Product market power and management’s action to avoid earnings disappointment

We investigate the empirical relationship between a firm’s product market power and its management’s action to use real-activity-based earnings management techniques to avoid earnings disappointment by meeting or beating earnings targets such as analysts’ earnings forecasts, positive earnings, or higher earnings relative to previous years. While there is a general consensus that product market competition in an industry affects management’s operating and financial decisions, and thus is an important intervening factor in a firm’s strategies for many economic situations (Nickell in J Political Econ 104:724–746, 1996; Porter in The competitive advantage of nations. Macmillan, London, 1990), the linkage between product market power, managerial incentives, and financial reporting quality has so far received little academic attention. Our analyses show that while the firms manage both accruals and real activities in varying degrees, the firms having greater product market power with the ability to differentiate their products to earn additional revenue, if necessary, are less inclined to engage in real-activity-based earnings management in certain suspect economic situations compared to the firms with less market power. We, however, do not find any significant relationship between product market power and accrual-based earnings management.     

Economic value in tranching of syndicated loans

This paper presents a theory to explain the economic value of tranching and provides empirical evidence to support the theoretical implications. I show that riskier firms are more likely to take loans with multiple tranches. Therefore, the average credit spread on a syndicated loan with multiple tranches is higher than that on a non-tranched loan. However, after accounting for the risk characteristics of a tranched loan, I show that borrowings that are a part of tranched loans have lower credit spreads than otherwise identical non-tranched loans. I also show that the benefits of tranching accrue primarily to riskier borrowers.     

Order dynamics: Recent evidence from the NYSE

We examine investor order choices using evidence from a recent period when the NYSE trades in decimals and allows automatic executions. We analyze the decision to submit or cancel an order or to take no action. For submitted orders, we distinguish order type (market vs. limit), order side (buy vs. sell), execution method (auction vs. automatic), and pricing aggressiveness. We find that the NYSE exhibits positive serial correlation in order type on an order-by-order basis, which suggests that follow-on order strategies dominate adverse selection or liquidity considerations at a moment in time. Aggregated levels of order flow also exhibit positive serial correlation in order type, but appear to be non-stationary processes. Overall, changes in aggregated order flow have an order-type serial correlation that is close to zero at short aggregation intervals, but becomes increasingly negative at longer intervals. This implies a liquidity exhaustion–replenishment cycle. We find that small orders routed to the NYSE's floor auction process are sensitive to the quoted spread, but that small orders routed to the automatic execution system are not. Thus, in addition to foregoing price improvement, traders selecting the speed of automatic executions on the NYSE do so with little regard for the quoted cost of immediacy. As quoted depth increases, traders respond by competing on price via limit orders that undercut existing bid and ask prices. Limit orders are more likely and market sells are less likely late in the trading day. These results are helpful in understanding the order arrival process at the NYSE and have potential applications in academics and industry for optimizing order submission strategies.     

The forgotten strategy

Most multinationals see globalization as a matter of replication--spreading a single business model as widely as possible to maximize economies of scale. From this perspective, the key strategic challenge is choosing how much of the model to keep standard and how much to grudgingly adapt to local tastes. But focusing exclusively on that choice is a mistake, for it blinds companies to the very real opportunities they can still gain from arbitrage--from exploiting differences as opposed to similarities. Indeed, the scope for arbitrage is as wide as the differences that remain among countries, and those differences continue to be broad and deep. They can, in fact, be divided into four main categories--cultural, administrative, economic, and geographic. In each category, old opportunities persist and new ones are arising, sometimes very quickly. Consider the continued cachet of French culture in its wines and haute couture. Witness, too, how swiftly the Finns have become known for their expertise in wireless communications. Clearly, legal and other administrative differences, particularly in tax laws and the cost of capital, remain large. So do purely economic wage differentials, especially for knowledge workers and other skilled employees. And if modern transportation and other technologies have reduced geographic advantages and brought down the price of spices, they've also made possible expanded trade in other goods like perishable flowers and out-of-season produce. Both the differences that make arbitrage valuable and the similarities that make replication important will remain with us for the foreseeable future, and combining the two, while necessary, is tricky. But that spells competitive advantage for those companies that have the imagination to see the full range of possibilities.     

