Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Data on the number of unsolicited commercial email (spam) promoting the purchase of the stocks of specific companies was compared to changes in the stock’s price in several ways. Spam created a short-term rise in the price of the average stock. It was found that a message strategy consisting of sending a number of messages over a period of days could exert a positive effect on stock price.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Many people have a vested interest in the performance of the US stock market. Using a data-based thought experiment, we cast recent market fluctuations in an unusually unattractive light. The negative result matters because the economic and political factors that make it relevant are likely to continue. Using research in economics and psychology, we explain why so many media reports (and people) are blind to the unattractive interpretation. To mitigate the blindness’ harmful consequences, we propose an alternate way of presenting the information. The alternative is easy to implement and can help citizens draw important inferences from the attention they already pay to stock market reports.

The “loonies” in the title are Canadian dollars, which play a key role in our analysis.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper examines the forces driving the adoption of an accounting practice, stock option expensing (SOE), among the Fortune 500 in the wake of the recent corporate scandals. I argue that in the ensuing debates and challenges to the legitimacy of existing institutional frameworks governing corporate behavior, SOE became a symbol of normative legitimacy and a way for organizations to defend against threats to their own legitimacy. In analyzing the effects of different types of legitimacy threats, the results indicate that organizations in industries that were under intensive levels of investigation were more likely to adopt SOE, but that negative media scrutiny and shareholder activism did not influence SOE adoption. The results also suggest that as the Financial Accounting Standards Board threatened to require SOE, the significance of the practice as a symbol of normative legitimacy began to diminish. The findings broaden and deepen our understanding of how organizations engage in symbolic practice adoption to defend their legitimacy as well as the processes shaping the social construction of accounting practices. This paper also provides empirical support for recent theoretical claims regarding legitimacy defense and expands upon recent work that has made links between the impression management literature and neoinstitutional theory.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This project examines the relationship between listed firms and their State-Owned Enterprise (SOE) parents in China’s domestic stock markets. We argue that largely due to concentrated share structure, state-controlled listed firms are mainly used by their SOE parents as financing vehicles to extract capital from the stock markets. Without effective internal and external corporate governance mechanisms, the transfer of fortune from listed firms to parents firms is fulfilled through various types of related party transactions. Although institutional building of China’s stock markets has gone a long way in dealing this issue, much needs to be done to hold listed firms to be real independent and accountable.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: While debate ranges over the economic consequences of stock market growth in emerging market countries and others have examined the correlates of stock market development this paper challenges the assumption that stock markets evolve linearly toward a predictable end state. Governments in emerging market countries have different motives for encouraging or discouraging stock exchange capitalization. This paper explores the idea that stock markets fulfill different economic and political purposes depending on the national political context in which they evolve.