Due to their access to non-public information, insiders frequently have the opportunity to make trades based on superior information. Information contained in earnings forecasts is value-relevant and affords informed insiders the ability to earn abnormal returns by trading in advance of forecast disclosure. Penman (1982) finds evidence of informed insider trading activity prior to earnings forecasts for a sample of forecasts made during the years 1967 to 1974. Since 1974, significant structural changes have occurred with respect to insider trading and management earnings forecast regulation. This research tests whether insiders trade in an informed manner and earn abnormal returns prior to forecast release with a more current (1982-1987) and complete sample. Tests are also performed to determine the role that incentives and disincentives in the form of the magnitude and tone of the earnings surprise play in determining insider trading activity. Additionally, tests are performed to determine if incentives for litigation in the form of pre-forecast insider trading and the existence of a bad news forecast affect the sign and magnitude of ex-post forecast error. Finally, tests are performed to examine whether the Insider Trading Sanctions Act (ITSA) of 1984 affected insider trading prior to earnings forecasts. / Insiders are observed making informed trades prior to good news forecasts, but not prior to bad news forecasts. However, insiders are not observed earning abnormal returns on average. The magnitude of the earnings surprise is strongly related to insider trading activity. Weak support is found for the prediction that the presence of a bad news forecast will reduce insider trading activity. Insider trading activity is not related to the sign of the ex-post forecast error, although a weak negative relationship between insider trading activity and the magnitude of the ex-post forecast error is found. A negative relationship is found between the magnitude of ex-post forecast error and the presence of a bad news forecast. Overall, the ITSA had mixed effects. More accurate forecasts are produced in the presence of pre-forecast insider trading and bad news forecasts during the post-ITSA sub-period. However, insider trading activity increased prior to good news forecasts post-ITSA. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-09, Section: A, page: 2894. / Major Professor: Stephen P. Baginski. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1994.

This study extends Pourciau (1993) by examining the link between executive succession and the capital market's response to earnings announcements. Two competing predictions are proposed. First, prior studies have shown that executives manage earnings downward in the year of management change and upward the following year. Managed earnings are more noisy than unmanaged earnings. Since there is an inverse relationship between the perceived noise in earnings and the ERC, the study proposes that the ERC will be less in the year of and the year following a management change than in the year prior to the change. / Second, based on the findings of Lang (1991), the study proposes that a management change will increase the uncertainty about a firm's future cash flows. To the extent that earnings reports are used to resolve these uncertainties, the ERC is expected to increase in the year of change. As the firm's earnings series lengthens, however, and more is learned about the firm's new manager, less reliance will be placed on the earnings reports and the ERC is expected to decline. / Drawing upon the findings of Murphy and Zimmerman (1993) (1985), it is also proposed that the financial condition of the firm prior to the management change will determine the direction of the change in the ERC. Firms that were performing above their industry median before the change are expected to have an increase in their ERCs while firms that were performing below their industry median are expected to have a decline in their ERCs. / Based on the findings of Strong and Meyer (1985), the study also proposes that the origin of the incoming executive will have an impact on the magnitude of the change in the ERC. Firms that appoint the new manager from outside are expected to have greater changes in their ERCs than firms that appoint the new manager from inside. / The results indicate that a management change has a significant impact on the ERC of a firm. Management change firms have lower ERCs in the year of change than non-management change firms from the same industry. The results were inconclusive for firms performing below their industry medians prior to the management change. Firms performing above their industry medians prior to the management change have a significant decline in their ERCs in the year of change but the ERCs return to their pre-change values in the following year. Firms that appoint the new manager from outside have greater changes in their ERCs in the year of change than firms that appoint the new manager from inside. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-09, Section: A, page: 2894. / Major Professor: Thomas Schaefer. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1994.

