DISINVESTMENT FROM SOUTH AFRICA: THEY DID WELL BY DOING GOOD

This paper uses standard event-study methodology to analyze the effect of announcing disinvestment or withdrawal of U.S. firms from South Africa during the 1980s on those firms' returns. Several different measures of abnormal return indicate a consistent and significant positive announcement effect, particularly for the two- and three-day periods surrounding the public announcement. With one exception, these results hold even when the variables are normalized by their respective standard deviations to account for possible changes in variance due to the announcement. Using the "ordinary cross-sectional" test statistic rather than the usual t-statistic explicitly accounts for a change in variance at announcement throughout the analysis.     

The effect of the liberalization of the Chinese stock market on returns

We examine the short-term effects of the liberalization of the Chinese stock market on returns. We find a positive and significant abnormal return associated with the announcement of the liberalization of the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Exploiting features of the reform, we are able to compare stocks directly and indirectly affected by the liberalization. We find that all stock prices reflect this announcement premium equally, suggesting that the premium does not reflect an increase in expected liquidity. We further find that observed liquidity, as measured by volume and price impact, did not increase following the liberalization. We conclude that the observed premium reflects a diversification benefit for Chinese investors.     

Abnormal returns before acquisition announcements: evidence from Europe

Acquisition announcements influence the stock price of target firms, providing an opportunity for insiders to obtain significant abnormal returns. We study the presence of positive abnormal returns before the announcement date, in target firms, quoted in Euronext markets (Belgium, France, The Netherlands and Portugal) from 2001 to 2007. We investigate whether the pre-announcement run-up of prices can be explained by rumours in the media and the percentage of capital previously owned by the bidding firm, among other factors. We examine cumulative abnormal returns in an event window of 60 days prior the acquisition announcement, with the event date adjusted for the previous disclosure of news about the acquisition, in the media. We compute a run-up index, and find that there are abnormal positive returns before the announcement date, confirming previous studies. We find that a significant part of the run-up is explained by: (i) market anticipation triggered by legitimate sources of information, namely, rumours in the media about the possibility of an acquisition bid and (ii) the percentage of capital previously owned in the target firm, by the bidding firm.     

Overflow effect of credit rating announcements on stock exchange based on event study

This study is aimed to identify the impact of credit rating announcements on the stock returns in stock markets and for this purpose, four different sectors of Pakistan stock exchange were selected and from each of these four sectors, different business organizations were selected, i.e. total 32 business organizations were selected. The credit rating announcement data were collected for these 32 business organizations belonging to four different sectors. Totally 101 credit rating announcements were selected and the time period for which the credit rating warnings were selected include last three years period, i.e. from 2014 to 2016. The collected data were analysed by calculating abnormal returns for each of the selected security and average abnormal returns, and cumulative average abnormal returns were calculated for four different sectors. Event study methodology was applied, and t-test and t-stats value were calculated and results were analysed on the basis of t-statistics. The results of analysis identified that credit rating announcements have a significant impact on stock prices and investors and other market participants are earning abnormal returns during two-day period after the announcements are made. In addition, these abnormal returns were either negative or positive, depending upon the nature of credit ratings announced. If the credit rating announced was upgraded, investors enjoyed positive abnormal returns while in case when credit rating announcements were downgraded, then investors bear negative abnormal returns. Finally, the findings of the study identified the applicability of random walk hypothesis on the Pakistan Stock Exchange and Pakistan Stock Exchange confirms the efficient market hypothesis with its semi-strong form of efficiency.     

