Share repurchase,executive options and wealth changes to stockholders and bondholders

We test the signaling and wealth transfer hypotheses around the announcement of share repurchases using a recent and larger sample of data than previously examined while employing a methodology designed to enhance the power of our tests. Disentangling the wealth transfer and signaling hypotheses is difficult; they are not mutually exclusive and can have opposite effects for bondholders. Wealth transfers decrease bondholder wealth while positive signals increase it; the combined result obscures tests of each hypothesis. By focusing on sub-samples where signaling is more and less likely to be present we increase our ability to isolate the separate effects. In addition to traditional tests of wealth effects, we feature information inherent in the correlation of wealth changes to equity and debt. Our results are generally consistent with the positive signaling effect of stock repurchases, but also provide some support for wealth transfer. Our work also emphasizes the importance of trying to disentangle the various hypotheses. In the subset of option funding repurchases, where signaling effects are less likely, the positive correlation of wealth changes between stockholders and bondholders is completely eliminated. Bond ratings are much more likely to be upgraded in samples without executive options which is precisely where the signaling effects are expected to be concentrated. Firms with weaker shareholder rights experience greater bondholder wealth losses at the announcement of stock repurchases.     

Optimal management of a flammable forest providing timber and carbon sequestration benefits: an Australian case study*

In deciding to keep or fell a forest stand given its age, the risk of loss of timber through wildfire is an important consideration. If trees also have value from sequestration of carbon, another effect of fire is the unplanned loss of stored carbon. Factors affecting the decision to keep or fell trees, and how much to spend on fire protection, are investigated using stochastic dynamic programming, using carbon sequestration in stands of mountain ash in Victoria as a case study. The effect of treating sawlogs as a permanent carbon sink after harvesting is explored.     

Exploring the Seeds of Organisational Decline

This study develops a composite model and a two-dimensional classification illustrating the seeds of organisational decline. In the first dimension, the origins of decline are shown as being internal or external to the organisation. The second dimension links the nature of the decline problem to people, technology, or fiscal policy factors. A Delphi study lent preliminary support to the conceptual model and suggested certain amendments. The revised model was then tested using a sample of 44 public accountants. The results suggest that accountants use information about an organisation's people, technology, and fiscal policies when assessing its likelihood of declining, and that human resources is the most powerful of the three factors.     

Some evidence on Ross' resolution irrelevancy hypothesis

This research attempts to discriminate empirically between the predictable events and resolution irrelevancy hypotheses as both pertain to abnormal stock price performance around regular and special proxy statement mailing dates and the related shareholder meeting dates. We find no evidence that these events result in the positive wealth effects suggested by the predictable events hypothesis. We do find evidence of increased idiosyncratic stock price volatility or information flow around special meeting proxy statement mailing dates and special meeting dates. Thus, our evidence supports the resolution irrelevancy hypothesis.     

Trends, lead times and forecasting

The innovations representation for a local linear trend can adapt to long run secular and short term transitory effects in the data. This is illustrated by the theoretical power spectrum for the model which may possess considerable power at frequencies that might be associated with cycles of several years' duration. Whilst advantageous for short term forecasting, the model may be of less use when interest is in the underlying long run trend in the data. In this paper we propose a generalisation of the innovations representation for a local linear trend that is appropriate for representing short, medium and long run trends in the data.     

The Costs of Deception: Evidence from Psychology

Recently, it has been argued that the evidence in social science research suggests that deceiving participants in an experiment does not lead to a significant loss of experimental control. Based on this assessment, experimental economists were counseled to lift their de facto prohibition against deception to capture its potential benefits. To the extent that this recommendation is derived from empirical studies, we argue that it draws on a selective sample of the available evidence. Building on a systematic review of relevant research in psychology, we present two major results: First, the evidence suggests that the experience of having been deceived generates suspicion that in turn is likely to affect the judgment and decision making of a non-negligible number of participants. Second, we find little evidence for the reputational spillover effects that have been hypothesized by a number of authors in psychology and economics (e.g., Kelman, H.C., 1967. Psychological Bulletin. 67, 1–11; Davis, D.D. and Holt, C.A., 1993. Experimental Economics. Princeton University Press, Princeton). Based on a discussion of the methodological costs and benefits of deception, we conclude that experimental economists' prohibition of deception is a sensible convention that economists should not abandon.     

Research and development with publicly observable outcomes

This paper studies the simultaneous evolution of costs and research incentives in a model in which two firms research each period by purchasing a draw from a stationary distribution of possible production costs. Research decisions each period are based on the results of previous research which are common knowledge. When research stops a Bertrand pricing game occurs. We give conditions under which the perfect equilibrium of this game involves a race by both firms to reach some endogenously determined critical cost level. The first firm to reach this critical level wins the race, capturing the entire market, and continues to research until a second critical cost level is reached.     

Does adding up of economic capital for market- and credit risk amount to conservative risk assessment?

There is a tradition in the banking industry of dividing risk into market risk and credit risk. Both categories are treated independently in the calculation of risk capital. But many financial positions depend simultaneously on both market risk and credit risk factors. In this case, an approximation of the portfolio value function separating value changes into a pure market risk plus pure credit risk component can result not only in an overestimation, but also in an underestimation of risk. We discuss this compounding effect in the context of foreign currency loans and argue that a separate calculation of economic capital for market risk and for credit risk may significantly underestimate true risk.     

Uncertainty and the Great Recession

Has heightened uncertainty been a major contributor to the Great Recession and the slow recovery in the United States? To answer this question, we identify exogenous changes in six uncertainty proxies and quantify their contributions to GDP growth and the unemployment rate. The answer is no. In total we find that increased macroeconomic and financial uncertainty can explain up to 10% of the drop in GDP at the height of the recession and up to 0.6 percentage points of the increased unemployment rates in 2009 through 2011. Our calculations further suggest that only a minor part of the rise in popular uncertainty measures during the Great Recession was driven by exogenous uncertainty shocks.