Contrary to popular belief, layoff announcements do not always lead to reduced employment. Using hand-collected data on layoff announcements for S&P 500 firms, I show that 32% of layoffs announced do not lead to employment downsizing. While the market, in the short run, does not react...

We investigate the impact of mass layoff announcements on the equity value of industry rivals. When a layoff announcement conveys good (bad) news for the announcer, rivals on average witness a 0.44 percent increase (0.60 percent decrease) in cumulative abnormal stock returns. This effect is...

Using data on layoff announcements by S&P 500 firms, we show that layoff announcements mostly contain industrywide news. Competitors' stock price reactions are positively correlated with the announcer's returns. This contagion effect is stronger for competitors whose values depend on growth...

This study investigates market reactions to announcements of CEO turnover and finds that forced turnovers are not accompanied by positive returns, which contradicts the broad view that firing a CEO sends a positive signal to the market. This contradiction is further explored by focusing on the...

On theoretical grounds, monitoring of top executives by the (supervisory) board is expected to be value relevant. The empirical evidence is ambiguous and we analyze three non-competing explanations for this ambiguity: (i) The positive effect on firm value of board monitoring is hidden in stock...

To gain insights about the quality of boards' firing decisions, we investigate abnormal stock returns and operating performance around CEO-turnover announcements in a new hand-collected sample of 208 "clean'' turnover events between January 1998 and June 2009. Unlike the majority of previous...