We examine differences in market performance of Swedish firms that initiate repurchase programs infrequently (1-2 programs), occasionally (3-4 programs) and frequently (5 or more programs) over the period 2000-2009, and examine the relationship between abnormal return and repurchase size in repurchase months. We find that infrequent repurchase programs are greeted with a stronger positive reaction than occasional and frequent programs. However, over long term, infrequent repurchase programs show no abnormal return while occasional and frequent repurchase programs show a significant positive abnormal return. A positive relationship between abnormal return and repurchase size in repurchase months is documented on average for all types of repurchase programs. / <p>QC 20130515</p>

We examine the market liquidity impact of open market share repurchases in a computerized order driven market. Using a detailed dataset of daily repurchase transactions on the Stockholm Stock Exchange together with intraday data on bid-ask spreads and order depths enable us to examine liquidity effects on the actual repurchase days. Overall, we find that repurchase trades inside the order driven trading system contributes to market liquidity through narrower bid-ask spreads and deeper market depths. After controlling for total trading volume, price, and volatility we still find a significant decrease of the bid-ask spread on repurchase days relative to surrounding non-repurchase days. However, repurchases executed as block trades outside the order driven trading system have a detrimental effect on the bid-ask spread, consistent with a negative response to the presence of informed managerial trading. / <p>QC 20130515</p>

Aim: The aim of this study is to examine and compare the importance of services and products in grocery store and to study the effects of services and products on customer retention. Method: This study is quantitative and data is collected by conducting a survey. Primary data is collected through questionnaires by visiting the stores in two cities of Sweden, namely Bollnäs and Gävle. In order to study the importance of service and products, importance scale is used in the questionnaire. Comparative analysis is used to analyze the data. Results &amp; Conclusions: The results show that customers are more concerned about the quality of products rather than quality of services. Further, it is found that among all service elements, personal interaction is considered more important whereas, among products elements, quality of products has most influence on customer decisions. After the comparison of services and products, we found out that product quality influences customer retention to a greater extent. Suggestions for future research: Research always continues and could be followed up with more perception dimensions either from customers’ perspectives or from managerial perspectives. Future research can be conducted to study managerial perception of service and product quality. Furthermore, future research can be conducted to find out other factors that determine customer retention. Customers from multiple stores and larger cities can also be the theme for future researches. Contribution of the study: This study helps retail business to build strong customer base by focusing first on quality of products and then services. Further this helps firms to know how customer’s decision making is affected. Firms with limited resources can first focus on product improvement then on services.

In recent years, it is not hard to tell that in the retail market of flaming competition in Taiwan, and quality of service is worth of being paid attention. The study tries to investigate the relationships between buyer reactions to ethical behaviors of salespeople and customer-company identification. Several hypotheses are developed and tested to find out whether interactions with salespeople generates customers¡¦ ethical perceptions and impacts on customer-company identification. Moreover, the study intends to explore the consequences of customer-company identification (extra- or in- role behaviors). The study adopts structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine the path estimates among constructs. The study adopts convenience sample and the valid return of survey is 296. Results indicate that the significant and positive effects of both moral equity and relativism on customer-company identification and repurchase intention and positive word-of-mouth followed up. At last, the managerial implications of this study may help retailers with professional ethics of salespeople and create loyal customers.

