I study how the decisions of corporate individuals, firm culture, corporate behavior, and the broader financial markets are interconnected. In the first chapter, I examine insider trade reporting violations by corporate insiders, such as executives, officers, and directors, who have access to nonpublic information. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) mandates prompt insider trade reporting within two business days to reduce information asymmetry. However, frequent violations of this deadline breach securities law and may indicate a broader culture of noncompliance. I investigate whether insiders’ adherence to or disregard for filing deadlines reflects the firm’s stance on unethical behavior and its fiduciary duty to shareholders. Using a dataset of 18,567 firm-year observations post-SOX, I find a significant positive association between insider filing violations and future corporate misconduct, especially in firms without a Chief Compliance Officer (CCO). This suggests that strong internal regulatory systems are crucial for promoting a culture of compliance. In the second chapter, I explore the link between incoming CEO incentives and real earnings management (REM), which involves purposeful deviations from normal business operations to meet specific earnings targets. New CEOs face significant scrutiny from shareholders, boards, and the market, which may pressure them to manage earnings. I find a negative association between CEO risk-taking incentives (vega) and REM and a positive association between CEO stock price sensitivity (delta) and REM when the firm is in financial distress. These findings suggest that CEO incentives are closely related to REM. In the third chapter, using hand-collected data, I explore the labor market response to executives’ off-the-job personal misconduct, such as sexual misadventure, substance abuse, violence, and dishonesty. I observe that executives with a record of indiscretion are 12% more likely to switch firms, 11% more likely to lose board seats, and 10% more likely to experience a lower rank the next year. Furthermore, they are 34.5% to 37.3% more likely to join firms with low integrity culture scores. This research highlights the career repercussions of personal indiscretions for executives.

本文所稱之「先購後併」乃係指併購公司或公開收購公司於併購或公開收購消息公開前，於市場上先行購買目標公司之股份提前佈局的行為，亦有以「立足點持股」或「預先持股」稱之。於先購後併之情況下，是否併購方有構成內線交易之疑慮，因我國無論證券交易法或企業併購法對此議題皆無明確規定，故素來即存在爭議，實務上亦不乏收購人因建立投資部位而招致內線交易訴訟之案例存在。 本文試以我國內線交易法規範之根源—美國法作為比較法，分析先購後併的情況下，是否併購人或公開收購人本身為內線交易之主體，以及併購人或公開收購人是否得與他人一同建立投資部位，再加入104年7⽉月8⽇公布之企業併購法第27條第10項⾄至第15項關於併購前建立投資部位之最新修訂說明，以及實務案例研析，並於文後嘗試提出本文見解。

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:33:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Alexandre Manoel Goncalves.pdf: 1317030 bytes, checksum: 5b611f48911913eb10863f83d5bfb44b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-08-09 / Capital Market is comprised of the most important companies in activity in a given country. It is a means to obtain resources to finance productive activity in the long term, being consistent with the size of the business and its economic capacity. Also, Capital Market is widely used for savings both through funds or direct investments. The Federal Constitution ensures economic order based upon free enterprise. However, regardless of the business sector, that cannot be considered as unlimited freedom in terms of economic activity, exempt of monitoring or accountability. Therefore, over the past two decades the Movable Assets Commission has become a steady and accurate institution establishing administrative rules, conducting assessments in case of suspicion of irregularities, in addition to establishing penalties. On the other hand, Bovespa Market Supervision is taking over self-regulation among traders and brokers. Nonetheless, in some cases administrative supervision alone is insufficient to prevent irregular practices or punish those responsible. For specific cases, measures such as suspension of the exercise of professional activity and fines have proven ineffective to discourage the unlawful conduct of certain persons. Under such circumstances, criminal law becomes the State s last resort to regulate the matter. Law 6.485/76, with wording amended by Law 10.303/01, typifies the crimes of market manipulation, misuse of insider information and irregular exercise of office, profession, activity or function in the capital market. It is society s role to reflect and define what conducts shall be regarded as crimes. / O Mercado de Capitais representa a reunião das mais relevantes empresas em atividades de determinado país. Trata-se de um meio para a obtenção de recursos de modo a financiar a atividade produtiva, em longo prazo, de forma compatível com o porte do negócio e sua capacidade econômica. Noutro aspecto, serve como destino para a poupança popular, quer por meio de fundos, ou investimentos diretos. A Constituição Federal assegura a ordem econômica fundada na livre iniciativa. Não significa, entretanto, liberdade absoluta da atividade econômica e isso vale para qualquer setor empresarial sem que exista alguma espécie de acompanhamento ou responsabilidade. No caso do mercado de capitais, a Comissão de Valores Mobiliários se firmou, ao longo das duas últimas décadas, como instituição serena e precisa, para estabelecer normas administrativas, realizar apurações quanto à suspeita de irregularidades e até estabelecer sanções. A Bovespa Supervisão de Mercados, por sua vez, começa a ocupar o espaço de autorregulação entre os operadores e corretoras. Há casos, contudo, em que a tutela administrativa é insuficiente para, isoladamente, evitar práticas irregulares ou punir os responsáveis. Suspensão do exercício da atividade profissional e multa, em determinados casos, mostram-se fracos a desestimular a conduta ilícita de determinadas pessoas. Normas penais, por vezes, representam o último recurso do Estado para disciplinar o assunto. A Lei 6.485/76, com a redação alterada pela Lei 10.303/01, tipifica os crimes de manipulação de mercado, uso indevido de informação privilegiada e o exercício irregular de cargo, profissão, atividade ou função no mercado de capitais. A sociedade deve refletir e definir quais as condutas que deseja ver previstas como crime.

