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Interorganizational alliances are widely recognized as critical to product innovation. A notable trend is the rapid growth of new product development (NPD) alliances between large, well-established firms and small, growing firms. This dissertation is comprised of two studies on the formation and termination of asymmetric new product development alliances. In study one I examine the factors that drive the changes in shareholder values of the partner firms. I develop and empirically test a model of short-term changes in shareholder values of larger and smaller firms involved in NPD alliances, using the event study methodology on data covering 167 asymmetric alliances in the information technology and communication industries. The model accounts for selection correction, potential cross-correlation across the residuals from the models of firm value changes for the larger and smaller firms, and unobserved heterogeneity. The results suggest that both the partners experience significant short-term financial gains, but there are considerable asymmetries between the larger and smaller firms with regard to the effects of alliance, partner and firm characteristics on the gains of the partner firms. The findings of this study have important implications for managers of both large and small firms. In study two I develop and test a framework of the determinants of new product alliance (NPA) terminations. The hypotheses for study two are tested on a unique database comprised of 401 new product alliances involving 24 pharmaceutical firms during 1990-2005. NPA terminations are modeled using Cox’s proportional hazard specification that accounts for the unobserved heterogeneity of firms with multiple NPAs, competing risks and ties among NPA duration times. The results suggest that NPA terminations are not made in isolation but are influenced by composition of the firm’s portfolio. The results also suggest that NPA terminations are predicted to a great extent by competition between alliances (i.e., product market rivalry) and competition within alliances (i.e., partner value). The findings of this study have important implications for managing a portfolio of new product partnerships.

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Academically, the ex-dividend is a neutral event in stock market. It not only has no positive material influence on firms¡¦ value but also creates no real worth for shareholders. However, lots of prior studies indeed proved there is conspicuous abnormal return during the few of ex-dividend dates and advanced plenty of hypotheses to explain the ex-dividend effect. Based on these inferences, my study more focus on the different of ex-dividend effect on the IC industry and the individual IC enterprise with different attributes. The study period is from 1998 to 2007. The study targets are the ex-dividend events of the all IC firms in Taiwan stock market. After eliminating the samples with incomplete data and disagreement, the sum of samples is 318 ex-dividend events of the 80 firms. The result of my study has five points. First, the ex-dividend effect is existence in the IC industry and there is no distinct trend during the study period. Second, the IC design industry, IC manufacture industry and IC assembly and test industry have the apparently different ex-dividend effect. Third, the samples in the bullish market and with low PBR and MSCI weight have obviously better ex-dividend effect. Fourth, the samples with low earning growth ratio and middle stock dividend ratio have better ex-dividend effect, but not obviously. Finally, before the ex-dividend dates, the samples with low employee stock bonus ratio have better ex-dividend effect. After the ex-dividend dates, the samples with high employee stock bonus ratio contrarily have better ex-dividend effect.

<p>Syftet med den här magisteruppsatsen är att undersöka hur tillkännagivandet av företags-förvärv påverkar aktieavkastningen på ett uppköpande bolaget. Testet är begränsat till före-tag som enbart är listade på Stockholmsbörsen under perioden 1996 till 2005. För att testa onormal avkastning användes marknads modellen. Resultatet visade att tillkännagivandet av företagsförvärv har en signifikant effekt på avkastningen för aktien för det bolag som ska förvärva. Majoriteten av uppköpande bolag upplevde en negativ onormal avkastning under test perioden (100 dagar före tillkännagivandet och 100 dagar efter).</p> / <p>The purpose of this master’s thesis is to examine the effect a corporate takeover an-nouncement has on share prices for acquiring companies. The test will only involve com-panies listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange during the period 1996 to 2005. To test the effect an announcement has, abnormal return for a period before and after the takeover announcement was calculated. The findings from the testing showed that takeover an-nouncements have a significantly impact on shareholder return. The majority of acquirers in the sample had negative average abnormal returns during the event period (100 days prior to the announcement and 100 day after).</p>

Patent trolls have changed the innovation and patent policy landscape. This thesis is an empirical event study that focuses on two landmark cases of patent troll litigation, RIM v. NTP and eBay v. Mercexchange, to determine whether pro-troll litigation outcomes significantly impact the market values of the firms in the high-tech industries they target. I find that the Supreme Court ruling in eBay v. Mercexchange did seem to significantly impact a proportion of firms in the market. The decisive factors in distinguishing affected vs. unaffected firms include a firm's R&D to Sales ratio, market value, and NAICS code specification.

