Market e#ciency survives the challenge from the literature on long-term return anomalies. Consistent with the market e#ciency hypothesis that the anomalies are chance results, apparent overreaction to information is about as common as underreaction, and post-event continuation of pre-event abnormal returns is about as frequent as post-event reversal. Most important, consistent with the market e#ciency prediction that apparent anomalies can be due to methodology, most long-term return anomalies tend to disappear with reasonable changes in technique. # 1998 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.

We survey 392 CFOs about the cost of capital, capital budgeting, and capital structure. Large firms rely heavily on present value techniques and the capital asset pricing model, while small firms are relatively likely to use the payback criterion. We find that a surprising number of firms use their firm risk rather than project risk in evaluating new investments. Firms are concerned about maintaining financial flexibility and a good credit rating when issuing debt, and earnings per share dilution and recent stock price appreciation when issuing equity. We find some support for the pecking-order and trade-off capital structure hypotheses but little evidence that executives are concerned about asset substitution, asymmetric information, transactions costs, free cash flows, or personal taxes. Key words: capital structure, cost of capital, cost of equity, capital budgeting, discount rates, project valuation, survey. 1 We thank Franklin Allen for his detailed comments on the survey instrument and the overall project. We

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This paper tests traditional capital structure models against the alternative of a pecking order model of corporate financing. The basic pecking order model, which predicts external debt financing driven by the internal financial deficit, has much greater timeseries explanatory power than a static tradeoff model, which predicts that each firm adjusts gradually toward an optimal debt ratio. We show that our tests have the power to reject the pecking order against alternative tradeoff hypotheses. The statistical power of some usual tests of the tradeoff model is virtually nil. � 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved. JEL classification: G32

P. Szegö is at the Università de Roma 'La Sapienza. ' The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Board of Governors or its staff. The authors thank the Wharton Financial Institutions Center for sponsoring the conference on which the special

I review empirical research on the relation between capital markets and financial statements.The principal sources of demand for capital markets research in accounting are fundamental analysis and valuation, tests of market efficiency, and the role of accounting numbers in contracts and the political process.The capital markets research topics of current interest to researchers include tests of market efficiency with respect to accounting information, fundamental analysis, and value relevance of financial reporting.Evidence from research on these topics is likely to be helpful in capital market investment decisions, accounting standard setting, and corporate financial

We test the pecking order theory of corporate leverage on a broad cross-section of publicly traded American firms for 1971 to 1998. Contrary to the pecking order theory, net equity issues trackthe financing deficit more closely than do net debt issues. While large firms exhibit some aspects of pecking order behavior, the evidence is not robust to the inclusion of conventional leverage factors, nor to the analysis of evidence from the 1990s. Financing deficit is less important in explaining net debt issues over time for firms of all sizes.

Abstract: This study presents evidence which indicates that stock prices, on average, react positively to stock dividend and stock split announcements that are uncontaminated by other contemporaneous firm-specific announcements. In addition, it documents significantly positive excess returns on and around the ex-dates of stock dividends and splits. Both announcement and ex-date returns were found to be larger for stock dividends than for stock splits. While the announcement returns cannot be explained by forecasts of imminent increases in cash dividends, the paper offers several signalling based explanations for them. These are consistent with a crosssectional analysis of the announcement period returns.

Previous research offers little large-sample evidence on the magnitude of non-financial firms ' risk exposure hedged by financial derivatives. In a sample of 234 large non-financial corporations that use derivatives, we find that if the median firm simultaneously experiences a three standard deviation change in interest rates, currency exchange rates, and commodity prices, it will collect $15 million of cash from its entire derivatives portfolio and that the entire derivatives portfolio will rise in value by $31 million. These dollar amounts are modest relative to firm size, operating cash flows, investing cash flows and other firm benchmarks. The findings raise questions about the role of derivatives securities held by non-financial firms.

In this paper I argue that corporate finance theory, empirical research, practical applications, and policy recommendations are deeply rooted in an underlying theory of the firm. I also argue that although the existing theories have delivered very important and useful insights, they seem to be quite ineffective in helping us cope with the new type of firms that is emerging. I outline the characteristics that a new theory of the firm should satisfy and how such a theory could change the way we do corporate finance, both theoretically and empirically. FOR A RELATIVELY YOUNG RESEARCHER like myself, there is a very strong tendency to look at the history of corporate finance and be overwhelmed by the giants of the recent past. A field that 40 years ago was little more than a collection of cookbook recipes that reflected practitioners ’ common sense is today a bona fide discipline, taught not only to future practitioners but also to doctoral students, both in business schools and in economic departments—a discipline whose ideas are now influencing other areas of economics, such as