[pt] Nas últimas décadas, os programas de recompra de ações têm se tornado cada vez mais populares entre as empresas abertas ao redor do mundo. Além de constituírem uma forma de remuneração aos acionistas, as recompras de ações geram uma série de efeitos secundários e impactos distintos sobre as companhias, o que dificulta a identificação de um fator único para sua execução e para a existência das anomalias de mercado. Ao mesmo tempo que se observa uma evolução gradual dos estudos sobre recompra de ações nos mercados desenvolvidos, como no caso dos Estados Unidos, observa-se um gap de conhecimento sobre tais eventos no Brasil. O presente estudo tem por objetivo analisar as anomalias observadas nos preços das ações após os anúncios de recompra sob um ângulo diferenciado dos estudos já desenvolvidos com referência ao tema na literatura nacional. A partir de uma conceituação internacional, identifica-se que cada vez mais os insiders têm um papel importante na execução e nos retornos dos programas de recompra. Utilizando pela primeira vez uma base de dados recente e mais precisa sobre os programas de recompra de ações anunciados e realizados no país nos últimos anos, este estudo identifica características únicas do mercado brasileiro, como por exemplo o alto nível de recompras anunciadas e não executadas. Esta visível discrepância entre os anúncios e as execuções resulta na identificação de um efeito reputacional, através do qual empresas que possuem histórico de execução apresentam retornos anormais ao redor das datas de anúncio dos programas de recompra. Além deste efeito reputacional, também são obtidas evidências positivas do papel da governança corporativa e da existência de uma relação significativa entre a execução das recompras e as negociações de ações realizadas pelos insiders. / [en] In the recent decades, share repurchase programs gained increasing importance among public companies worldwide. Besides being an alternative form of distribution to shareholders, share repurchase programs have a series of secondary effects and distinct impacts within each company, which does not allow the identification of one exclusive factor to justify such behavior. While several studies regarding share repurchases have been conducted in developed markets, such as the United States, there is a large gap of knowledge between those markets and the Brazilian market. This research represents a step forward to the understanding of the share price behavior anomalies following share repurchase announcements using a different perspective than previous studies in the Brazilian literature. Following an international review, the behavior of the companies insiders is identified as an important factor that directly affects the execution and returns generated by the share repurchase programs. Using for the first time a more recent and accurate data base about the announcements and execution of share repurchase programs in Brazil covering the past years, this study identifies unique characteristics of the Brazilian market, such as a high level of repurchase program announcements without executions. This notorious difference between announcement and execution creates a reputational effect by which companies with a history of past execution present superior abnormal return nearby announcement dates. Besides this reputational effect, it s also presented evidence regarding the positive influence of corporate governance and the existence of a significant relationship between the execution of the share repurchase programs and insider trading.