Exploring the manipulation toolkit: the failure of Doral Financial Corporation

The 2015 bankruptcy of Doral Financial Corporation, once ‘the best’ U.S. bank according to U.S. Banker, is the largest since April 2010. The bankruptcy concludes years of management manipulation and efforts to recover. SEC investigation revealed fraud related to Doral’s valuation of interest only strips (IOs). We show that Doral management’s misconduct also includes reckless hiring, over investing, insiders trading, and opportunistic stock splits. Investigating the full range of Doral management’s misconduct reveals new tactics that managers use to pool with good firms and aids our understanding of the economic impact of managerial misconduct.     

The Sarbanes‐Oxley Act of 2002 and Market Liquidity

Investors rely heavily on the trustworthiness and accuracy of corporate information to provide liquidity to the capital markets. We find that the rash of financial scandals caused a severe deterioration in market liquidity in the form of wider spreads, lower depths, and a higher adverse selection component of spreads vis‐à‐vis their benchmark levels. Regulatory responses including the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) had inconsequential short‐term liquidity effects but highly significant and positive long‐term liquidity effects. These liquidity improvements are positively associated with the improved quality of financial reports, several firm‐specific variables (e.g., size), and market factors (e.g., price, volatility, volume).     

Too much of a good thing? Absorptive capacity,firm performance,and the moderating role of entrepreneurial orientation

Absorptive capacity (ACAP) refers to a firm's ability to acquire, assimilate, transform, and exploit new knowledge. Research has yet to acknowledge the possibility of limits to the financial returns of this important strategic construct. This study suggests an inverted‐U shaped relationship between ACAP and financial performance. Based on data from 285 technology‐based small and medium enterprises, we observe gains within three prospective, secondary measures of growth to diminish beyond lower levels of ACAP, even turning negative and becoming harmful beyond intermediate levels. We find that entrepreneurial orientation (EO) moderates the ACAP‐performance relationship, enhancing financial gains at lower levels of ACAP and mitigating the decline in financial performance at higher levels of ACAP. Further, with higher EO, higher ACAP can be achieved before financial returns diminish.Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Order backlogs and strategic pricing: the case of the U.S. large turbine generator industry

This paper illustrates the usefulness of game theory for strategic management through theoretical and empirical analysis of price competition in the presence of production backlogs. Game-theoretic analysis predicts a different relationship between relative prices and backlog levels than does analysis that ignores the sorts of interactive considerations emphasized by game theory. Empirical analysis based on data for the U.S. market for large turbine generators between 1951 and 1963 corroborates the game-theoretic prediction. The paper concludes with a discussion of the sorts of situations in which game-theoretic reasoning is particularly likely to prove useful. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Investor Recognition, Liquidity, and Exchange Listings in the Reformed Markets

We examine multiple facets of firms' descisions to list on the NYSE. Although the average Nasdaq spreads are now comparable to the average NYSE spreads, we find that firms continue to switch from Nasdaq to the NYSE, and that they experience positive cumulative abnormal returns on listing. Using a simultaneous ststem of equations approach, we establish that enhanced investor recognition mainly explains this phenomenon. A logistic regression suggesrts that corporate listing choice is consistent with these findings, since eligible unlisted firms already have high volumes and recognition and might not benefit as much as do firms that actually switch.     

Explaining post‐IPO venture performance through a knowledge‐based view typology

We extend the knowledge‐based view with a new typology and its application to post‐IPO firm performance. The typology categorizes knowledge development activity along the dimensions of familiarity (whether the firm has experience with the knowledge or it is new) and source (whether the firm creates it independently or with partners). We use this typology to determine direct and interaction effects of knowledge development activity on survival, RoA, and Tobin's q of newly public firms. Using a sample of 1,056 high‐technology manufacturing IPOs in 1990–2005, we find that focused, internal knowledge development correlates with higher performance. We also find a positive interaction effect in combining focused, internal and diversifying, alliance‐based knowledge development, and a negative interaction effect in combining diversifying, internal and alliance‐based knowledge development. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.