Marilyn Johnson (Michigan State University, College of Business) Karen Nelson (Stanford University School of Business) Adam Pritchard (University of Michigan Law School)
Abstract
Congress passed the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 in an attempt to discourage meritless securities fraud class actions. This paper uses damages, accounting, insider trading and governance variables to explain the incidence of securities fraud litigation both before and after the passage of the PSLRA. Using a matched sample of sued and non-sued firms from the computer hardware and software industries, we find that accounting and insider trading, which did not correlate with the incidence of litigation prior to the passage of the PSLRA, are significant after the passage of PSLRA. This finding is confirmed by our analysis of allegations and outcomes. Our accounting variables do not explain the incidence of pre-PSLRA accounting allegations, but they become significant after the passage of PSLRA. Similarly, insider trading variables do not explain insider trading allegations before the PSLRA, but net sales by insiders correlate with such allegations after its enactment. Finally, we find no correlation between lawsuit outcomes and our accounting variables before the PSLRA, but accounting variables are significant after its enactment. Abnormal insider sales correlate with outcomes before the PSLRA, but not after. Overall, we interpret our finding as evidence that the PSLRA has furthered Congress' goal of discouraging frivilous securities fraud lawsuits.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Christopher F. Baum).
Related research
Keywords:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)