Seasoned equity offerings by all-equity firms

Previous studies on the announcement effect of seasoned equity offerings document an average two-day common stock abnormal return of approximately −3%. The overall results from these studies suggest that capital structure hypothesis, information hypothesis, and/or price-pressure hypothesis offers a potential explanation for the abnormal reaction around the announcement date. This paper controls for capital structure related effects by examining the announcement effect of seasoned equity offerings made by all-equity firms. Our results show that the average two-day common stock abnormal return is −0.82% (significant at 5% level). This result suggests that capital structure related effects constitute a major portion of the announcement effect of seasoned equity offerings studied in the previous literature. Furthermore, the negative abnormal returns following equity issues cannot be attributed entirely to capital structure related effects. Our cross-sectional tests indicate that the information hypothesis is significant in explaining the abnormal reaction. While our results do not support the price-pressure hypothesis, we find that the negative reaction around the announcement date is significantly mitigated if a firm has issued stock more frequently during our sample period.     

管理者交易的市场择时能力对市场有效性的影响

管理者卖出和买入公告对股票市场具有一定的影响,以管理者卖出交易和买入交易为公告样本进行实证分析,检验公告当日及给定事件期超额收益的显著性.结果显示:卖出公告样本反对半强式有效假说,管理人能够“卖高”,获得超额收益；而买入公告样本支持半强式有效假说,管理者不能够“买低”,在公告日和事件期都不能获得超额收益.     

Mergers in the Electric Utility Industry in a Deregulatory Environment

We document that the merger announcement returns are positive and significant for targets of acquiring electric utility industry firms, but are not as algebraically large as target returns documented in non-regulated industry merger announcements. Additionally, electric utility acquirer firms earn significant negative announcement returns when acquiring an electric utility. We find announcement returns for acquirers vary significantly based upon the timing of the merger announcement, with mergers announced after the Energy Policy Act of 1992 generating negative returns for acquirers. We also find a significant difference in the percentage change in aggregate entity value around the announcement date for diversifying mergers as compared to non-diversifying mergers, with diversifying merger announcements resulting in a decrease in aggregate entity value.     

Does Social Media Get Your Attention?

The author investigates how social media affects stock prices and post–earnings announcement drift in response to companies’ quarterly earnings announcements. Using quarterly earnings data as well Twitter and StockTwits data, the author utilizes Twitter volume and a residual methodology to generate an attention proxy that is orthogonal to the growth of Twitter accounts. The author finds that the new attention brought by social media after the earnings announcements positively affects the cumulative abnormal returns. Further, even companies reporting bad news can still have positive immediate cumulative abnormal returns if they attract enough attention from investors after an earnings announcement. The new attention effects are different in both magnitudes and statistical significance between social media popular and unpopular industries.     

A FURTHER EXAMINATION OF THE PRICE AND VOLATILITY IMPACT OF STOCK DIVIDENDS AT EX‐DATES*

We examine the price and volatility reaction around stock dividend ex‐dates for an Australian sample, over the period January 1992 to December 2000. We find that price reaction around stock dividend ex‐dates provides positive abnormal returns both prior, and subsequent, to the abolishment of par value of shares in July 1998. When we partitioned the sample into financial, industrial non‐financial and mining firms, the price reaction is found to be positive and significant only for industrial non‐financial companies. Volatility of daily returns for periods subsequent to ex‐dates is significantly greater than corresponding periods prior to announcement dates, while cumulative raw returns subsequent to ex‐dates are significantly lower than periods prior to announcement dates for industrial non‐financial companies. The magnitude of the price reaction is statistically significantly related to an increase in the volatility of daily returns and to a reduction in cumulative raw returns subsequent to the ex‐dates, for industrial non‐financial companies. These findings support buying pressure hypothesis suggested by Dhatt et al. (1994, 1996 ).     

Information Transmission Through Rumors in Stock Markets: A New Evidence

The authors provide new evidence of the influence of false rumors based on Taiwan's stock market. The results indicate significant patterns of abnormal returns and trading volumes surrounding the event day and that the rumors seem to be disseminated in the stock market before appearing in newspapers. The results also indicate asymmetry: Investors hearing a positive rumor about a stock may tend to buy the stock, prompting a price run-up until the rumor dies away, while negative rumors usually have greater and longer negative impacts on stock returns than positive rumors do. The presence of a daily price limit is negatively correlated to the size of abnormal returns and abnormal trading volumes on the event day, and the abnormal trading volumes are more sensitive to the price limit surrounding the event day. Finally, firm managers might receive rumor information earlier and then conduct stock trading before the rumor's announcement.     

