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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of capital structure changes by target firms on the outcome and ex post performance of firms targeted by proxy contests.

The influence is examined by using predictions of control‐driven model developed by Harris and Raviv and signaling theory of debt in capital structure.

The results are consistent with the predictions of both control‐driven model and signaling theory. Significant differences are found between two groups of target firms – management victory targets and dissident victory targets. Specifically: management victory targets feature proxy contests that are accompanied by leverage increasing changes in target firms' capital structure; the same group also realizes better long‐run stock performance compared to dissident victory targets; and the long‐run abnormal stock performance of management victory targets is significantly positively related to the increases in leverage in the capital structure during proxy contest period.

This paper is the first to directly address the relationship between leverage change and the outcome and long‐run performance of proxy contest targets, thus confirming both the defensive and the signaling role of debt on firm's capital structure decision.

There is a preponderance of evidence in the established literature that declining firms have lower levels of organizational slack when compared with surviving firms. To further advance the current literature, the purpose of this paper is to examine whether or not organizational slack in its various forms differ in declining firms and in surviving firms. Additionally, this study examines whether there is a change in the extent of slack in the declining firms in the years immediately preceding bankruptcy filing.

–t-tests and panel regressions with random effects are performed.

Available slack, potential slack and total slack of bankrupts significantly differ from that of survivors in each year. However, recoverable slack levels do not differ in bankrupts and survivors. Available slack of bankrupts reduces significantly over the last five years before bankruptcy. Recoverable slack, potential slack and total slack conditions do not drastically deteriorate for the bankrupts over the last few years prior to bankruptcy.

Not confirming to prior evidences, the results of this study suggest that not every type of organizational slack is in a worse condition within a declining firm than in a surviving firm.

Among all the slack types, what differentiates bankrupts from survivors is the amount of available slack. Decreasing available slack within declining firms should forewarn managers of further likely deteriorations.

The results of this study questions the prevailing wisdom that financial resource levels, especially the levels of organizational slack is in a significantly lower level in declining firms than in surviving firms.

This article explores the varied ways that individuals create and use calendars, planners and other cognitive artifacts to document the multiple temporalities that make up their everyday lives. It reveals the hidden documentary time work required to synchronize, coordinate or entrain their activities to those of others.

We interviewed 47 Canadian participants in their homes, workplaces or other locations and photographed their documents. We analyzed qualitatively; first thematically to identify mentions of times, and then relationally to reveal how documentary time work was situated within participants' broader contexts.

Participants' documents revealed a wide variety of temporalities, some embedded in the templates they used, and others added by document creators and users. Participants' documentary time work involved creating and using a variety of tools and strategies to reconcile and manage multiple temporalities and indexical time concepts that held multiple meanings. Their work employed both standard “off the shelf” and individualized “do-it-yourself” approaches.

This article combines several concepts of invisible work (document work, time work, articulation work) to show both how individuals engage in documentary time work and how that work is situated within broader social and temporal contexts and standards.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the section of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act related to information dissemination by sell-side security analysts. The paper analyzes how the abolishment of the quiet period requirements for emerging growth companies (EGCs) changes the analyst initiation timing and market expectation of and reaction to the issuance of the analyst recommendations.

This paper considers the effect of the abolishment of the quiet period requirements on analyst coverage initiations for EGCs with IPOs between January 2006 and December 2015 using regression analyses and probability models.

The results confirm the current anecdotal and empirical evidence that a shorter, de facto, quiet period exists. Analyst issue stronger average ratings for EGCs than for similar firms with IPOs before the JOBS Act. EGCs with initiations from multiple analysts also experience stronger positive market reaction than the firms with initial offerings before the JOBS Act. The market seems to anticipate which EGCs will have initiations and particularly which EGCs will have initiations from multiple analysts. The investors, however, do not fully anticipate the strength of actual recommendations.

This paper is important for researchers, practitioners and policy-makers to understand how analysts impact the financial markets, how timing of analyst initiations affects stock prices of EGCs and what firm characteristics play a role in securing analyst coverage shortly after initial offerings.

This paper adds to the emerging literature on consequences of and changes brought by the JOBS Act. Specifically, this paper extends the limited literature on analyst initiations issued for firms with IPOs following the JOBS Act, timing of those initiations and magnitude of the market’s response to the initiations.

