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The conventional wisdom regarding the rationale for employee stock ownership plans (ESOPS) holds that such plans provide incentives for improved worker productivity. This view minimizes the employees' portfolio problem inherent in ESOP participation — employment risk for ESOP participants is increased by tying their investment/retirement program to the fortunes of the company in which they are employed. We examine the extent of empirical support for the incentive alignment theory of ESOPs, along with two alternative explanations. One alternative holds that firms initiating ESOP plans signal high investment quality, thus reducing the cost of raising equity capital. Another theory is that ESOPs are a form of coalition, or “devil's pact” between managers and workers in which they agree to prolong and share in perquisite consumption. A large sample of ESOP plans is divided into three categories: anti‐takeover plans, wage concession plans, and “pure” ESOPs. Analysis of pre‐ and post ESOP conditions and stock returns is performed. Among the findings is that pure ESOPs appear to have effects consistent with improvements in worker productivity and/or signaling high investment quality. Strong support for the devil's pact theory is found in the anti‐takeover subcategories of ESOPs.

I. INTRODUCTION This study attempts to extend and expand previous research conducted by the Department of Marketing at Strathclyde on the adoption and diffusion of industrial products.

This study aims to investigate the impact of information, both public macro news and private information, on exchange rate volatility in an integrated framework.

The authors apply real-time data of macro announcements and high-frequency trading data (German Deutsche Mark to US dollar, DEM/USD, from 1 May to 31August 1996) to GARCH models and examine various model specifications.

Data analysis demonstrates real-time macro news and market makers’ private information both have a significant impact on exchange rate volatility, but there is no interaction between macro and micro information in the information transmission process.

This study contributes to empirical hybrid studies of examining exchange rates volatility, which is in line with literature that combine both macro and micro fundamentals in examining exchange rates variation. Particularly, a key element of this study is to use a microstructure fundamental variable, namely, order flow, to capture private information in an exchange rate volatility study.

The purpose of this paper is to show how corporate policy with respect to the seniority structure of debt changes after a merger.

The author uses data on the seniority and other properties of outstanding bonds of acquiring and target firms before mergers and of the combined firm after the merger. The author tests whether a combined firm that has acquired junior debt in the merger attempts to move toward the senior-only structure of the acquiring firm before the merger.

The author finds that acquiring firms do not rapidly move back toward that structure after acquiring senior debt.

The results of this study are consistent with those of many recent studies on capital structure, which find that changes in capital structure tend to persist, and that firms are slow to revert to previous structures aftershocks, such as those that may result from mergers.

The paper suggests that there may be an advantage for firms to sell off acquired junior debt after a merger.

This paper extends previous studies of capital structure to the more detailed level of debt seniority structure.

The market for mergers and takeovers, often referred to as the market for corporate control [Manne (1965)], has always attracted the attention of investors and researchers because takeovers represent corporate investment decisions on a scale several times larger than the normal, ongoing, growth‐maintaining capital outlays by the typical value‐maximising firm. Although the theoretical justifications for such corporate actions are reasonably well understood, the true motives for the mergers and the strategies adopted by acquiring firms to consummate them can be complex and diverse in scope. Corporate acquisitions can therefore have widespread effects on the wealth of various groups of agents involved in the market for corporate control.