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The purpose of this paper is to examine investor reactions to auditor opinions containing qualifications or an emphasis of matter paragraph related to going concern uncertainty or financial distress. In particular, abnormal returns are analyzed around audit report dates.

The event study methodology, focusing on a short event window, was used to determine whether there is an immediate market reaction to the audit report announcement, as might be expected assuming efficient stock markets.

Overall, this analysis shows that the audit reports investigated have information content for investment decisions. In particular, the qualifications expressed in the audit report have a negative effect on stock prices. It is also shown that an unqualified opinion with an emphasis of matter paragraph regarding going concern uncertainty or financial distress has a positive effect on stock prices. These results also elucidate the distinction between different types of opinions in the Italian context.

This paper has attempted to limit the possible concurrent effects on stock prices using a short window event study methodology. However, the possibility that some other event may have occurred during this event window cannot be excluded. Among the policy implications coming from this research, it is argued that the authorities should regulate the public disclosure of audit reports, so that the information becomes available to the audited company and the other stakeholders on the same day, which, in theory, would be the day that the audit process concludes with the signing of the audit report.

The findings of this paper show the relevance of audit reports, distinguishing the different impacts based on the types of audit opinions issued in a specific jurisdiction (qualified and unqualified with an emphasis of matter paragraph).

This paper aims to investigate the implementation of the short selling ban policy imposed by the Italian stock exchange on health-care stock prices, as a tool to mitigate COVID-19 price effects. Important contributions are in terms of assessing the effect of the temporary short selling ban on restricted health-care stocks; the effect of COVID-19 cases and crude oil price volatility onto health-care stocks; and whether COVID-19 resulted in a change in the risk and average stock price of health-care stocks.

The methodology involves impulse responses to capture the shock of the short selling ban onto health-care stocks, and Markov switching regimes to capture the effect of COVID-19 onto the risk and prices in the health-care industry. Daily data from 9 November 2018 till 23 December 2020 is used.

Findings suggest there were significant changes in average prices in health-care technology and health-care services stocks before, during and after the short selling ban. Shocks to the number of COVID-19 cases and crude oil price volatility impacted health-care stocks but lasted only for a few days. While daily changes in the number of COVID-19 cases impacted some health-care stocks in the presence of a two-state Markov regime, insignificant coefficients and relatively low duration suggest that the short selling policy did not significantly change the average price and risk in health-care stocks to explain a two-state regime in the health-care industry.

Insignificant coefficients in a two-state Markov regime reinforce that short-selling policies have a short-lasting effect onto health-care equity prices. The findings are limited by the duration of the short selling policy, the pandemic event and the health-care industry.

This is the first study to look at the impact of early COVID-19 and short selling ban policy on health-care stocks.

This paper aims to investigate the potential relationship between the stock market announcement of a brand's buy and sell agreement, and the stock price trend.

The research question was approached using a GARCH‐based statistical analysis on a sample of companies listed on the Mibtel (Italian stock exchange) that have a brand among their assets and have undertaken a purchase/sale from 2006 to 2008.

Although the brand is believed to be an important value driver, the mere occurrence of a purchase/sale operation for this asset only occasionally leads to a reaction in the market; at any rate, the stock's volatility quite rarely depends solely on such an occurrence.

The statistical relevance of the analysis is limited by the observational data that it was possible to analyse. In particular, to give a positive conclusion about the influence of the brand's buy and sell agreements on a stock's return, it is necessary to have a time series of a greater number of firms. A larger availability of data might, in the future, allow a more detailed analysis and the opportunity to investigate the possible impacts of the event with relation to the business's characteristics – something that could not be carried out in this study because of the aforementioned problems.

Researchers and practitioners are now aware that the market does not always look upon the operations of a brand's buy and sell agreement as value‐relevant.

The originality of the present work lies in the fact that, to the best of one's knowledge, no other surveys were carried out on the chosen sample (i.e. the companies listed on the Italian stock market); that only a few international contributions posed the same research question; and most importantly, that the statistical methodology used can very well provide more reliable results than regression analysis, which is normally applied to such data.

This paper fits in a research field dealing with the impact of Corporate Ethics Assessment on Financial Performance. The authors argue how environmental, social and governance (ESG) paradigm, meant to measure corporate social performance by rating issuance, can impact on abnormal returns of Italian firms listed on Financial Times Stock Exchange Milano Indice di Borsa (FTSE MIB) Index, developing a panel data analysis which runs from 2007 to 2015.

