Capital Investments and Stock Returns / Sheridan Titman, K.C. John Wei, Feixue Xie.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Titman, Sheridan.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Wei, K.C. John.

Xie, Feixue.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w9951.

NBER working paper series no. w9951

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2003.

Summary:

Firms that substantially increase capital investments subsequently achieve negative benchmark-adjusted returns. The negative abnormal capital investment/return relation is shown to be stronger for firms that have greater investment discretion, i.e., firms with higher cash flows and lower debt ratios, and is shown to be significant only in time periods when hostile takeovers were less prevalent. These observations are consistent with the hypothesis that investors tend to underreact to the empire building implications of increased investment expenditures. Although firms that increase capital investments tend to have high past returns and often issue equity, the negative abnormal capital investment/return relation is independent of the previously documented long-term return reversal and secondary equity issue anomalies.

Notes:

Print version record

September 2003.