Graphs (or networks) are now omnipresent, infusing into many aspects of society. This dissertation contributes unified graph-based algorithms and models to help solve large-scale societal problems affecting millions of individuals' daily lives, from cyber-attacks involving malware to tobacco and alcohol addiction. The main thrusts of our research are: (1) Propagation-based Graph Mining Algorithms: We develop graph mining algorithms to propagate information between the nodes to infer important details about the unknown nodes. We present three examples: AESOP (patented) unearths malware lurking in people's computers with 99.61% true positive rate at 0.01% false positive rate; our application of ADAGE on malware detection (patent-pending) enables to detect malware in a streaming setting; and EDOCS (patent-pending) flags comment spammers among 197 thousand users on a social media platform accurately and preemptively. (2) Graph-induced Behavior Characterization: We derive new insights and knowledge that characterize certain behavior from graphs using statistical and algorithmic techniques. We present two examples: a study on identifying attributes of smoking and drinking abstinence and relapse from an addiction cessation social media community; and an exploratory analysis of how company insiders trade. Our work has already made impact to society: deployed by Symantec, AESOP is protecting over 120 million people worldwide from malware; EDOCS has been deployed by Yahoo and it guards multiple online communities from comment spammers.

This thesis examines the effects of managerial overconfidence on corporate financing decisions. Overconfident managers tend to overestimate the mean of future cash flow and underestimate the volatility of future cash flow. We propose a novel time-varying measure of overconfidence, which is based on computational linguistic analysis of what the managers said (i.e. Chairman s Statement). The overconfidence of CEO and CFO is also constructed based on what the managers did (i.e. how they trade their own firms shares). We conduct three empirical studies that offer new insights into the roles of managerial overconfidence in the leverage decision (i.e. debt level), pecking order behaviour (i.e. the preference for debt over equity financing) and debt maturity decision (i.e. short-term debt vs. long-term debt). Study 1 documents a negative overconfidence-leverage relationship. This new finding suggests that debt conservatism associated with managerial overconfidence might be a potential explanation for the low leverage puzzle: some firms maintain low leverage, without taking tax benefits of debt, because overconfident managers believe that firm securities are undervalued by investors and thus are too costly (Malmendier, Tate and Yan, 2011). Study 2 finds managerial overconfidence leads to reverse pecking order preference especially in small firms, which sheds light on the pecking order puzzle that smaller firms with higher information costs surprisingly exhibit weaker pecking order preference. This new evidence is consistent with Hackbarth s (2008) theory that overconfident managers who underestimate the riskiness of earnings tend to prefer equity to debt financing. Study 3 finds managerial overconfidence leads to higher debt maturity. This evidence supports our proposition that overconfidence can mitigate the underinvestment problem (which is often the major concern of long-term debt investors) (Hackbarth, 2009), which in turn allows overconfident managers to use more and cheaper long-term debt. This evidence also implies that overconfidence may mitigate the agency cost of debt. Overall, our empirical analysis suggests that managerial overconfidence has significant incremental explanatory power for corporate financing decisions.

This study aims to investigate if an outside investor can gain positive return from investing in company stocks on the Swedish stock market following published announcements of insider stock purchases done through the Swedish financial regulatory authority Finansinspektionen’s public insider transaction registry. Studying a total of 5 966 announced stock purchases during the period 2014 – 2018, the study finds significant positive abnormal return over all studied time periods following the announcement date, regardless of differences in company size. Highest return was found in smaller companies, at the cost of accepting a higher degree of risk. Despite significant results showing informational value of the announced purchases, economic gain from following insider behavior could be inhibited by the cost of investment and would require the outside investor to pick the right stock, which could prove difficult.