This study aims at exploring whether socially responsible investors outperform an excess market return on Italian Stock Exchange because of their investment behavior, testing statistically the relationship between the yearly ESG assessment issued by Standard Ethics Agency on FTSE MIB’s companies and their abnormal returns. To verify the impact of an ESG Rating on a company’s abnormal return, the authors developed a panel data analysis through a Fixed Effects Model. They measured abnormal returns via Fama–French approach, running a yearly Jensen’s Performance Index for each company under investigation.

The empirical results denote in Italy both a growing interest to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability by managers over the past decade, as well as an improving quality in ESG assessments because of a reliable corporate disclosure. Thus, despite investors have been applying ESG criteria in their stock – picking operations, the authors found a not positive and statistically significant impact in terms of market premium, when they have been undertaking a socially responsible investment (SRI).

The findings described above show that ethics is not yet a reliable fundraising tool for Italian-listed companies, despite SRIs having a positive growth rate over past decade. Investors seem to be not pricing CSR on Stock Exchange Market; therefore, listed companies cannot be rewarded with a premium price because of their highly stakeholder oriented behavior.

This paper explores, for the first time in Italy, when market extra-returns (if any) are related to corporate social performance and how managers leverage ethics to build capital added value.

This paper aims to investigate the main motivations for Italian insiders to trade relevant stakes of their companies, specifically assuming that most transactions are driven by speculative intents. According to an information asymmetry hypothesis, insiders, having a superior information set, may better detect the temporary under or overvaluation of stocks. Moreover, when insider trading law is not well enforced, insiders may take advantage of relevant and undisclosed information. In both cases, such transactions would convey an important signal to uninformed traders.

In order to determine whether insiders are able to earn abnormal returns, a standard event study methodology is used and, then, a profitable mimicking portfolio strategy is proposed.

The paper finds statistical evidence of a positive relationship between the change of holdings and the sign of market movement: excess returns are earned after a positive increase of relevant stakes and negative abnormal returns follow an opposite insiders' strategy. In particular, we find significant excess returns between the first and the third month following insiders' transactions. Market response is generally higher for insiders' purchases rather than sales and for insiders owning more than 50 per cent of the company.

As at European level laws on insider trading have been updated recently, future research could study this phenomenon after 2002, investigating if new laws were able to guarantee strong efficiency of the Italian market.

This paper is interesting because it is one of the few studies on insider trading carried out outside the USA.

This study aims to examine the cross-market efficiency of the FTSE/MIB index options contracts traded on the Italian derivatives market (IDEM) during a period including the financial crisis between 1st October 2007 and 31st December 2012 using daily option prices.

Two fundamental no-arbitrage conditions were tested: the lower boundary condition (LBC) and the put–call parity (PCP) condition while taking into account the role of transaction costs in mitigating the number of violations reported. Ex post tests of LBC and PCP revealed a low incidence of mispricing in this market. Furthermore, to check the robustness of the results obtained by the ex post tests, ex ante tests were applied to PCP violations occurring within a one-day lag.

The results showed a significant drop in the number of profitable arbitrage strategies. The findings obtained from all these tests generally support the cross-market efficiency of the Italian index options market during the sample period, though some violations were occasionally reported. Overall, the number and monetary value of the violations reported declined during the post-financial crisis period compared to those during the financial crisis period.

This study can be extended to test the relationships between arbitrage profitability and other factors such as the moneyness (in the money, out of the money, at the money) of options and the maturity of options. Options market efficiency tests can be conducted such as call and put spreads, box spreads and put/call convexities (butterfly spreads).

There are several factors that influenced the decision to test the Italian index options market. First, the limited number of studies conducted on this market. Second, the fact that the two main studies on this market are relatively old, which makes it interesting to test the efficiency of this market with respect to a new set of data, taking into account the introduction of the Euro and the impact of the recent financial crisis on this market and whether the market efficiency hypothesis holds during the period of crisis. Third, it is important to consider the effect of the new rules applied to this market.