The structure of United States security markets and information systems create incentives for managers to time strategically the release of accounting information when security markets are open or closed. This research tests two theories that offer predictions about when managers will release accounting earnings. The first theory, developed by Trueman (1991) predicts that managers choose the time of release to maximize security markets' reaction to good news, as determined by firms' economic earnings. The expectations adjustment hypothesis predicts managers choose the time of release based on the information environment facing the firm. The theory predicts that firms operating in environments marked by high degrees of information asymmetry will release earnings when security markets are closed. / The results of the empirical tests do not support either of the two theories. Accounting earnings released when security markets are closed are not associated with smaller measurement errors with regard to accounting and economic earnings. Open announcements additionally do not result in larger market reactions after controlling for accounting earnings. Finally, earnings released when security markets are closed are not associated with greater information asymmetry or larger absolute unexpected accounting earnings. / The lack of significant results may be driven by differences between closed announcements made before security markets open and after security markets close. Earnings released before markets open contain more good news than earnings released after markets are closed and are similar to earnings released when markets are open. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-10, Section: A, page: 3622. / Major Professor: Stephen P. Baginski. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1992.

A socio-economic study of twentieth-century American literature reveals that mainstream businessmen must either discipline, suppress, or kill boyish tendencies that collide with the expectations of American business or suffer the frustration, demotion, or demolition of corporate Darwinism. / The roots of competition stem from pioneers, cowboys, and industrial entrepreneurs who raised spirited aggression, profit-grubbing, and the American play-to-win mentality to an expected way of life in American business. Life-or-death-dealing codes for dress, behavior, and loyalty complete the expectations of the corporate universe. / Holden Caulfield senses in Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye that growing up or answering the patriarchal expectation to prepare himself for corporate law promises death to anything real that he feels about himself. In Vonnegut's Player Piano, Paul Proteus impresses his supervisors with his enormous capacity for manly, logical, and practical mentality until he awakens to a spirit for freedom and adventure and to the unique possibilities and inner realities that lie beyond a system that tries to claim his soul. Although Willy Loman fanatically struggles for more than forty years to suffocate his boyish love of freedom and adventure in order to force-fit himself to corporate expectation, in Miller's Death of a Salesman he cannot realize coveted success in the whirlpool of the American big-shot dream. Bob Slocum accidentally suffocates his son in Heller's Something Happened, but no matter how passionately he loves the boy struggling for attention and life within his inner universe, he feels that he must deliberately kill this threat upon his career life. While Rabbit Angstrom confesses in Updike's Rabbit Is Rich that he is not naturally suited to the risks and challenges of business, he beats corporate Darwinism by marrying the boss's daughter and by steadily conditioning himself to the rational, practical, and cost-effective mentality expected of mainstream American businessmen. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-08, Section: A, page: 2485. / Major Professor: David Kirby. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1989.

The economic value (as measured by consumer's surplus) and the economic impact (as measured by sales, employment and wages and salaries) were estimated for Florida's east and west coast recreational and commercial king mackerel fisheries using 1986 data. In 1986, the king mackerel fisheries in Florida were economically more important to both the nation (using consumer's surplus) and to the state of Florida's economy (using sales, employment and wages salaries impact) than the commercial king mackerel fisheries in Florida. These conclusions held even assuming large errors in estimation. / A short-run economic allocation model was implemented for Florida's east and west coast king mackerel fisheries to evaluate the economics of allocating king mackerel stocks between recreational and commercial fishermen. Computer simulations, based upon estimates using 1986 data, revealed that maximum of consumer's surplus, sales, employment and wages and salaries would have been achieved if the entire 1986 commercial catch would have been allocated to recreational fishermen. This conclusion held even under extreme assumptions designed to bias the results towards the commercial fishery. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-09, Section: A, page: 3151. / Major Professor: Frederick W. Bell. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.