Assessing impact of regulatory risk on shareholders’ wealth

Research indicates that regulatory risk increases required return on investment by investors and causes underinvestment in industries with high sunk costs. The effects of regulatory changes may be measured by estimating the abnormal returns associated with the event. The results may suggest to regulators what should be encouraged or avoided. This article utilizes a fixed effects regression to examine abnormal returns from changes in Philippine nationalization regulations. The results are consistent with extant literature. Supreme Court decisions, which increased uncertainty and regulatory risk, produced negative abnormal returns. The initial release of draft implementing rules did not produce statistically significant effects, but a succeeding draft favouring liberalization, produced positive abnormal returns.     

How effective is European merger control?

This paper applies an intuitive approach based on stock market data to a unique dataset of large concentrations during the period 1990–2002 to assess the effectiveness of European merger control. The basic idea is to relate announcement and decision abnormal returns. Under a set of four maintained assumptions, merger control might be interpreted to be effective if rents accruing due to the increased market power observed around the merger announcement are reversed by the antitrust decision, i.e. if there is a negative relation between announcement and decision abnormal returns. To clearly identify the events' competitive effects, we explicitly control for the market expectation about the outcome of the merger control procedure and run several robustness checks to assess the role of our maintained assumptions. We find that only outright prohibitions completely reverse the rents measured around a merger's announcement. On average, remedies seem to be only partially capable of reverting announcement abnormal returns. Yet they seem to be more effective when applied during the first rather than the second investigation phase and in subsamples where our assumptions are more likely to hold. Moreover, the European Commission appears to learn over time.     

Information advantage,short sales,and stock returns: Evidence from short selling reform in China

We study short selling around earnings announcements and examine the potential sources of their information. Using unique daily aggregate short selling transactions in China, we find that short sellers significantly increase (decrease) their short positions before negative (positive) earnings surprise. In addition, abnormal high short selling is significantly associated with negative post-earnings announcement stock returns. The findings suggest that short sellers, on average, are informed and sophisticated traders and they can exploit profitable opportunities contained in earnings announcements. Finally, we find that stocks with poor governance or more insiders have higher (lower) abnormal short selling in negative (positive) earnings surprise, indicating private information leakage from firms with weak governance; which is consistent with the tipping argument. Our findings have important policy implications for capital market regulation in China.     

The Effect of Annual Earnings Announcements on the Chinese Stock Markets

This paper examines the annual earnings announcement effect of the stock markets in China. The investigation is based on events analysis and carried out by modeling the daily changes of stock returns using the M-EGARCH approach, by testing the news effects of annual earnings announcement on the conditional mean of abnormal return and the variance of the returns. It is found that a higher than expected earnings announcement leads to a rise in the conditional mean of stock returns on days before the news announcement and a fall afterwards. The conditional volatility of the changes are significantly reduced by bigger absolute values of reported earnings before the news announcement and increased afterwards, supporting the rejection of semi-strong-form efficiency.     

公共建设项目中合同策略及其关系行为测量研究

公共建设项目合同策略的制定往往忽视了关系治理对承包人机会主义行为的抑制作用,造成合同策略侧重于单一的控制功能,不利于合同的事后履约。根据项目治理理论,项目缔约全过程中契约治理与关系治理存在交互作用,因而,合同策略必然包含两者间的互动关系。首先通过扎根分析,明确了公共建设项目合同策略是一个组合型构念,包括承包人选择、合同策略重点及防范问题方式3个维度;然后,利用关系行为量表,对合同策略中3个维度对应的关系行为进行测量,明确各参与方在合同缔约各阶段采取的具体关系行为;最后,结合访谈数据对关系行为测量结果进行分析。结果发现：在缔约全过程中,承包人对待关系行为始终处于积极状态,业主方采取关系行为则存在一定的障碍。研究结果为公共建设项目关系治理的使用提供了依据,同时也为各参与方采取合理的关系行为提供指导。     

Do Reverse Stock Splits Benefit Long-term Shareholders?

