CEO Turnover and Relative Performance Evaluation

This paper shows that CEOs are fired after bad firm performance caused by factors beyond their control. Standard economic theory predicts that corporate boards filter out exogenous industry and market shocks from firm performance before deciding on CEO retention. Using a hand‐collected sample of 3,365 CEO turnovers from 1993 to 2009, we document that CEOs are significantly more likely to be dismissed from their jobs after bad industry and, to a lesser extent, after bad market performance. A decline in industry performance from the 90^th to the 10^th percentile doubles the probability of a forced CEO turnover.     

CEO Preferences and Acquisitions

This paper explores the impact of target CEOs’ retirement preferences on takeovers. Using retirement age as a proxy for CEOs’ private merger costs, we find strong evidence that target CEOs’ preferences affect merger activity. The likelihood of receiving a successful takeover bid is sharply higher when target CEOs are close to age 65. Takeover premiums and target announcement returns are similar for retirement‐age and younger CEOs, implying that retirement‐age CEOs increase firm sales without sacrificing premiums. Better corporate governance is associated with more acquisitions of firms led by young CEOs, and with a smaller increase in deals at retirement age.     

Trust Me! I am a European Central Banker

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, the European Central Bank (ECB) has experienced an unprecedented deterioration in the level of trust. This raises the question as to what factors determine trust in central banking. We use a unique cross‐country data set that includes a rich set of socioeconomic characteristics and supplement it with variables meant to reflect a country's macroeconomic condition. We find that besides individual socioeconomic characteristics, macroeconomic conditions play a crucial role in the trust‐building process. Our results suggest that agents are boundedly rational in the trust‐building process and that current ECB market operations may even be beneficial for trust in the ECB in the long run.     

Market Timing and Managerial Portfolio Decisions

This paper provides evidence that top managers have contrarian views on firm value. Managers' perceptions of fundamental value diverge systematically from market valuations, and perceived mispricing seems an important determinant of managers' decision making. Insider trading patterns shows that low valuation firms are regarded as undervalued by their own managers relative to high valuation firms. This finding is robust to controlling for noninformation motivated trading. Further evidence links managers' private portfolio decisions to changes in corporate capital structures, suggesting that managers try to actively time the market both in their private trades and in firm‐level decisions.     

Non‐Governmental Public Norm Enforcement in Large Societies as a Two‐Stage Game of Voluntary Public Good Provision

In small groups, norm enforcement is achieved through mutual punishment and reward. In large societies, norms are enforced by specialists such as government officials. However, not every public cause is overseen by states, for instance those organized at the international level. This paper shows how nongovernmental norm enforcement can emerge as a decentralized equilibrium. As a first stage, individuals voluntarily contribute to a nongovernmental agency that produces an incentive system. The second stage is the provision of a public good on the basis of private contributions. The incentive system increases contributions by means of public approval or disapproval of behavior. It is shown that, even in large populations, nongovernmental norm enforcement can be supported in a noncooperative equilibrium of utility‐maximizing individuals. This result is in sharp contrast to those obtained in the standard situation of voluntary provision of an intrinsic public good which—without altruism or related motives—is eroded by free‐riding. Reliance on altruistic behavior is not required in supplying the second‐order public good “norm enforcement” in large societies.     

Security Issue Timing: What Do Managers Know,and When Do They Know It?

We study put option sales on company stock by large firms. An often‐cited motivation for these transactions is market timing, and managers' decision to issue puts should be sensitive to whether the stock is undervalued. We provide new evidence that large firms successfully time security sales. In the 100 days following put option issues, there is roughly a 5% abnormal stock return, with much of the abnormal return following the first earnings release date after the sale. Direct evidence on put option exercises reinforces these findings: exercise frequencies and payoffs to put holders are abnormally low.     

Europe 1992 revisited: Assessing the Net Benefit for the UK

Calendar time has passed the 31.12.1992 deadline for completion of the EC internal market and although a voluminous body of literature has accumulated over recent years, the predictive assessment of the economic consequences of the Single European Market cannot be considered as a settled issue. The widely quoted estimates of the welfare gains from ‘Europe 1992’ suggested in the Cecchini Report of the European Commission have failed to find the unanimous approval of the economics profession. The controversial academic discourse concerning the validity of these estimates has at least shown the need for further research in this direction. Moreover, in the face of the envisaged establishment of the Single European Area, which extends the internal market regime to the EFTA group, as well as in view of the imminent EC membership applications by several Community neighbours, the refinement of the tools for the analysis of further European integration retains a high ranking on the research agenda for future years. As a contribution to the ongoing exploration of the economics of the Single Market, this article summarises the main results of a recently concluded London Business School research project to quantify the net gains from completing the EC internal market for the UK. The analytical approach adopted for the purpose is an applied computable general equilibrium (CGE) model which incorporates recent advances in international trade theory by allowing for the presence of imperfect competition, intra-industry product differentiation and economies of scale. The approach overcomes various shortcomings of previous evaluations of regional integration programmes. The quantitative results suggest in particular that the UK is a net winner of the Single Market programme, yet the aggregate welfare gain remains well below 0.5 per cent of benchmark GDP. The analysis furthermore indicates that the long-tern industrial restructuring processes induced by the programme are likely to be far more moderate than is widely believed.     

Stock Returns in Mergers and Acquisitions

This paper develops a real options framework to analyze the behavior of stock returns in mergers and acquisitions. In this framework, the timing and terms of takeovers are endogenous and result from value-maximizing decisions. The implications of the model for abnormal announcement returns are consistent with the available empirical evidence. In addition, the model generates new predictions regarding the dynamics of firm-level betas for the period surrounding control transactions. Using a sample of 1,086 takeovers of publicly traded U.S. firms between 1985 and 2002, we present new evidence on the dynamics of firm-level betas, which is strongly supportive of the model's predictions.