Market reactions to announcements of corporate downsizing actions and implementation strategies

This study examines the effects of downsizing actions and implementation strategies on market performance. While downsizing actions reduce costs, they also produce a loss of valuable human capital that can exceed the benefits resulting from the lay‐offs. In support of this argument, the results showed that downsizing had a negative effect on market returns and the effects grow increasingly negative with larger downsizing actions. However, the market reacts more positively to downsizing actions when reallocation strategies are used and to large downsizing actions when disengagement incentives are applied. The results of this research suggest the importance of carefully managing valuable resources to create positive returns. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stock Returns and Operating Performance of Securities Issuers

We examine long‐run stock returns and operating performance around firms’ offerings of common stock, convertible debt, and straight debt from 1985 to 1990. We find that pre‐issue abnormal returns are positive and significant for stock issuers, but not for convertible and straight debt issuers. The post‐issue mean returns show that common stock and convertible debt issuers experience underperformance during the post‐issue periods, but straight debt issuers do not. Consistent with these results, common stock issuers experience the best pre‐issue operating performance among all three types of issuers, and operating performance declines during the post‐issue periods for common stock and convertible debt issuers. Using a new approach in linear model estimations to correct heteroskedasticity and to adjust for finite sample, we find a positive relation between post‐issue operating performance and issue‐period stock price reactions. The results suggest that future operating performance is anticipated at the issue and that securities issues provide information on issuers’ future performance.     

EFFECTS OF THE SUNDAY SHOPPING RESTRICTION IN KOREA

We examine the effectiveness of Korea's Sunday superstore shopping regulation, whose purpose is to protect small‐ and medium‐sized retailers as well as traditional markets. Applying a two‐way random‐effects regression model to the daily sales data of four megastores and four super supermarkets, we find the net sales decrease of superstores is on average 5.61% of daily sales after taking into account sales increases due to consumers' switching to weekdays. Only about 17%–19% of the reduced superstore sales are transferred to traditional markets. Based on these estimates, the compensating variation per year is predicted to be 2.4–2.5 trillion Korean won (around US $2.1–2.2 billion). (JEL L51, L88)     

CEO Overconfidence and Stock Price Crash Risk

This study examines the association between chief executive officer (CEO) overconfidence and future stock price crash risk. Overconfident managers overestimate the returns to their investment projects and misperceive negative net present value (NPV) projects as value creating. They also tend to ignore or explain away privately observed negative feedback. As a result, negative NPV projects are kept for too long and their bad performance accumulates, which can lead to stock price crashes. Using a large sample of firms for the period 1993–2010, we find that firms with overconfident CEOs have higher stock price crash risk than firms with nonoverconfident CEOs. The impact of managerial overconfidence on crash risk is more pronounced when the CEO is more dominant in the top management team and when there are greater differences of opinion among investors. Finally, it appears that the effect of CEO overconfidence on crash risk is less pronounced for firms with more conservative accounting policies.     

Efficiency of U.S. hospitals between 2001 and 2011

This study focuses on finding the trend of efficiency in the healthcare industry in recent years. We applied stochastic frontier analysis and data envelopment analysis methods to capture the efficiency of 1,471 hospitals and found a sign of the Baumol effect, which is detected by the decreasing trend of hospital efficiency with increasing trend of labor costs. Furthermore, we compared the results of both approaches (stochastic frontier and data envelope analyses) in capturing efficiency scores and suggest the U‐shaped curve of the size effect may indicate the practice of “cream skimming” by some small hospitals.     

STANDARDIZATION IN THE WIRELESS INTERNET MARKET: LESSONS FROM JAPAN AND KOREA

The wireless Internet market has been growing rapidly since NTT DoCoMo first introduced the service in 1999. This paper provides a framework within which the wireless Internet market can be analysed so as to draw valuable policy implications. We show that if platforms are standardized: (i) social welfare is increased with the rational expectation of larger installed bases; (ii) the neutrality of a revenue‐sharing ratio that is valid for non‐standardized network platforms is affected; and (iii) the collusive interconnection charge is lower than the social optimum insofar as the population mass of content providers is less dense than that of Internet users.     

The participatory Vickrey–Clarke–Groves mechanism

This paper introduces the participatory Vickrey–Clarke–Groves mechanism, which satisfies both ex-ante budget balance and interim individual rationality. We bound the efficiency loss of this mechanism by a parameter that captures the structure of marginal contributions to the social welfare. We then apply the theory to quite general multiple unit double auction problems to show that the participatory VCG mechanism achieves asymptotic efficiency.     

How is suicide different in Japan?

This study investigates suicide rates among OECD countries, with particular effort made to gain insight into how suicide in Japan is different from suicides in other OECD countries. Several findings emerged from fixed-effect panel regressions with country-specific time-trends. First, the impacts of socioeconomic variables vary across different gender–age groups. Second, in general, better economic conditions such as high levels of income and higher economic growth were found to reduce the suicide rate, while income inequality increases the suicide rate. Third, the suicide rate is more sensitive to economic factors captured by real GDP per capita, growth rate of real GDP per capita, and the Gini index than to social factors represented by divorce rate, birth rate, female labor force participation rate, and alcohol consumption. Fourth, female and elderly suicides are more difficult to be accounted for. Finally, in accordance with general beliefs, Japan's suicide problem is very different from those of other OECD countries. The impact of the socioeconomic variables on suicide is greater in Japan than in other OECD countries.     

Convergence or divergence?*: The South Korean state after the Asian financial crisis

This study suggests that the government's attempt to replace the developmental state by introducing neo‐liberal axioms is slim. The state that is to emerge in consequence of the economic and financial reforms carried out by the Kim government is distinct from the neo‐liberal regulatory state at the ideological level; moreover, the embedded characteristics of the developmental state hinder changes in the nature of the state. It is the paper's argument that the economic reform that has been implemented by the Kim Dae‐Jung government since its establishment (in 1998) is merely a form of “self‐help” to correct those mistakes committed by the developmental state. Despite the neo‐liberal reform attempted by the Kim government, the social, political and historical conditions in which a liberal regulatory state may be born are pre‐mature, and the embedded legacies of the developmental state are far from becoming a thing of the past.