Aktieåterköpen har haft en stor utveckling globalt sett den senaste tiden och sedan det blev rättsligt tillåtet i Sverige år 2000 använder allt fler företag aktieåterköp som metod för att distribuera pengar till sina aktieägare. Tidigare forskning visar att företagsledningar innehar en stor handlingsfrihet när det gäller publicering av nyheter och de kan till stor del styra hur företagets interna nyhetsflöde utges till marknaden. Tidigare studier åskådliggör att företagsledningar utnyttjar denna handlingsfrihet och strategiskt publicerar information för att gynna sig själva. Manipulation av nyhetsflödet vid aktieåterköp är dock ett mycket outforskat område där de få studier som förekommer har genomförts i USA. Syftet med den här uppsatsen är att undersöka och klargöra om och i vilken omfattning svenska företagsledningar manipulerar nyhetsflödet vid aktieåterköp med avsikten att gynna sig själva. Studien ska förklara om svenska företagsledningar medvetet ändrar innehållet och tidpunkten för deras nyheter i samband med aktieåterköp.  Tidigare amerikansk forskning påvisar att företagsledningar publicerar fler negativa nyheter innan ett aktieåterköp med intentionen att få en nedåtdrivande aktiekurs där aktierna återköps till ett lägre pris. Efter aktieåterköpet publiceras fler positiva nyheter för att driva upp aktiekursen igen. Uppsatsens studie visade att svenska företagsledningar publicerade fler negativa nyheter innan ett aktieåterköp och till viss del fler positiva nyheter efter ett aktieåterköp. Resultatet i uppsatsen innehöll en för hög signifikansnivå och därför var inte resultatet tillräckligt tillförlitligt för att vara statistiskt signifikant. Resultatet tolkas som att svenska företagsledningar inte manipulerar nyhetsflödet i samband med aktieåterköp i lika stor omfattning relativt företagsledningar i USA. Anledningarna till det är främst på grund av de påtagliga skillnaderna i ägarstruktur mellan Sverige och USA. Avslutningsvis diskuteras förslag till framtida forskning där det vetenskapliga arbetet om ämnesområdet skulle kunna utvecklas genom att utöka undersökningen till fler delar av Europa. På så sätt skapas en bredare bild över hur vanligt förekommande manipulation i samband med aktieåterköp är i olika delar av världen. / Share repurchases has increased a lot globally recently and since it was legally permitted in Sweden 2000, more companies use share repurchases as a method of distributing cash to their shareholders. Previous research implicates that corporate managers have a lot of control when it comes to publishing news and they can largely control the company's internal newsfeed that is published to the market. Previous studies illustrate that corporate managers trade on this control and strategic publishes information to benefit themselves. Manipulation of news feed when it comes to share repurchases is a largely unexplored area. The few studies that exist have been conducted in the United States. The purpose of this paper is to investigate and clarify if and to what extent Swedish corporate managers manipulate the news feed related to share repurchases with the intent to benefit themselves. The study will explain how the Swedish corporate managers consciously change the content and timing of their news related to share repurchases. Previous American research shows that corporate managers publish more negative news before a share repurchase with the intention of repurchase shares at a lower price. Following the share repurchase corporate managers published more positive news to push up the stock price again. This paper showed that Swedish company managers published more negative news before a share repurchase and some more positive news after a share repurchase. The result in this paper was not within the significance level and therefore was not the result reliable enough to be statistically significant. The result is interpreted as the Swedish corporate managers do not manipulate their newsfeed related to share repurchase as much as corporate managers in the United States. The reason for this is mainly due to the considerable differences in ownership structure between Sweden and the United States. Finally, we discuss suggestions for research in the future where the scientific work in the subject could be developed by extending the survey region to more parts of Europe. This would create a broader picture of how common manipulation related to share repurchase is in different parts of the world.

The earnings game and myopic performance focus induce managers to use judgment and influence to alter the reported earnings. Earnings management is the umbrella term for such manipulative actions, by accruals management or real activates management. The implicit market reactions by the stock returns indicate the effect of EM and if the behaviors are opportunistic or informative for the stakeholders. Accounting variables explain less of the stock return variation and speculative short-term news drives the variation of stock return. Research Question: Can earnings management indicators improve the forecasting of stock returns? The main purpose of the study is to investigate whether EM can be utilized to forecast returns from improving the forecasting of earnings. The authors will include both AM and RAM measures to investigate the different inherent forecasting abilities, adding to the asset pricing research and valuation area. The authors aim to enhance the explanation of cross-sectional variation of stock returns from accounting variables. The authors aim to develop a model more specified to explain the future stock returns from the accounting relationships. An additional purpose is to include transactions with the firm (stock repurchases) to potentially increase the signaling value of the manipulation behaviors. The theoretical framework consists of a discussion of theories and empirical findings regarding the accounting characteristic and relationship with stock returns. Earnings management is explained in-depth along with the empirical findings related to the concept. The capital market perspective is explained by the efficient market and behavioral finance. The chapter is concluded by concepts explaining the relationship and explanations for earnings management and the impact of information. The sample consists of 3545 firms from NASDAQ and NYSE for the years 1992-2012, which equates to around 40 000 observations. We utilize 11 different EM indicators, constructed to capture abnormal components which indicate manipulative actions. The EM indicators’ association with future stock returns is tested by yearly and industry-yearly firm characteristics framework regressions. The firm characteristic framework is developed to control for firm characteristics and evaluate the standalone effect of EM. The result is expanded by investigating earnings persistence, correlations, robust regression and portfolio sorts. The results suggest that total accruals, discretionary accruals, unexpected core earnings, production cost and stock returns are associated with subsequent stock returns. Abnormal SG&amp;A expenses, Abnormal R&amp;D expenses and abnormal cash flows from operations are not associated with stock returns. Earnings are downward manipulated prior and during stock repurchases. The change in ATO and PM diagnostic captures AM but not RAM. The concluding remarks are that EM indicators are associated with future stock returns and improve the forecasting of stock returns via a more accurate forecast of earnings.

