Are financial constraints of corporate activist investors perceived negatively?

This paper shows that financial constraints of corporate activist investors are negatively perceived by the market. By conducting an event study on a sample of 561 Schedule 13(D) filings disclosed by US corporations in the years 1996–2016, abnormal share price reactions in the [?10, \(+\)3] event window are about 10.8% lower for targets of financially constrained corporate investors. The average abnormal return for all targets is equal to 13.4%. This positive market response suggests that activism results in actual value improvement for the target. Yet, our analyses show that value improvements crucially depend on the investor’s access to external financing.     

Locked Up by a Lockup: Valuing Liquidity as a Real Option

Hedge funds often impose lockups and notice periods to limit the ability of investors to withdraw capital. We model the investor's decision to withdraw capital as a real option and treat lockups and notice periods as exercise restrictions. Our methodology incorporates time-varying probabilities of hedge fund failure and optimal early exercise. We estimate a two-year lockup with a three-month notice period costs approximately 1% of the initial investment for an investor with constant relative risk aversion utility and risk aversion of three. The cost of illiquidity can easily exceed 10% if the hedge fund manager can arbitrarily suspend withdrawals.     

Exchange rate pass-through and rivalry in the Swiss automobile market

Exchange Rate Pass-Through and Rivalry in the Swiss Automobile Market. —This paper investigates the pricing rivalry among foreign automobile producers in the Swiss market. The main results from the dynamic analysis of two categories of automobiles between 1977 and 1991 are: First, the degree of exchange rate pass-through differs among source-countries despite the absence of quantitative restrictions on imports and of domestic production facilities. However, for some countries, pricing strategies show remarkable consistency across product categories and time spans. Second, the degree of exchange rate pass-through is low, especially in the market for small-size automobiles. Third, this low degree of pass-through may be attributed to a low degree of competition among foreign sellers.     

Co-movement of revenue: structural changes in the business cycle

The co-movement of revenue growth across different industries changes over the business cycle. Using a large sample of quarterly firm revenues, aggregated to industry data from 1969 to 2009, we demonstrate that the correlation is the highest during a crisis. Our findings of structural changes in correlation have implications for diversification decisions in portfolio analysis and risk management. The higher correlation in crisis periods increases the downside risk and bankruptcy probability of business portfolios. We test the hypothesis that average correlations are significantly different, by applying permutation and bootstrap techniques. As robustness checks, both correlations between industries and the aggregate market and correlations between earnings confirm our findings.     

The geography of trade in goods and asset holdings

Gravity models have been widely used to describe bilateral trade in goods. Portes and Rey [Portes, R., Rey, H., 2005. The Determinants of Cross-Border Equity Flows. Journal of International Economics, 65(2), 269-296.] applied this framework to cross-border equity flows and found that distance, which proxies information asymmetries, is a surprisingly very large barrier to cross-border asset trade. We adopt a different point of view and explore the complementarity between bilateral trade in goods and bilateral asset holdings in a simultaneous gravity equations framework. Providing different instruments for both endogenous variables, we show that a 10% increase in bilateral trade raises bilateral asset holdings by 6% to 7%. The reverse causality is also significant, albeit smaller. Controlling for trade, the impact of distance on asset holdings is drastically reduced.     

Managers’ Citizenship Behaviors for the Environment: A Developmental Perspective

The objective of this longitudinal study is to analyze the intrinsic drivers and values underlying managers’ organizational citizenship behaviors for the environment (OCBEs) from a developmental psychology perspective based on measuring the stages of consciousness that shape the meaning-making systems of individuals. At time 1, the stages of consciousness of 138 managers were qualitatively assessed using the Leader Development Profile test. At time 2, a quantitative survey measured the environmental beliefs and OCBEs of these managers. The links between stages of consciousness, environmental beliefs, and OCBEs were analyzed using hierarchical regressions. The main findings show that managers’ stages of consciousness positively influence two types of OCBEs, namely eco-initiatives and eco-helping, while environmental beliefs influence eco-helping and eco-civic engagement but do not appear to be connected with the stage of consciousness development. This paper first contributes to the literature on corporate greening by shedding more light on the aspects of behavioral and developmental psychology that underlie environmental leadership. Second, it bridges the gap between theories that have developed separately by showing the interconnectedness between the managers’ stage of consciousness and the more concrete environmental behaviors in the workplace that could have emulative effects throughout the organization.     

Host–home country linkages and host–home country specific advantages as determinants of foreign acquisitions by Indian firms

This paper examines the complementarity of country-specific linkages with country-specific advantages in explaining the foreign acquisitions by Indian MNEs by testing and extending further the Eclectic Paradigm. The approach to internationalisation dominated by the Eclectic Paradigm has constantly faced challenges in gaining acceptance as a holistic framework in explaining outward foreign direct investment (OFDI). In 2006 Dunning acknowledged that the role of networks and linkages (Dunning, 2006a). In this paper we explore the view that linkages between host and home country should be included in the Eclectic Paradigm as institutional assets. Country-specific linkages add to richness and improve explanatory power of the Eclectic Paradigm. Linkage variables are shown to be an adjunct to the Eclectic Paradigm, not an alternative to it.     

A simple model of brain circulation

This paper analyzes the allocation of two types of individuals differentiated by talent between two countries where they choose to be workers or entrepreneurs. An equilibrium with international migration exists when countries' talent endowments are sufficiently different. It is consistent with one-way or two-way migration whether individuals are entrepreneurs or workers. Although allowing migration increases domestic welfare in one country and decreases it in the other, it is always supported by majority voting in both countries.