The study assesses the significance of environmental uncertainty and its effects on fishing strategies of small-scale fishermen in Ende, Flores, Indonesia. Periodic environmental cycles such as the moon phase can have important effects on fishing strategies by regulating the behavior of stocks and tides. Traditional lunar calendars are used by subsistence fishermen to decide when and where to go fishing. Environmental uncertainty, specifically unprecedented changes in oceanographic and atmospheric conditions, is threatening the predictability of traditional systems of ecological knowledge.

Methods included ethnographic and observational techniques. Interviews (n = 58) and surveys (n = 132) are qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed. A combination of standard statistical tests, multilevel models, and cluster analysis is applied to long-term repeated observations of fishing events (n = 2,633).

Endenese fishermen emphasized the importance of the traditional lunar calendar to allocate their effort in interviews and surveys. This belief does not coincide with observed behavior. Contrary to expectations from the traditional calendar, the lowest probability of fishing happens in the intermediate phases, with fishing also occurring during the full moon. Differences between individuals play an important role in explaining variability in returns. Finally, based on the consideration of variability, three different fishing strategies are identified that suggest an effect of environmental uncertainty in effort regulation.

The paper underlines the importance of studies of variability to identify behavioral flexibility and adaptation. Results emphasize the value of considering individual traits in the analysis of subsistence practices.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

During the 1930s Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal created a wide range of spending and loan programs. Brief descriptions are provided for the programs created by the New Deal and loan and spending programs that were in place before the New Deal. I worked with others to create a panel data set with estimates of the spending and lending by the programs each year from 1930 through 1940. The data aggregated to broad categories are reported here and the methods and sources used to construct the estimates of the spending and lending for the categories are discussed.

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the relationship between and among genres, discourse communities, and their associated ideologies by means of a historical case study of the rise and decline of a particular archival finding aid genre, i.e., the calendar, within the Public Records Office of Great Britain (PRO) between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries.

The study demonstrates the ways in which the calendar genre, as it evolved in the PRO, reproduced, framed, and perpetuated a progressive, consensual understanding of the history of the British nation, and worked to construct a community of historical workers comprising select members of the PRO’s professional staff and select users.

The study deepens and extends understanding of discourse communities and the ideologies they promote and suppress and contributes to the emergent understanding of archival finding aids as socio-cultural texts by exposing the ways in which they participate in the formation and shaping of knowledge.

The effects of environmental change are becoming more noticeable in the Lower Mekong Basin, where there is growing pressure on the agriculture-based livelihoods of communities living along the mainstream of the Mekong River. This chapter presents an investigation of temporal seasonal variability in four communities of Kratie Province, Cambodia, including identification of locally developed strategies to adapt to temporal changes in weather patterns. A mixed-methods approach was adopted, combining historical hydrometeorological data with participatory seasonal calendars and daily routine diaries. Seasonal calendars were compiled from nine workshops across four villages in Kratie Province, and daily diaries were collected from seven individuals across three villages. The results indicate that patterns in rainfall, flooding and drought have become more variable due to the impacts of environmental change; a phenomenon that will likely continue into the future. Without effective, locally appropriate adaptation measures, changing weather patterns will likely continue to have adverse impacts on communities in the region due to their reliance on reliable seasonal rainfall and flooding events for crop cultivation. Households and communities in the study region have already developed a number of approaches to mitigate the adverse impacts of environmental change. This research also reiterated the importance of incorporating both local knowledge and scientific data to gain the most accurate understanding of the impacts of environmental change in a given region.

This chapter uses a college-by-graduate degree fixed effects estimator to evaluate the returns to 19 different graduate degrees for men and women. We find substantial variation across degrees, and evidence that OLS overestimates the returns to degrees with the highest average earnings and underestimates the returns to degrees with the lowest average earnings. Second, we decompose the impacts on earnings into effects on wage rates and effects on hours. For most degrees, the earnings gains come from increased wage rates, though hours play an important role in some degrees, such as medicine, especially for women. Third, we estimate the net present value and internal rate of return for each degree, which account for the time and monetary costs of degrees. Finally, we provide descriptive evidence that satisfaction gains are large for some degrees with smaller economic returns, such as education and humanities degrees, especially for men.