The primary objective of this thesis is to investigate the value implications of the mergers and acquisitions deals initiated by the firms from the CEE region. We examine the sample of the 203 M&A announcements made by the bidder firms from the two major economies in the region-Poland and Russia-over the period 2006-2016. We apply the event study methodology to investigate the effect of the M&A announcement on the wealth of the acquirers' shareholders. The results demonstrate that on average investors of the Polish acquirers receive positive short-term wealth effect, while the investors of the Russian firms lose in short-term value. Our empirical findings provide partial support for the positive wealth effect when acquirers target the strategically important asset. Our results hold after controlling for the number of firm and transaction-specific characteristics. JEL Classification G14, G32, G34 Keywords mergers and acquisitions, event study, bidder gains, shareholder wealth effects, Central and Eastern Europe Author's e-mail lukashova.a.v@gmail.com Supervisor's e-mail kocenda@fsv.cuni.cz

This paper investigates the impact of dividend reduction announcements on the returns to stocks listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. We perform an event study on dividend cutting firms between 2002-2016 to determine if contrarian trading on the basis of negative dividend announcement yields abnormal returns. We evaluate the immediate market reaction during a three-day event window surrounding dividend announcements. Thereafter we test a contrarian trading strategy by examining abnormal returns during a holding period up to twenty days following the initial event. We evaluate the results in reference to previous literature on post earnings (dividend) announcement drift and contrarian investment strategies. The findings suggest that the initial market reaction to dividend cuts is negative, but that the abnormal returns to buying stock following dividend reduction announcements are negligible. Furthermore, we argue that there might be means of increasing these returns by supplementary analysis of firm specifics.

This dissertation consists of three essays evaluating topics in industrial organization. The first essay investigates a market structure or property regime in which a final good exists only by assembling multiple, monopoly-supplied components. In such dynamic settings, any sunk cost results in an outcome of hold-up, also known as tragedy of the anticommons. I design a model showing conditions for which two factors that reduce sunk cost, refunds and complementarities, mitigate hold-up. If the first component purchased has positive stand alone value or the first seller offers a full refund, hold-up is mitigated. My results suggest several policies that can mitigate inefficient outcomes in assembly problems, including legal requirements on full refunds, regulation on the purchasing order of components, and prohibition of price discrimination. The second essay applies Bayesian statistics to single-firm event studies used in securities litigation and antitrust investigations. Inference based on Bayesian analysis does not require an assumption of normality that potentially invalidates standard inference of classical single-firm event studies. I investigate ten events, five from actual securities litigation cases. Various Bayesian models, including replication of the frequentist approach, are examined. A flexible Bayesian model, replacing parametric likelihood functions with the empirical distribution function, also is explored. Our approach suggests an alternative, valid method for inference with easy implementation and interpretation. The third essay, motivated in the context of pharmaceutical advertising, analyzes demand rotations caused by an exogenously determined advertising parameter under Cournot oligopoly competition. We find that firms and consumers prefer extreme levels of advertising, but preferences for which extreme do not necessarily align. However, these differences can be alleviated with few or many firms in the market or cheap or expensive technologies. Therefore, advertising levels, regulated or not, might not serve consumers' best interests unless certain market attributes hold.

This study investigates whether different acquisition strategies provide dissimilar abnormal returns forthe bidders’ investors before, during and after the financial crisis. The study focuses on acquisitionsconducted by banks between 2004 and 2012. The data is split in a pre-, mid-, and post-crisis sample.The dataset consists out of 950 completed acquisitions conducted by 378 unique banks. Crosssectionalresults point out that investors are generally indifferent to which acquisition strategy is usedby banks, both at announcement and at completion. Moreover, it seems that investors do not reactfiercer to the announcement compared to the completion of a deal. The results are robust whensplitting the sample in acquirers originating from common- and code law countries. However, the studyfinds that opposed to what is suggested by prior research, shareholders from code law countries earnhigher returns than shareholders from common law countries.