Evaluation of Water Conservation From More Efficient Irrigation Systems

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Crop-Share Leasing Arrangements For Irrigated Land in Kansas

Crop Production/Industries, Farm Management,

Financial market integration and the value of global diversification: evidence from US acquirers in cross-border mergers and acquisitions

Using theories of internal capital markets, this paper examines the link between financial market integration and the value of global diversification. Based on a sample of 1,491 completed cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) conducted by US acquirers during the 1990–2003 period, we find that, in general, US shareholders gain significant positive abnormal returns following the announcement of the merger/acquisition. Specifically, firms that acquire/merge with targets from countries with financially segmented markets experience significantly higher positive abnormal returns than those that acquire/merge with targets from countries with financially integrated capital markets. We find that the significantly higher positive returns are driven particularly by deals between firms from unrelated industries. These firms with higher announcement returns are also characterized by positive and significant post-merger operating performance. This finding is consistent with our event study results and suggests that the overall improvement in the merged firms’ performance is likely due to the influx of internal capital from wholly integrated acquirers to segmented targets, firms that, on average are usually faced with higher capital constraints.financial market integration; global diversification; internal capital markets; mergers; acquisitions

Political connections and the process of going public: evidence from China

We examine how political connections impact the process of going public. Specifically, we test how political connections impact the pricing of newly offered shares, the magnitude of underpricing, and the fixed cost of going public. Based on experiences of the new public firms in the Chinese security markets and using multiple measures of political connections, we find robust evidence that issuing firms with political connections reap significant preferential benefits from going public. To be specific, we find that firms – irrespective of ownership arrangements – with greater political connections have higher offering prices, less underpricing, and lower fixed costs during the going-public process.political connections; IPO; emerging markets

The Importance of Academic Deans\u27 Interpersonal/Negotiating Skills as Leaders

Four academic deans investigated when and how they used interpersonal/negotiating skills to function effectively in their positions. For two full weeks, the deans coded their on-the-job interactions during scheduled meetings, informal meetings, spontaneous encounters/meetings, telephone calls, and select email. Analyses revealed that the interpersonal/negotiating skills used, from most to least prevalent, were: working closely with others, being responsive to key persons, negotiating key players\u27 roles, and keeping key persons in the organisation informed. Across these engagements, the deans interacted with 35 different categories of stakeholders inside and outside their institutions for 32 different purposes. Given the nature and range of interactions, the deans concluded that practicing and prospective deans should likely have access to professional development opportunities explicitly focused on working closely with others. Future research would need to confirm, however, whether interpersonal/negotiating skills are essential for deans\u27 job survival and, if so, whether such skills can authentically be developed

Return-volatility linkages in the international equity and currency markets

This paper, which is motivated by the literature on international asset pricing and recent work on exchange rate determination, investigates dynamic relationshiops between major currency and equity markets. Using a multivariate GARCH framework, we examine conditional cross-autocorrelations between pairs of national equity markets and related exchange rates. This provides a parsimonious way of testing mean-volatility relationships in currency and equity markets and re-examining the robustness of relationships between equity markets, while controlling for exchange rate effects. We find that the relationship between currency and equity markets is bi-directional, significant, persistent, and independent of the relationship strictly between equity markets, and that it is better captured by the conditional second moments.international asset pricing; exchange rate determination; equity markets; relationships between currency and equity markets