Organizational Form and the Economic Impact of Corporate New Product Strategies

Abstract:  This paper examines the role of organizational form in explaining the economic impact of corporate new product strategies. I find that the wealth effects associated with the announcements of new product introductions are more favorable for introducing firms with focused activities than for those with diversified activities. The results hold even after controlling for other factors suggested in the literature that could affect the value of new product introductions. The findings in this study suggest that the efficient investment hypothesis dominates the internal capital markets hypothesis in terms of the net economic impact of new product introductions on the introducing firms.     

Further Evidence on the Determinants of Secured versus Unsecured Loans

Using a unique data set collected from financial statements of all Singapore listed firms from 1983 to 1991, we provide international evidence on the determinants of the amount of secured loans as a fraction of total secured and unsecured loans. This data set comprises a much wider range of firms than most previous studies. We show that consistent with the agency-cost hypothesis, firms with more growth opportunities use more secured loans. This is in contrast to the opposite result reported in Barclay and Smith (1995b) who measure secured debt as a fraction of total long-term fixed claims. We also find strong support for the hypothesis that smaller firms use more secured loans. In contrast, Leeth and Scott (1989), using survey data on small firms, find an insignificant firm size effect. Finally, we show that the use of secured loans is positively related to asset riskiness and loan size, and is negatively related to asset specificity. Firm quality has no explanatory power.     

Local sports sentiment and returns of locally headquartered stocks: A firm-level analysis

We undertake a firm-level analysis of the relation between National Football League (NFL) game outcomes and the return patterns of Nasdaq firms headquartered geographically near the NFL teams. We find that a team's loss leads to lower next-day returns for locally headquartered stocks and that this impact increases for a surprising loss or a critical game loss. The negative effects of game losses are stronger for stocks that are more vulnerable to shifts in sports sentiment. Our results suggest that the game outcomes of local sports teams influence investor sentiment, which significantly affects the returns of localized trading stocks.     

Revisiting corporate dividends and seasoned equity issues

Information signaling is regarded as an important motivating factor in corporate payout decisions, particularly with regard to cash dividends and the costly information signaling which they provide. Although Loderer and Mauer (1992) find little evidence to suggest that the announcements of firms’ equity offers are timed to arrive just after dividend declarations as a means of supporting the offer price. Using updated data, we determine that the dividend declaration does have a positive effect on the market reaction to equity offering announcements. We find that the abnormal returns from the announcement of seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) were −1.45 per cent for those SEO firms which had already made dividend declarations, whereas the returns for those SEO firms where the equity issue did not immediately follow a dividend declaration were −1.83 per cent. In this study, we interpret the changes in the impact of the dividend declaration on the equity offering announcement using the ‘tax regulation hypothesis’ and the ‘information asymmetry hypothesis’, and find that while our empirical results provide strong support for the latter, they provide only weak support for the former.     

Buyback behavior of initial public offering firms

We examine the motives behind the share repurchase decisions of initial public offering (IPO) firms by studying the stock and operating performance after the IPO date. We find that IPO firms that announce repurchases within 3 years of IPO dates exhibit poorer long-run abnormal operating performance than other IPO firms. These IPO firms also experience poorer stock return performance and downward analyst forecast revisions. Moreover, these firms show intensive insider selling transactions after the IPO date. These results for IPO announcing repurchase firms are consistent with the misleading hypothesis, which suggests that these IPO firms mislead investors by announcing repurchases as false signals.     

The over-optimism of financial analysts and the long-run performance of firms following private placements of equity

We set out to determine whether the over-optimism of analysts has negative impacts on the subsequent long-run performance of firms following private placements of equity (PIPEs). Our results indicate that analysts do tend to make over-optimistic forecasts at the time of PIPEs, and that such over-optimistic forecasts can lead to investors erroneously overstating the value of placement firms, resulting in subsequent revisions of their valuations over time. We further infer that when firms announce their PIPEs, over-optimistic forecasts tend to lead to overstated valuations. The evidence shows that the long-run performance of PIPEs has a negative correlation with over-optimistic forecasts.     

THE DIFFERENTIAL INFORMATION CONVEYED BY SHARE REPURCHASE TENDER OFFERS AND DIVIDEND INCREASES

We identify the difference in the private information conveyed by the announcements of a share repurchase tender offer and of a regular dividend increase. We find that, after controlling for timing, industry, size of cash distribution, and other firm-specific characteristics, a share repurchase tender offer causes a much larger stock price response than a regular dividend increase. The results suggest that the two cash distribution mechanisms convey differential information. Further examination of the differential information indicates that (1) the upward revision in financial analysts' earnings forecasts following a share repurchase is, on average, greater than that following a regular dividend increase, and (2) a repurchase announcement is followed by a permanent decline in the firms' systematic risk while a dividend-increase announcement is not.     

The economy and demand for finance Ph.D.s: 1989–2001

We investigate the demand for new finance Ph.D.s from 1989 to 2001. Three categories of schools (Top 20, Top 21–50, and Other Finance Departments) are explored and the differences between private and public institutions are reported. The demand for assistant professors is the greatest and most institutions require an earned Ph.D. While most do not specify the position type, there is some evidence that tenure-tracked ones are on the rise. The most desired areas of expertise are corporate/business finance, investments, and bank management/financial markets and institutions. The total demand is positively related to the Gross Domestic Product and Dow Jones.     

The long-term performance following dividend initiations and resumptions revisited

Previous studies have documented that an announcement of dividend initiation and resumption is associated with an increase in stock price, while Boehme and Sorescu (J Finance 47:871–900, 2002) argue that the dividend anomaly only occurs by chance. However, their sample contains firms listed within 3 and/or 5 years of their respective initial public offering (IPO) dates, as well as regulated firms. We conjecture that the confounding effects of IPOs and regulated firms may interfere with the increase in stock prices due to dividend initiations and resumptions and bias their results. We thus reexamine the long-term stock performance following dividend initiations and resumptions by excluding newly IPO firms and regulated firms. We find no evidence that the non-robust positive price drifts for firms, which initiate or resume cash dividends, is due to the confounding effects of IPOs and regulated firms. Therefore the price drifts after dividend initiation and resumption announcements may be a sample-specific result of chance, even after controlling for possible sample selection biases.     

The impact of strategic interaction on earnings expectations associated with corporate product strategies

We examine how strategic interaction in an industry influences the earnings expectations of financial analysts with regard to new product strategies. We find that following announcement of new products, analysts revise earnings forecasts upward more for announcing firms competing in low-strategic interaction industries than for firms competing in high-strategic interaction industries. For value-enhancing (value-reducing) product strategies, earnings forecast revisions are more favorable for rivals competing under a high (low) degree of strategic interaction than for rivals competing under a low (high) degree of strategic interaction. Overall empirical evidence indicates that the nature of strategic competition within the industry is important in assessing the market expectations of earnings for new product announcers and their rivals.