Abstract Many studies explore how firm-level characteristics affect the returns that corporate insiders earn when they trade the stocks of their own firms, but little is known about the role of insiders’ personal characteristics. This dissertation contributes to the literature by expanding our understanding of how corporate insiders’ personal characteristics affect their decisions to exploit private information in insider trading. The first essay of the dissertation examines whether insiders who have shown noncompliance with the tax law are more prone to exploit their information advantage in insider trading than other insiders. Our empirical results from analyzing archival data of all insider trades in Sweden show that the noncompliant insiders use more of their information advantage to trade their insider stocks shortly before significant stock price changes than other insiders. The second essay explores why insiders engage in informed insider trading, given the surprisingly small average insider returns reported in the literature and the potential costs involved. Using archival data of corporate insiders in Sweden, we show that less wealthy insiders are more likely to time their insider selling, and sell in greater magnitudes, prior to abnormal price declines than wealthy insiders. We also find that less-wealthy insiders with lower risk-aversion as measured by their criminal behavior are particularly prone to timing their selling to avoid price declines. The third essay examines what type of insiders are willing to violate their own company’s restrictions on insider trading by trading on their private information during blackout periods when the firm prohibits trading by its insiders. Using archival data of corporate insiders in Finland, I find that less-wealthy insiders avoid economically significant insider losses by selling their insider stocks during the prohibited blackout period. These insider sales also predict negative earnings surprises. / Tiivistelmä Tämä väitöskirja laajentaa aikaisempaa tutkimuskirjallisuutta tarkastelemalla, miten yritysten sisäpiiriläisten henkilökohtaiset ominaisuudet vaikuttavat sisäpiirin kaupankäynnin tuottoihin. Väitöskirjan ensimmäisessä osatutkimuksessa tutkitaan, voidaanko sisäpiirin kaupankäynnin tuottoja selittää sisäpiiriläisten verottajalta saamien hallinnollisten sanktioiden avulla. Osatutkimuksen empiiristen tulosten mukaan verottajalta hallinnollisia sanktioita saaneet sisäpiiriläiset ansaitsevat merkittävästi suurempia sisäpiirin kaupankäynnin tuottoja kuin muut sisäpiiriläiset. Aikaisemmissa tutkimuksissa havaitut sisäpiirin kaupankäynnin tuotot vaikuttavat verrattain pieniltä, kun huomioidaan sisäpiiritiedon hyödyntämiseen liittyvä maine- ja juridinen riski. Toisessa osatutkimuksessa tutkitaan, miksi jotkut sisäpiiriläiset kuitenkin päättävät hyödyntää sisäpiiritietoaan käydessään kauppaa yhtiöidensä osakkeilla. Tulosten mukaan matalamman varallisuuden sisäpiiriläiset ajoittavat osakemyyntinsä todennäköisemmin ennen osakekurssien laskuja kuin korkeamman varallisuuden sisäpiiriläiset. Tämä tulos on erityisen vahva sellaisten matalamman varallisuuden sisäpiiriläisten joukossa, jotka ovat erityisen riskihakuisia henkilökohtaisilla rikostuomioilla mitattuna. Väitöskirjan kolmannessa osatutkimuksessa tutkitaan, millaiset sisäpiiriläiset eivät noudata yhtiöidensä asettamia rajoituksia sisäpiirin kaupankäynnille vaan hyödyntävät sisäpiiritietoaan käymällä kauppaa ns. suljetun ikkunan aikana, jolloin yhtiön asettamat rajoitukset kieltävät sisäpiirin kaupankäynnin. Tämän osatutkimuksen empiirisen tulosten mukaan matalamman varallisuuden sisäpiiriläiset ansaitsevat suljetun ikkunan aikana toteuttamillaan osakemyynneillä merkittävästi suurempia tuottoja kuin muut sisäpiiriläiset. Matalamman varallisuuden sisäpiiriläisten suljetun ikkunan aikana toteuttamat osakemyynnit myös ennustavat yrityksen julkistamaa tulevaa negatiivista tulosyllätystä.

In the first part of thesis, we investigated the influence and explanatory power of aggregate insider trading activities on momentum trading strategies in US stock markets. We find that aggregate insider trading activities have ability in predicting cross-sectional returns and can strengthen the naive momentum effects. The risk factors such as size and book-to-market ratio cannot explain the strong momentum effects in our refined momentum strategies. We further extend the time horizon to as long as 3 years and find that the reversal patterns. We interpret our findings as follows: The continuous overreaction causes the mediate term (3- to 12 months) momentum effects and overly pricing. In long-term horizon, these overly priced stocks will be corrected with the time passing. The correction of overly pricing causes long-term reversals. / In the second part of the thesis, we studied relationships between the efficiency of external market and the capital allocation processes in internal market by investigating the performance of red chips traded in Hong Kong. Because of its special role between China and international capital market, it is difficult for international investors to monitor how red chips allocated their Hong Kong raised capital in China. The evidences show that red chips made poor investments in the past decades. However, the external market failed to reflect the unprofitable investment made by the management groups in the internal market. At least, our evidences show that the red chips made diversified but unprofitable investments in aggregate level in the past decade. / Jihong Xiang. / "December 2001." / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 63-01, Section: A, page: 0306. / Supervisors: Jia He; Duan Li. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p.102-113). / Available also through the Internet via ProQuest dissertations and theses under title: Are markets efficient? Evidences from stock markets in United States of America and Hong Kong. / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest dissertations and theses, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

