IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/esconf/148358.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Securities Litigation and Stock Returns: an Event Study

Author

Listed:
  • Kalchev, Georgi

Abstract

This paper executes a simple event study of the effects of securities litigation on stock returns. Securities litigation is a common occurrence on the US investment markets, via which shareholders aim to recover losses they have suffered as a result of managerial misconduct. Filing lawsuits, however, signals to the market in general that there is something wrong with the company, unless the market knows it already. In that case, litigation may have negative consequences on future stock returns of the company. Applying t-tests, this paper tests this hypothesis and finds that significant negative stock reaction to litigation is present but not overwhelmingly. Positive reaction to lawsuits can sometimes be observed. Negative reaction, however, is twice as common as positive reaction to lawsuits. Shareholders should not be concerned that filing a securities lawsuit will necessarily result in stock return declines.

Suggested Citation

  • Kalchev, Georgi, 2009. "Securities Litigation and Stock Returns: an Event Study," EconStor Conference Papers 148358, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:esconf:148358
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/148358/1/eventStudy2.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fama, Eugene F, et al, 1969. "The Adjustment of Stock Prices to New Information," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 10(1), pages 1-21, February.
    2. Brown, Stephen J. & Warner, Jerold B., 1985. "Using daily stock returns : The case of event studies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 3-31, March.
    3. Barber, Brad M. & Lyon, John D., 1997. "Detecting long-run abnormal stock returns: The empirical power and specification of test statistics," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 341-372, March.
    4. Romano, Roberta, 1991. "The Shareholder Suit: Litigation without Foundation?," Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(1), pages 55-87, Spring.
    5. John D. Lyon & Brad M. Barber & Chih‐Ling Tsai, 1999. "Improved Methods for Tests of Long‐Run Abnormal Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(1), pages 165-201, February.
    6. Thompson, Rex, 1985. "Conditioning the Return-Generating Process on Firm-Specific Events: A Discussion of Event Study Methods," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(2), pages 151-168, June.
    7. A. Craig MacKinlay, 1997. "Event Studies in Economics and Finance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 35(1), pages 13-39, March.
    8. Karafiath, Imre, 1988. "Using Dummy Variables in the Event Methodology," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 23(3), pages 351-357, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:esconf:148358. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/zbwkide.html .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.