Three essays in finance

This dissertation contains of three separate essays. The first essay is an empirical examination of the firm's decision to switch from the Amex to Nasdaq, and vice versa. 36 firms that moved from the American Stock Exchange (Amex) to Nasdaq and 70 firms that moved from Nasdaq to the Amex after the market reform of Nasdaq are examined. Quoted, effective, and realized spreads increase (decrease) when firms switch from the Amex (Nasdaq) to Nasdaq (Amex). The trade size is smaller but volume is larger when firms are listed on Nasdaq. Quotations on both markets exhibit quote clustering. Unlike previous studies, the Amex-to-Nasdaq (Nasdaq-to-Amex) firms have an average market value higher (lower) than the average of all Amex (Nasdaq) firms. The excess returns are positive (and higher than reported by previous research) when firms announce a move from the Amex to Nasdaq, particularly for high-tech firms, but are insignificant for the reverse. Moreover, institutional ownership and the number of institutional shareholders increases when firms move from the Amex to Nasdaq, but not when firms move from Nasdaq to the Amex.; In the second essay the dissemination of information by analysts via consensus (public) forecasts and whisper (private) forecasts over eight quarters in 1999–2001 is examined. Consensus forecasts are found to be pessimistic suggesting that analysts' lower their public forecasts to avoid negative surprises while their private forecasts remain optimistic. However, for the entire sample, whisper forecasts do not represent an improvement over consensus analysts' forecasts.; The third essay examines a unique sample of firms that followed a consistent policy of no-debt financing and then made a significant change to their financing policy by initiating debt into their financing mix. The primary finding is that operating performance of firms around the debt initiation seems to be directly related to the amount of leverage taken on. Firms that take on larger amounts of debt subsequently perform better than those firms that take on small amounts of debt. These inferences can be interpreted to be consistent with the debt signaling theories and with agency theories where debt commits managers to pay out excess free cash. These results are not consistent with the cash flow signaling theories of debt issuance. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...