This paper examines the market response of the reverse stock splits by using the effective date to trace the abnormal returns after reverse splits over the period of 1981 to 2010:3. The findings show that the short-term behavior of the abnormal returns on the effective date is negative and highly significant for all firms. The abnormal returns on the effective month are negative and highly significant. As expected, the cumulative abnormal returns are negative and significant at 10?% level over the period of +1 to +12?months. However, the cumulative abnormal returns from month +13 to month +36 are significantly positive. Our findings also support that institutional investors show confidence by increasing mean holdings of reverse splits of large capital stocks.     

Merger Speculation in Financial Media: The Valuation of Investigative Reporting

The authors study abnormal returns and volume in the days surrounding takeover speculation by financial media. Significantly positive price and volume responses 2 days after publication are observed. While most of this effect dissipates shortly thereafter, some excess returns remain impounded into the stock price. A study of the ex post takeover probabilities suggests that a positive response is justified, as takeover probabilities for such firms subsequently increase. This evidence is consistent with the idea that financial media speculation can facilitate the release of useful private information to shareholders. However, significantly positive excess returns and volume in the few days before publication also suggests that certain shareholders may benefit disproportionately.     

Capital markets' assessment of airline restructuring following deregulation

The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 propelled the industry into a constant state of change, even turmoil, that prevails 14 years later. The purpose of this paper is to examine the capital markets' reactions to the dramatic restructuring of the airline industry. The results of an event study of 24 merger announcements indicates that stockholders of target firms experience positive abnormal returns of 14.5% over a three-day period around the merger announcement date. Bidding firms experience a 3.7% increase over the same time window. Clearly, the capital markets viewed this restructuring of the industry as positive.     

Will the games pay? An event analysis of the 2020 summer Olympics announcement on stock markets in Japan,Spain, and Turkey

As a wealthy, highly developed city with many existing athletic facilities, Tokyo seems uniquely placed to profit from hosting the 2020 Olympics and boost the Japanese economy. We test this hypothesis using event analysis to determine whether the holding period return on Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 stock index showed abnormal returns following the IOC’s announcement that Tokyo would host the 2020 Summer Games. We use the same technique to investigate whether the stock markets in Madrid or Istanbul – the other finalist cities – showed abnormally low holding period returns in the wake of the announcement.     

Dimensions of international expansions by US firms to China: Wealth effects,mode selection,and firm-specific factors

China's recent efforts to attract foreign investment have been viewed favorably by US firms, who have explored a variety of strategies for expanding to China. This paper provides evidence related to a comprehensive set of strategies used by US firms to expand to China. For the 302 announcements of expansion by US firms into the Chinese market, several firm-specific factors are found to affect both the choice of mode entry and the reaction of investors to the announcement of the expansion. The results suggest that firms with a high investment in proprietary assets prefer foreign direct investment (FDI) modes to non-FDI modes, as do firms with high levels of geographic diversification. Firms entering the Chinese market utilize non-FDI modes, while those who have established a presence in China prefer FDI modes. The reaction of the stock market to expansions to China is positive; average excess returns of 0.75% are observed for the two days surrounding the announcement. Both FDI and non-FDI categories of expansion have statistically significant excess returns. Analysis by mode of expansion shows that expansions through joint ventures (JVs) and contracts are the most desirable alternatives. Other modes of expansion do not result in significant excess returns. Finally, a firm's prior financial performance has a significant influence on its ability to profitably expand to China.