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This paper examines the effect of peers on a firm's research and development (R&D) policy. We show that firms do not make R&D decisions in isolation, and that industry dynamics play an important role in defining a firm's R&D intensity. Using a large sample of 54,393 firm‐year observations from 1991 to 2015 in the United States, we find that firms' R&D decisions are mainly driven by their industry peers' R&D policies. Moreover, we find that R&D mimicking is significant only in the presence of strong product market competition, whereas we do not find any evidence of information‐based herding in R&D investments. Our additional analysis shows that our main conclusions remain valid even in the presence of financial constraints, and regardless of the firms' market positions. Finally, we provide evidence that R&D mimicking increases firms' future values, future patent outputs, and estimated patent dollar values. Our findings are robust to endogeneity concerns, and to using alternative sample compositions, R&D intensity proxies, and different industry classifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the tone newspapers use in reporting information on a company that it is linked with through an ownership tie. Our empirical setting is Italy, a country characterized by dominant national industrial groups' high ownership of newspapers. Based on a sample of about 123,000 articles, we document that newspapers' coverage of firms in conflict of interest is greater, with significantly fewer negative and uncertain words. We also document that the slant increases with ownership stakes and decreases with the newspaper's reputation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Called to vote for a reduction in their dividend privileges, Pirelli's nonvoting shareholders appeared to expropriate themselves and favor the voting class of shares. However, what initially seemed to be self-expropriation became self-interest when the media coverage, voting decisions, and dual-class ownership of 36,361 shareholders were investigated. Most of the institutional investors voting 'for' the proposal were found to have ownership ties with controlling shareholders or to have held voting shares. Moreover, dual-class ownership significantly increased the likelihood of shareholders voting to expropriate one class of shares if they benefited from the other class in their portfolios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The positive market reaction at the announcement of most European rights issues can be explained by two major factors which distinguish them from a US public offering: active insiders, and a quasi-split effect which signals a large increase in the dividend yield. An analysis of 428 Italian rights offerings and an event study involving 82 observations in the 1980-94 period show that Italian insiders are completely 'active', and almost 85% of the equity rights issues result in a dividend yield increase, which corresponds to the quasi-split effect in approximately 40% of the issues. The dividend yield rises, on average, by a significant +61% after a combined rights offering and by a significantly lower +20% following a fully-paid rights issue. The market reaction to the announcement is significantly positive for combined rights" offerings" (+2.77%) and positive, but not significant, for the whole sample (+0.79%). The dividend increase signalled by the quasi-split effect explains almost 30% of the abnormal returns' cross-sectional variation and it is" the only significant explanatory variable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]