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This paper extends the merger pricing model associated with Larson‐Gonedes to the general question: how well does the premium developed from the pricing model forecast the securities market reaction of the actual merger? Based on a sample of 91 common stock mergers, shareholders in participating firms incur wealth losses about half the time but the magnitude of the gains outweighs the losses such that statistically significant gains are reported for both buyers and sellers. Removal of market wide price movements further increases the gains to shareholders. However, the premium consistently overstates the gain obtained by acquired firms and bears no systematic relationship to the gains registered by shareholders of acquiring firms. Financial analyses of mergers have focused almost exclusively on mergers as “events” with resultant measurements in abnormal returns surrounding the merger announcement/consummation to shareholders, and occasionally bondholders, in both buying and selling firms. Recent reviews of these studies by Halpern (1983), Jensen and Ruback (1983), and especially Roll (1986) stress the tentativeness of the findings and the ambiguity of their interpretation. The common feature of all this analysis has been on the ex post valuation of the merger event by the securities market from an informational content perspective. Alternatively, these studies have evaluated indirectly whether the price premium paid in an acquisition exceeds, equals, or is less than the market's valuation of the net present value of the merger, and how the spoils/losses are distributed between acquirers and acquirees. But never is the bid premium itself determined and then compared to the market's reaction upon public announcement. As Roll argues, the merger process involves three steps: “First, the bidding firm identifies a potential target firm; second, a ‘valuation’ of the equity of the target is undertaken…; third, the ‘value’ is compared to current market price… If value exceeds price, a bid is made…” Roil (1986, p. 198). This paper links the price premium offered in mergers to the market's reaction to the news of the merger, or alternatively, it compares Roll's steps two and three. The merger pricing model used is the exchange ratio determination model developed by Larson and Gonedes (1969) and applied to mergers by Conn and Nielsen (1977). The pricing model, commonly cited in finance texts (eg. Copeland and Weston (1988, pp. 757–763), has the advantage of being deterministic and thus provides a direct measure of the bid premium subject to a pareto optimal wealth constraint for shareholders in both buying and selling firms. The principal question this paper asks is: Does the price premium provide a consistent, unbiased forecast of the market's reaction? This is an important question from both the bidding firms' and target firms' perspectives for several reasons. First, the terms of the negotiated merger may signal important information to the securities market regarding the degree of agency costs in the merging firms. For example, an excessively high negotiated price for the target may indicate either the bidder has inept management or management insulated from shareholder interests. Thus, the terms of a merger may reflect not only the participants' expectations regarding the merger itself, but also be influenced by existing — although previously unknown — agency costs. The signalling information contained in merger announcement may obviously mask the expectational information, creating ambiguity in interpretation of market reaction. Second, distribution of the market reaction for buyers and sellers is important not only to participating firms' shareholders, but also to the effectiveness of the market for corporate control. A perfectly competitive merger market assures that merger premiums equal the expected value of the increased market values of merging firms. Thus, divergences between premiums and subsequent market reactions may have important implications for assessing the degree of competitiveness in the merger market, and hence, the effectiveness of mergers as a disciplinary force in the market for corporate control. Finally, the adequacy of ex ante merger pricing models remains an unexplored issue. Using an improved methodology, the Larson and Gonedes (LG) model is expanded to adjust for market wide movements in PE ratios; thus, merger specific influences on wealth positions are more clearly focused upon in contrast to the earlier work by Conn and Nielsen (1977). The earlier finding by Conn and Nielsen that approximately one half of mergers sampled in the 1960s failed to meet the pareto wealth constraint for participating firms is therefore re‐examined with an improved methodology and more recent sample of mergers occurring through 1979. The paper is organised as follows. Section I reviews and critiques the Larson‐Gonedes merger pricing model. Section II describes the empirical methodology and sample. Section III presents the empirical results and Section IV concludes with a summary.

Marx's analysis of alienated labor still explains much about how the capitalist labor process shapes the thoughts and feelings of direct producers. But Marx's analysis fares less well in explaining how the work people actually do with their hands and minds leads to specific psychological consequences. This weakness stems from an inadequate social psychology. The purpose of this article is to provide Marx with this needed social psychology by drawing on the work of G.H. Mead. Specifically, Mead's philosophy of the act and his concept of aesthetic experience will be used to show how alienated labor leads to a reified mode of consciousness and a dislike of work itself. This synthesis of Marx and Mead makes good theoretical sense when we consider, first, the remarkable similarity of their respective philosophical anthropologies.

This conceptual chapter explores the role of embodiment in phenomenological experience of lived time, and the implications it may hold for studying consumption.

Conceptual chapter.

We argue that though consumer research scholars have become increasingly cognizant of the embodied foundation of temporal experience, the relation between embodied experience of time and consumption activity still remains under-theorized and researched. Through a phenomenological perspective we are able to understand the consumer as temporally directed toward the world where value is realized emergently through embodiment of affordances.

We build an existing work in consumer research to open up a possibility for a phenomenological experience of consumption that is, to a great extent, precognitive, temporal, and based on the ability to experience lived time.

This paper aims to examine consumption behavior to understand how individuals become culturally plural consumers through exploratory research conducted in one of the world's most urban multi‐cultural environments, the UAE. As a starting point consumption was deemed as “consummatory” in accord with Holbrook.