Background: Achieving an abnormal return on your investment is something investors are trying to achieve. A lot of attempts have been made to try and find an investment strategy that always generates abnormal returns, although none has been proven to be absolute. Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) proponents argue that when it comes to public available information, one could not get an abnormal advantage of this information. Behavioural Finance (BF) proponents however argue that there may still be possible for this due to human psychology. For markets to have the best possibilities for being efficient, it must be a large and competitive market where information transfers rapidly. When analysing aspects necessary for earning abnormal return for outsiders, there are indications that these aspects does exist and it might be profitable to mimic the insiders operating in the Swedish large-cap bank sector. The large-cap bank sector contains of Svenska Handelsbanken (SHB), Nordea, Swedbank and Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB). Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to explore whether there exist an opportunity in the Swedish bank sector for outsiders to earn abnormal return based on insiders’ transactions. In the process an indirect test will be made to see if the semi-strong form of efficiency holds for the Swedish bank sector. Method: Observing the movements on the market when the information about insider trading becomes public. The results are tested for both statistical significance and economical significance. Conclusion: The purpose of this study was to try and determine whether or not outsiders could mimic the insider’s transactions in order to earn abnormal return in the Swedish bank sector. However, based on this study this seems not to be possible in the overall sector. The signs that indicated that this would be possible for the Swedish large-cap banks turned out to be false. The result that showed statistical difference from zero was negative and it was therefore concluded that the insider did not predict the future very well. This leads to the conclusion that there are stronger factors than the sign of insiders’ transactions determine the future stock price. Since the insiders could not predict the future stock prices, any attempt from outsiders to try to exploit their information would not be beneficial. This resulted in the BF assumptions of under- and overreaction in the price did not occur in this study and instead the results turned out to be in line with the EMH description of semi-strong markets. / Bakgrund: Att uppnå överavkastning på sin investering är något investerare ständigt försöker uppnå. Många försök har gjorts för att försöka hitta en investeringsstrategi som alltid genererar överavkastningen, dock har inga gjorts som visat sig vara kontinuerliga. Den Effektiva Marknads Hypotesens förespråkare hävdar att när det gäller offentligt tillgänglig information kan man inte få onormal fördel av detta. Dock hävdar förespråkare för Behavioural Finance att detta fortfarande kan vara möjligt och att detta beror delvis på mänsklig psykologi. För att marknader ska ha de bästa möjligheterna för att vara effektiv, måste de vara stora och konkurrenskraftiga där information överförs snabbt. När man analyserar vissa aspekter som är nödvändiga för att tjäna överavkastningen för utomstående, verkar det finnas tecken på att detta skulle kunna vara möjligt genom att imitera insynshandel i den Svenska large-cap bank sektorn. Sektorn består av Handelsbanken (SHB), Nordea, Swedbank och Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB). Syfte: Är att undersöka om det finns en möjlighet för utomstående att få överavkastningen baserad på insynspersonernas transaktioner. I processen görs ett indirekt test för att se om den Svenska banksektorn uppnår semi-stark effektivitet. Metod: Observera rörelserna på marknaden när information om insynshandel blev allmänt. Resultatet testas för både statistisk och ekonomisk signifikans. Slutsats: Syftet med denna studie var att försöka avgöra huruvida utomstående kunde imitera insynspersonernas transaktioner för att tjäna onormal avkastning i den Svenska banksektorn. Baserat på denna studie verkar detta inte vara möjligt i den totala sektorn. De tecken som indikerade att detta skulle vara möjligt för visade sig vara falskt. Resultatet som visade statistisk skillnad från noll var negativt och därför drogs slutsatsen att insynspersonerna inte kunde förutsäga framtiden särskilt väl. Detta leder till slutsatsen att det finns starkare faktorer än insynspersoners transaktioner som avgör framtida aktiekurser. Eftersom insynspersoner inte kunde förutse de framtida aktiekurserna, skulle varje försök från en utomstående att försöka utnyttja detta inte vara fördelaktigt. Detta resulterade i fenomenet av under- och överreaktioner som BF förespråkade, inte förekom i denna studie. Istället visade resultatet sig vara i linje med EMH beskrivningen av semi-starka marknader.