churn. As a consequence of the heightened public scrutiny, increased transparency, and bolstered monitoring capabilities by the SEC, mutual funds faced a much intensified threat of regulation by the end of 2004, leading to the voluntary fair value pricing of international holdings by most U.S. mutual funds. I ... find strong evidence that these fair value pricing methods have significantly reduced the market timing motive as well as fund churn in international mutual funds in the post-2004 period. These results suggest that self-regulation in the ... financial markets can be effective, but in the presence of a strong and credible regulatory threat. "Staggered Boards and the Wealth of Shareholders: Evidence from Two Natural Experiments" addresses an important question in corporate governance: does the presence of a staggered board cause lower ... firm value? While staggered boards have been documented to be negatively correlated with ... firm valuation, such association might be due to staggered boards either bringing about lower firm value or merely reflecting the tendency of low-value firms to have staggered boards. In this paper, we use two natural experiments to shed light on the causality question. In particular, we focus on two recent court rulings, separated by several weeks, that affected in opposite directions the antitakeover force of staggered boards: (i) a ruling by the Delaware Chancery Court approving the legality of shareholder-adopted bylaws that weaken the antitakeover force of a staggered board by moving the company's annual meeting up from later parts of the calendar year to January, and (ii) the subsequent decision by the Delaware Supreme Court to overturn the Chancery Court ruling and invalidate such bylaws. We ... find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that the Chancery Court ruling increased the value of affected companies -- namely, companies with a staggered board and an annual meeting in later parts of the calendar year -- and that the Supreme Court ruling produced a reduction in the affected companies' value. The identified effects were most pronounced for firms for which control contests are especially relevant due to relative underperformance, small ... firm size, high asset pledgibility, or high takeover intensity in their industry. Our findings have implications for the long-standing debate on staggered boards. The ... findings are consistent with the market's viewing staggered boards as bringing about a reduction in firm value. Our ... findings are thus consistent with leading institutional investors' policies in favor of board de-staggering, and with the view that the ongoing process of board de-staggering in public ... firms can be expected to enhance shareholder value.
Author: Sandra F. Holsonback Publisher: ISBN: Category : Going public (Securities) Languages : en Pages : 262
Book Description
Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) are financial vehicles whereby firms can raise capital through public markets. These vehicles increased in importance in the 1990's when financial institutions were reluctant to lend money, especially to young or unestablished firms. Private real estate companies, hampered by these tight credit markets, formed Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), a public entity. REIT IPOs trade on the same markets and are subject to the same SEC regulations as equity stocks, but the lack luster behavior of their initial stock offerings is opposite to large initial day returns exhibited by equity stocks. In proposing that underpricing is a strategy utilized by the firm and the underwriter, this study, comparing IPOs of four industries: retail, manufacturer of communication equipment, software development, and REITs, validates the theory of asymmetric information, whereby investors are compensated for risk through underpricing.
Author: Bo Zhang Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 129
Book Description
This thesis is comprised of three essays on informational issues that revolve around financial reporting, governance, and disclosure. The first essay focuses on how International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption by the Canadian fund industry impacts the funds' reported performance and managers' behavior. When Canada implemented IFRS for publicly accountable enterprises (PAEs) in 2011, it received much attention from international researchers, professionals, and regulators mainly for three reasons: (1) IFRS were more mature when adopted in Canada as nine amendments had been made from 2005 through 2010, and issues and uncertainties faced by earlier adopters such as firms from EU members may or may not exist in Canada; (2) pre-IFRS Canadian accounting standards were very close to that of the US, and thus, the Canadian experience has strong implication to the largest capital market which has not accepted IFRS as primary standards yet; (3) Canadian accounting and financial regulations have been shown to be more effective in controlling risks during the 2008 financial crisis compared to those of other major economies; how IFRS can strengthen such a tight system is to be examined and is important to IFRS proponents and standard setters. In 2014, Canada took the lead by being the first common law jurisdiction mandating IFRS for investment funds while most other countries hold up IFRS adoption in this particular industry due to various complications. This paper shows that IFRS adoption does affect the funds' outcomes and managers' behavior in Canadian closed-end investment funds, and voluntary disclosure of cash flows also strongly affects fund managers' return and valuation discretion. The implication is that if a country is not ready to fully implement IFRS in the fund industry because of complications at the accounting and financial levels, mandatory disclosure of cash flows could lead to better accounting quality as well, since one major difference between IFRS and GAAP is the disclosure of cash flows which constrains manager's discretion on asset appraisals. The second essay studies the implications from outside directors' turnover. Outside directors have been extensively studied as a governance factor, but their behaviors are not well documented in the literature, partly because most agency theory-based