The data were collected through 20 interviews with UAE residents. This included men and women, ages ranging from 20s to 60s, representing 11 countries from five continents. Broadly a hermeneutic approach was followed in eliciting how culturally plural consumption behaviors emerged and interpreting how the process unfolded. The study examined multicultural habits pertaining to products or services chosen by the respondents. These covered food, cuisine, books, beverages, music, dance, clothes, TV and health treatments among others.

Patterns of consumption acts create a consumption behavior that may be described as extemporaneous, expedient and emergent. The nature of the consumption process depends on a host of triggers that includes culturally diverse predisposition of the consumer, multi‐cultural identities, social cues, contextual factors and individuals' proclivity towards experimentalism. Taken together it is found that the praxis of becoming a culturally plural consumer is a learning process that has an emergent quality.

This study is exploratory and qualitative in nature with no firm conclusions.

In culturally plural markets consumers have to be approached with a fine brush. Many of the current taken‐for‐granted ideals of marketing will be questioned by the approach suggested in this paper. As Stewart aptly said, understanding of praxis “would allow for practical action, based on edifying philosophy”.

While Holbrook's idea of consummation is a metaphor for consumption that is well‐known, it is not adequately understood nor followed up with research. This inquiry into consumption praxis is a contribution to that end with significant implications for twenty‐first‐century marketing.

The flexibility of managers to respond to risk and uncertainty inherent in business decisions is clearly of value. This value has historically been recognized in an ad hoc manner in the absence of a methodology for more rigorous assessment of value. The application of real option methodology represents a more objective mechanism that allows managers to hedge against adverse effects and exploit upside potential. Of particular interest to managers in the merger and acquisition (M&A) process is the value of such flexibility related to the particular terms of a transaction. Typically, stock for stock transactions take more time to complete as compared to cash given the time lapse between announcement and completion. Over this period, if stock prices are volatile, stock for stock exchanges may result in adverse selection through the dilution of shareholder wealth of an acquiring firm or a target firm.

The paper develops a real option collar model that may be employed by managers to measure the market price risk involved to their shareholders in offering or accepting stock. We further discuss accounting issues related to this contingency pricing effect. Using an acquisition example from U.S. banking industry we illustrate how the collar arrangement may be used to hedge market price risk through flexibility to renegotiate the deal by exercising managerial options.

The purpose of this paper is to explore a Christian perspective on the field of finance.

This paper begins by examining the theoretical underpinnings of finance and how finance is practiced today. The paper then considers the implications of a reformed Christian worldview for finance, with special attention to the implications of the Biblical description of heaven for the practice of finance. The paper concludes by offering suggestions for the practice of finance.

Finance as it practiced today is overly concerned with short‐term considerations, shareholder interests over those of other stakeholders, and contractual relationships over other types of relationships. A model based on the Christian Scriptures that utilizes the themes of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation can be used to critique both the theory and practice of finance. This model suggests that finance is part of God’s intended structure for the world, and that it should contribute to the promotion of shalom, that is the universal flourishing of both humankind and the earth.

An examination of the Christian Scriptures provides a model for the practice of corporate finance. The authors assert that finance should be covenantal, long‐term oriented, inclusive, and stakeholder‐driven, and that it should promote the cause of justice.

The value of this paper is that it develops a Christian perspective on finance based on the reformed tradition of Christianity; it also offers suggestions for the practice of finance.

This paper develops more specific details on how natural mental‐function might evolve within a wholly‐material brain system, depending entirely on “self‐organization” operating within á reasonably consistent environment. It is assumed that mental development can, in principle, be explained in detailed mechanistic terms. The attempt is then made to give the outlines of such an explanation, drawing on existing physiological knowledge, and considerations of the practical “design” difficulties which such a system would necessarily have to face. RNA‐like codeable strings are seen as the basic memory elements (rather than adaptable synapses). “Concepts” are explained as Piagetian mental models, built up in explained stages due to interaction with the real object, and encoded on the linear elements. Coordination between these elements is seen as biochemical but with the added available intermediary of electrically mediated signals, allowing coordination at a distance. The likelihood that subsequent developmental periods may recapitulate the same overall strategy is considered.

This chapter explores the concept of market infrastructure, which is tentatively defined as a materially heterogeneous arrangement that silently supports and structures the consummation of market exchanges. Specifically, the authors investigate the enactment of market infrastructure in the US grocery retail sector by exploring how barcodes and related devices contributed to modify its market infrastructure during the period 1967–2010. Combining this empirical case with insights from previous research, the authors propose that market infrastructures are relational, available for use, modular, actively maintained, interdependent, commercial, emergent and political. The authors argue that this conception of market infrastructure provides a powerful tool for unveiling the complex agencements and engineering efforts that underpin seemingly superficial, individual and isolated market exchanges.

The exchange of reciprocal and quantitative consideration between transaction parties rests on the independent intentions and judgments of potential benefit for each. A transaction consummated between independent parties should logically be beyond subsequent unilateral modification. And, because “duality” is inherent in every exchange-priced transaction, the account form follows the lead of transaction substance. Conditions precedent to consummation of a transaction is two affirmative value judgments by the parties as to the benefits expected.