Through the remarkable growth of over a decade China's rural industry has already become an important pillar of its national economy. The primary goal of this dissertation is to place China's rural industry in a historical and a market economic perspective in an efforts to link its rapid development and its economic performance to its market-oriented characteristic, and to analyze its productive efficiency at firm-level, in order to demonstrate that firms operating in a competitive market economic environment should have better economic performance. / Using 1988-1992 data of 500 rural non-agricultural enterprises, which are collected from four counties of Sichuan province by author, and using stochastic frontier production function approach, this dissertation primarily examines technical efficiency, factor productivity growth, and economies of scale for sample firms with two dimensions: ownership (township, village or private ownership) and sector (manufacturing and its sub-sectors, construction or service). According to the empirical analysis, it is found that, at least for the sample firms, China's rural industry has (1) higher technical efficiency, measured by both its level and its distribution, than that of their counterparts in China's state sector and in typical developing countries; (2) much faster growth rate of total factor productivity than that of China's state and urban collective sectors; (3) greater labor output elasticity and constant returns to scale; and (4) significant labor-capital substitution effect in most cases. It also finds that when output is essentially determined by the capacity of engineering facilities, relatively larger-sized firm groups with higher capital intensity have better technical efficiency; on the contrary, in relatively labor-intensive sectors, the smaller-sized firm groups perform better, which is consistent with the finding by other economists that there does not exist obvious bivariate relationship between firm size and relative technical efficiency. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-07, Section: A, page: 2794. / Major Professor: James Cobbe. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.

This paper reexamines data on major industrial countries to investigate the dynamic interaction between money supply shocks and the real exchange rate. Specifically, this paper shows the relationship of observed comovements between money supply, industrial production index, interest rates, prices and real exchange rates to existing theories of real exchange rate determination. Using Vector Autoregression modeling technique alternative Granger causal orderings are fitted to the data in order to test validity of the different exchange rate models. The results of this study support the theory that the effect of money supply shocks is transitory and not permanent so there is no gain or loss in a country's competitiveness. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-04, Section: A, page: 1458. / Major Professor: Joan G. Haworth. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.

acase@tulane.edu

Traditional analysis of the effects of severance taxes on oil production has concentrated on the question of the exportability of the tax and on the effects of the tax on extraction rates. The incidence of the tax is ignored or discussed in broad, general terms. The purpose of this paper is to examine the incidence of severance taxes in detail. A general equilibrium model is constructed to describe economic activity within an oil producing state. Modifications are made to the traditional Harberger model to make it applicable both to petroleum production and to the analysis of a single state. The modifications allow for the differentiation of factor types and for the possibility of migration. Factor differentiation makes possible the earning of differential rents which will affect the incidence of the tax. Possible migration may allow a factor to escape the tax and therefore affect the tax burdens of non-migratory factors. The general results of the analysis are what one would expect. Any factor earning rent bears a larger share of the tax burden than if it were not earning rent. The employment of a less productive factor of the same type along with the rent earning factor reduces the extent to which the tax is borne by the rent earning factor. If a factor can migrate out of the taxing state, it can completely escape any tax imposed by the state. Empirical analysis shows that the tax has significant effects on labor in both the short run and in the long run / acase@tulane.edu

The multi-dimensional nature of intangible assets dictates that this dissertation be written in a certain way. Firstly, the dissertation includes a prologue, which explains the reasoning for writing this dissertation on intangible assets valuation. Second, the dissertation includes an index naming all the chapters and, in some cases, their included sub-topics, with their corresponding page numbers. Third, the chapters begin with a paragraph explaining the objectives of each chapter, and the reasons for their inclusion and analysis. Fourth, the dissertation concludes by reviewing the most important considerations and commenting on the results This dissertation explores different issues related to the valuation of intangible assets or intangible assets valuation, both in the United States and Mexico. The dissertation is divided into three parts Part One, consisting of chapters one through five, provides an overview of the issues relevant to intangible assets valuation. It explores the conceptual framework behind the evaluation of intangible assets valuation. It also recounts the historical background of intangible assets valuations by focusing on the evolution of the relevant concepts Part Two, consisting of chapters six through thirteen, addresses the development of the American system for valuing intangible assets. It provides an overview of the methods used to value intangible assets. Specifically, it analyzes the three main valuation methods: cost, market and income The third Part, consisting of chapter fourteen through eighteen, addresses the issues stemming from the lack of a system for valuing intangible assets in Mexico. It analyzes the possibility of creating a legal system and proposes the implementation of an intangible assets valuation law in Mexico / acase@tulane.edu