I examine whether and to what extent tax uncertainty affects a firm's dividend payouts. Based on the argument that tax uncertainty impairs the persistence and predictability of after-tax cash flows, I hypothesize and find that firms with greater tax uncertainty exhibit a lower probability of dividend payouts. The effect of tax uncertainty is stronger in the presence of financial constraints and weaker for firms that distribute dividends to alleviate agency conflicts. Furthermore, I find a negative effect of tax uncertainty on dividend levels, which is moderated by the costs of dividend reductions. These results are economically meaningful as a one standard deviation higher tax uncertainty leads to a 9.9 percentage point lower probability and a $23.6 million reduction in dividend payouts. Taken together, my findings document a real effect of tax avoidance and contribute to the understanding of interactions between uncertain tax avoidance and a firm's financial ecosystem. / Series: WU International Taxation Research Paper Series

This Dissertation consists of two essays. The first essay examines how corporate financial policies depend on the properties of future cash flows. In contrast to prior literature, we investigate the role of asymmetries in the distributionof cash flows. We document the relevance of such asymmetries for firms' payout, liquidity, and capital structure policies. Policies are more sensitive to downside volatility and the directional effect of upside variation is often opposite that of downside. Controlling for cash flow volatility,policies significantly relate to measures of skewness. Firms adopt more conservative policies (lower propensity to pay, more cash, less leverage) when cash flow news is more negatively skewed. The second essay addresses a mythical relationship between corporate payout and short-termism. Over the past 30 years, aggregate investment by US public corporations has declined, and corporate payout has increased. These facts are interpreted as evidence that public firms are plagued by short-termism and are foregoing valuable investment opportunities to support the large payouts. We find that large increases in corporate payout do not impact firm investment or innovative activities in the short run. In the long run, firms which increase their payout invest more in physical capital than control firms and that their RandD spending is comparable. Firms which increase their payout do not experience a decline in operating profitability or valuation in the long run. These conclusions hold when we restrict our attention to firms who persist in making large payouts and for those high payout firms that rely on internal funds. Our results are inconsistent with the view that unusually high payout harms the long-term viability of US firms. The evidence in the paper suggests that the high payers are from industries with declining growth opportunities but the firms themselves are expecting their high profitability and cash flow to persist. / Doctor of Philosophy / Large increases or decreases in a company’s earnings or stock returns are breathcatching. Do such large changes contain information about the company’s future performance? If so, what information do they carry? My first essay answers these questions by looking into the data. We find that extreme stock returns do carry information about firms’ long-run performance, and this information effectively predicts firms’ financial decisions including payout, cash balance, and leverage. U.S. public firms have been decreasing their capital investment and increasing their cash payout to shareholders in the past 30 years. This create a concern because these firms are supposed to support economy growth and create jobs. Some commenters would conclude that if public firms payout so much money to shareholders, they would not have enough resource to support economy growth and create jobs. We try to find evidence from the data to support or refute this argument. The data shows that firms that payout a large amount of cash to shareholders do not reduce investment relative to their otherwise similar peers, neither in the short run nor in the long run. We also find that the firms that payout high amount are from industries with declining growth opportunities but the firms themselves are expecting their high profitability and cash flow to persist.

This thesis investigates the relationship between share repurchase decisions and severalfinancial variables the year before. We link financial theories such as signaling,substitution, leverage, excess capital, corporate governance, employee stock option, andlegitimacy theory to this relationship and create a hypothesis to test in a quantitative study.This study uses publicly listed firms headquartered in Nordic countries and uses mainlyfinancial data collected between 2015-2019. The study intends to define what factors mayaffect a share repurchase decision and by which degree. This study is also among the firstto test Refinitiv ESG pillar scores toward this relationship. The purpose of this is tounderstand the process better and could potentially allow management to understand betterwhen a share repurchase program can be initiated. It can also better inform stakeholders infirms' decisions on the market in regards to share repurchases. This deductive andquantitative research is based on secondary data gathered from the Eikon financial databaseto create an observational study.We find that share repurchasing firms have more cash flows, lower leverage ratio, morestock options programs, more board members, and fewer independent board members. Wefind that firms with excess cash flows are more likely to undertake a share repurchase eventfrom the regression analysis consistent with the excess cash flow theory. We find arelationship between having a high number of board members, where few are independent,increases the likelihood of a share repurchase event in the following year, which wasagainst our initial corporate governance hypothesis. We found that a higher governancepillar score increases the likelihood of a share repurchases event that shows value tolegitimacy theory but cannot conclusively answer that firms use sustainability disclosure asa tool to legitimize themselves. This result more likely links to corporate governancetheory. We did not find a relation for the undervaluation, substitution, leverage, employeestock options theory. We conclude that firms with more cash flows, lower leverage ratio,more stock options programs, more board members, and fewer independent board membersuse share repurchases more than their counterparts. We note that ESG scores are relativelynew and have seen more widespread use in the latest years.We look forward to reading more research in this field as more data is collected.

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