research concentrates on the behavior of managers, not that of directors. While the majority of studies in the governance literature analyze characteristics of directors in a static way, I look at this question in a dynamic way which considers directors' behaviors. This paper studies S&P 500 companies that have boardroom turnovers due to outside directors' unexpected departures. The departures of these non-executive directors usually do not trigger investors' concerns. However, our results show that when they do not provide concrete reasons, the firms from which they resigned experience underperformance afterward. This result suggests that directors may have resigned ahead of sub performance because of information they became privy to. The implication is strong to both regulators and investors. While governance regulations require a certain proportion of outside directors on compensation and audit committees with the intention of achieving efficient governance and releasing timely and reliable information, such mechanisms are substantially affected if outside directors do not fulfill their responsibilities when firms face challenges. Investors who take long positions should be alerted about outside directors' unexplained departure, and investors who take short positions may find opportunities when a company has boardroom turnover. The third essay examines a financial question around mergers and acquisitions announcements. In a tender offer, the bidder contacts shareholders of a target firm directly by announcing a public offer to tender their shares. The risk arises because the acquisition may or may not go through. Insiders typically have a better appreciation of the likelihood of a successful acquisition than outsiders, who have very limited access to strategic and private information. As a result, outsiders are at the disadvantageous position during mergers and acquisitions. This paper documents that besides official and public releases, outsiders can also rely on stock returns around announcements to infer private information to reduce information asymmetry. While current regulations and reporting standards do not have effective ways to minimize information asymmetry during mergers and acquisitions, this study highlights an avenue that indirectly mitigates outsiders' information disadvantage.
Author: Zhongwei Huang Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
This dissertation consists of three chapters that present three standalone essays on the monitoring role of financial analysts. Chapter 1 investigates the monitoring role of financial analysts in the financial reporting process by examining the informativeness and monitoring effect of their written comments on earnings quality. I find that these comments have incremental predictability with respect to future accounting restatements, and convey information to investors beyond that in the earnings forecasts, stock ratings, price targets, and other qualitative text in analyst reports. Further analyses suggest that the market's reaction to these comments is primarily driven by negative comments and comments written with certainty. In addition, controlling for accrual reversals, I find that firms significantly reduce the level of accruals-based earnings management after receiving negative comments, and this reduction is not accompanied by an increase in real activities management. Overall, the first chapter provides direct evidence on analysts' monitoring role in financial reporting. Chapter 2 examines whether and how analysts' monitoring of the financial reporting process alleviates a well-known agency problem in which a manager inflates her compensation by manipulating earnings. I argue that analysts' monitoring reduces a manager's ability to conceal earnings management from directors, thus facilitating directors' adjustment of executive compensation in the presence of earnings management. Consistent with this argument, I find that earnings carry a lower weight in the determination of CEO compensation in firms that are criticized by analysts regarding earnings quality, but only when directors are likely to be aware of the critical analyst reports. The main findings are robust to matching on performance and controlling for firm-fixed effects and are not driven by other text in the analyst reports. Additional analyses suggest that the weight placed on earnings decreases as the actual accruals deviate from analysts' accruals forecasts. Overall, the second chapter emphasizes analysts' monitoring role in alleviating managerial rent extraction in executive compensation. Chapter 3 provides evidence on the impact of recent analyst independence reforms (the National Association of Securities Dealers [NASD] Rule 2711 and the companion New York Stock Exchange [NYSE] Rule 472 Amendment, and the Global Settlement) on analysts' monitoring role in the financial reporting process. The NASD Rule 2711 requires brokerage firms to structurally separate investment banking from equity research; meanwhile, the Global Settlement mandates the participating banks to fund independent research firms to the amount of 432.5 million dollars from 2004 to 2009. I find evidence consistent with an increase in analysts' monitoring effectiveness following the reforms. Further analyses suggest that this increase is primarily driven by the Global Settlement, rather than by the adoption of NASD Rule 2711. The evidence is robust to a difference-in-difference specification with Canadian firms as the control group. Moreover, I document a reversal of the increase in monitoring effectiveness following the end of the Global Settlement's five-year funding. Overall, the third chapter highlights the interaction between the monitoring role of financial analysts and the regulatory environment.
Author: American Bar Association. House of Delegates Publisher: American Bar Association ISBN: 9781590318737 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 216
Book Description
The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.
Author: Sheran Deng
Author: Sheran Deng
Author: Martin Shubik
Author: Charles Chang-Yi Wang
Author: Thomas Rüffieux
Author: Sandra F. Holsonback
Author: Bo Zhang
Author: Zhongwei Huang
Author: Simeon Djankov
Author: American Bar Association. House of Delegates
Author: David F. Andrade