The purpose of this study is to assess the differential impact on the stock market of statements made by and information about directors and companies who are politically connected, compared to directors and companies with no political connections. The authors also analyze the role played by state-owned enterprises (SOEs), which the authors have identified as politically connected companies because most board members are appointed by political authorities. Furthermore, the boundaries and institutional environment within which SOEs operate are likely to be different from private companies.

The sample is composed of over 60,000 news articles on the boards of directors (both with political roles and without political roles) of listed Italian companies in the period 1998–2013. On that sample the authors run a regression analysis under the signaling theory approach.

Results suggest a positive effect on market capitalization associated with individual political connections. This effect decreases when the political connection extends to the whole enterprise although it still remains, while a negative effect is associated with state-controlled enterprises. The impact of negative news content does not change depending on whether a board member has a political role or not.

Previous research has demonstrated a causal link between stock prices and their reaction to corporate news (Engelberg and Parsons, 2011; Peress, 2014), but no studies have quantified the different reactions that occur when the news mentions politically connected companies and individuals who hold a political role.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse companies listed on the FTSE MIB, in order to investigate the introduction of different types of open innovation practice as a key factor to develop a competitive advantage to pursue value creation.

This research uses a mixed-methods sequential explanatory design. A quantitative study was conducted to determine the firms listed on the FTSE MIB that for more than 10 years have paid dividends and beat the yield of the market. The qualitative analysis was designed to provide insights into the adoption of at least one open innovation practice by the listed companies selected in the quantitative phase.

This work is based on an empirical analysis undertaken with 40 Italian companies listed on the FTSE MIB. In particular, the authors highlight 16 companies that for more than a decade have regularly paid dividends and, at the same time, have beat the FTSE MIB Index. All of these companies implemented at least one open innovation practice during the period investigated.

This is among the first pioneer research works based on the potential relationship among value creation, innovation practice and competitive advantage in the Italian market. This study highlights the fact that 16 out of 40 companies listed on the FTSE MIB create more value for shareholders over a long period, and all of these firms adopt different open innovation practices (e.g. partnership and collaboration with external entities; mergers and acquisitions and alliances; investment in start-ups; hackathons and call for ideas; outsourcing R&D) as a key factor to develop a sustainable competitive advantage.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the relationship between family involvement and Initial Public Offering (IPO) value in the Italian context.

Based on a unique hand-collected data set, the authors test the hypotheses on companies that went public between 2000 and 2011, making inference on 113 firms using OLS hierarchical regressions. The authors quantify the IPO value from an outside investors’ perspective with two measures to proxy for IPO value in the short-term and apply robustness checks for long-run performance. In a stewardship framework, the authors examine demographic variables including family firm status, family involvement in managerial positions and family generations.

The results suggest that family firm status positively influences IPO value, that greater family involvement corresponds to higher IPO value and lastly, that the beneficial effect of family control is mainly attributable to the first generation. The results are robust to alternative specifications of each phenomenon.

As a single-country study, the results refer exclusively to the Italian context and thus the evidence provided may not automatically be generalized to IPOs of comparable equity markets.

This study expands current knowledge by showing how investors “price” family ownership in an IPO; furthermore the authors assess how certain characteristics of family firms affect the IPOs (e.g. family involvement and intergenerational).

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of the Italian real estate investment trusts (REITs)' governance and regulatory structure on the market prices discount to net asset values (NAV).

The hypothesis is that the overall regulatory design and the rules for prudential vigilance (i.e. governance rights, closed‐end form, leverage constraints, and mandatory listing) influence REITs' share value, both as market price and as NAV). In particular, the analysis focuses on the effects of the recent introduction of a shareholders' meeting in the articles of association of newly established REITs that pursues a better alignment of interests between managers and shareholders.

The original results show that the NAV discount decreases as long as time to maturity of the fund decreases. Conversely, the NAV discount is negatively affected by share turnover (as a proxy of the liquidity generated by the mandatory listing provision) and leverage. The regulatory provision of a shareholders' meeting appears to have improved the investors' governance capability having a positive impact on the NAV discount. The different sensitivity of market prices and NAVs to the regulatory variables investigated suggests the need to consider this dichotomy when defining or amending the regulatory set ruling REITs' operations and market dynamic.

This paper is the first in the Italian context to specifically consider the effect of the regulatory environment on the NAV discount. In particular, the effect of the regulatory provision of a shareholders' meeting has never been investigated before.