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Studies that examine the relationship of economic value added (EVA) to market value did not isolate the EVA effect in conjunction with controlling for the economic effect of the market. Since the EVA metric is viewed as value‐added apart from the market, operational managers will benefit from a procedure that separates the market driven versus firm driven (EVA) effects. Our paper examines the effects of the economy and EVA on MVA. The results indicate that EVA and GDP significantly affect MVA. Furthermore, the MVA‐EVA relationship shows a systematic bias between the largest MVA firms and the smallest MVA firms. Overall, our study provides implications for corporate executives utilizing EVA to evaluate managerial performance linked to MVA.

Corporate business portfolios, once bright with future stars, have darkened appreciably of late. With the economies of both North America and Europe moving from the growth of the 1960s to the stagflation of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the classification of business units into question marks, future stars, cash cows, or hopeless dogs has lost much of its relevance. There are simply not enough future stars to go around. Indeed, the life cycle of the market share—market growth matrix, pioneered by the Boston Consulting Group, has been more like that of an entertainment celebrity than a celestial star; it seems to be falling into disfavor, as a technique in corporate planning, almost as rapidly as it rose to prominence.

Business managers are usually inadequately prepared to lead their companies through a recession. Instead, they tend to treat recession as an externally imposed condition over which they have little control. Their inclination is to react to it as a de facto emergency, often with apprehension and uncertainty, and in some cases, with genuine panic.

OK, listen up. Here's how to win the 500‐meter freestyle swimming event at the next Olympics: Swim faster than your competitors do. Simple, absolutely true, but not easy advice to work with. You'll find the same sort of advice in the books in this issue's Stack.

The student's task is to develop a comprehensive strategy for Briggs & Stratton, which is facing severe competition and margin pressures. A major component of the strategy to be considered is whether to implement economic value added (EVA) as a new performance measurement for management. The case is designed to serve as an introduction to how to compute and use EVA. It emphasizes the importance of performance evaluation as part of a larger strategic plan. A teaching note is available to registered faculty, as well as two video supplements to enhance student learning.

This case serves as an introduction to the concept of economic value added (EVA). The student is placed in the position of Valmont's CFO to decide whether EVA can live up to its promise to motivate managers to act like shareholders and ultimately lead them to make value-enhancing decisions that can reverse Valmont's weak earnings and lackluster stock-price performance. The case works best if students are acquainted with the concepts of cost of capital and net present value. The teaching note that is available for registered faculty explains how to incorporate the accompanying six-minute video supplement.

Scholars have examined the importance of a firm's dividend policy through two competing paradigms: the signalling hypothesis and the free cash‐flow hypothesis. It has been argued that our understanding of dividend policy is hindered by the lack of a model that integrates the two hypotheses. The purpose of this paper is to address this by developing a theoretical dividend model that combines the signalling and free cash‐flow motives. The objective of the analysis is to shed light on the complex relationship between dividend policy, managerial incentives and firm value.

In order to consider the complex nature of dividend policy, a dividend signalling game is developed, in which managers possess more information than investors about the quality of the firm (asymmetric information), and may invest in value‐reducing projects (moral hazard). Hence, the model combines signalling and free cash‐flow motives for dividends. Furthermore, managerial communication and reputation effects are incorporated into the model.

Of particular interest is the case where a firm may need to cut dividends in order to invest in a new value‐creating project, but where the firm will be punished by the market, since investors are behaviourally conditioned to believe that dividend cuts are bad news. This may result in firms refusing to cut dividends, hence passing up good projects. This paper demonstrates that managerial communication to investors about the reasons for the dividend cut, supported by managerial reputation effects, may mitigate this problem. Real world examples are provided to illustrate the complexity of dividend policy.

This work has been inspired by, and develops that of Fuller and Thakor, and Fuller and Blau, which considers the signalling and free cash‐flow motives for dividends. Whereas those authors consider the case where firms only have new negative net present value (NPV) projects available (so that dividend increases provide unambiguously positive signals to the market in both the signalling and free cash‐flow cases), in this paper's model, the signals may be ambiguous, since firms may need to cut dividends to take positive NPV projects. Hence, the model assists in understanding the complexity of dividend policy.

Measuring corporate performance is difficult. No single measure can fully describe how well a firm is doing in the diverse aspects of its operations. As a result, analysts are forced to choose between synthesizing the dozens of ratios that describe a company or relying on simple aggregate measures to summarize overall performance. Return on equity (ROE) is one of the most popular of the latter indices. For example, ROE is used widely by investors in appraising common stock purchases, and by corporate planners in evaluating corporate performance.