Person:

Shleifer, Andrei

This paper reviews the evidence on takeover waves of the 1960s and 1980s, and discusses the implications of this evidence for corporate strategy, agency theory, capital market efficiency, and antitrust policy. We conclude that antitrust policy played an important role in the two takeover waves, and that the wave of the ';60s presents a problem for efficient capital markets.

The sharp rise and subsequent crash of stock prices in 1929 is perhaps the most striking episode in the history of American financial markets. The nominal S & P composite index rose sixty-four percent from January 1928 to September 1929, fell thirty-three percent from September 1929 to December 1929, recovered about halfway to its 1929 peak, and then fell again to a low point in the summer of 1932 sixty-six percent below its December 1929 level and seventy-seven percent below its September 1929 average (see figure 1).

This paper examines the hypothesis that the superior return to so-called value stocks is the result of expectational errors made by investors. We study stock price reactions around earnings announcements for value and glamour stock over a 5 year period after portfolio formation. The announcement returns suggest that a significant portion of the return difference between value and glamour stocks is attributable to earnings surprises that are systematically more positive for value stocks. The evidence is inconsistent with a risk-based explanation for the return differential.

Using a sample of 49 countries, we show that countries with poorer investor protections, measured by both the character of legal rules and the quality of law enforcement, have smaller and narrower capital markets. These findings apply to both equity and debt markets. In particular, French civil law countries have both the weakest investor protections and the least developed capital markets, especially as compared to common law countries.