Literature has advanced two contrasting theoretical perspectives related to the governance structure of business groups: the ‘value-constraining’ perspective, which focuses on principal–principal agency conflict and organizational inertia theory, and the ‘value-enabling’ perspective, which emphasizes the role of business groups in mitigation of institutional voids. Building on these two competing lenses, we develop hypotheses to examine post-acquisition performance of affiliate firms relative to stand-alone firms. As our empirical context, we study 440 majority-stake, domestic and cross-border merger and acquisition deals closed by Indian firms during the period 2002–2013. The results imply that in emerging markets, despite concerns of organizational inertia and principal–principal agency issues, the value-enabling impact of group affiliation persists. We also examine the contextual impact of intergroup heterogeneity owing to group diversification on post-acquisition performance and find that greater group diversification leads to better performance for affiliate acquirers.

How does greater public disclosure of arbitrage activity and informed trading affect price efficiency? To answer this, we exploit rule amendments in U.S. securities markets, which impose a higher frequency of public disclosure of short positions. Higher public disclosure can hurt the production of information and deteriorate efficiency, or it can be beneficial by mitigating the limits to arbitrage and diffusing arbitrageurs’ information faster. With more frequent disclosure, information encapsulated within short interest is incorporated into prices faster, improving price efficiency. We find important reductions in short sellers’ horizon risk and increases in short sales with the rule amendments.

We study the capital structure changes of drug firms after an investment-opportunity shock brought about by the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we show that the shock led drug firms to make their capital structures less constraining by decreasing leverage, shortening debt maturity, increasing unsecured debt, and reducing convertible debt. New debt covenants became less restrictive and firms raised equity to preserve borrowing capacity. Our results support the view that firms actively manage their capital structures to bolster financial flexibility and increase debt capacity in response to new investment opportunities.

This article discusses the complex issues behind the relation between national and global economic histories and the challenges of a comparative approach. On examining different national approaches (Italian and English) to the management of the early modern maritime sector, it will argue that this comparison allows a privileged view into different varieties of capitalism, highlighting fundamental differences in attitudes toward wage labor and risk management that still influence different approaches to economic activities today.

Robert Skidelsky, a historian whose fame for his monumental biography of John Maynard Keynes is well deserved, here provides us with a brilliant, well-informed history of macroeconomics stretching from the “British recoinage debates” of the 1690s to today. Money and Government was prompted by the 2008 financial crisis. It is an attempt, Skidelsky tells us, to answer the question that Queen Elizabeth II posed to a group of economists at the London School of Economics in October 2008: “Why did no one see it coming?” Not surprisingly, to skip to the bottom line, Skidelsky believes that macroeconomics reached its apogee with Keynes and that it has been more or less downhill from there. The 2008 financial crisis could have been predicted, and ameliorated after it occurred if not prevented, if macroeconomists had remained loyal to Keynes.

Despite the extensive literature on what questionable research practices (QRPs) are and how to measure them, the normative underpinnings of such practices have remained less explored. QRPs often fall into a grey area of justifiable and unjustifiable practices. Where to precisely draw the line between such practices challenges individual scholars and this harms science. We investigate QRPs from a normative perspective using the theory of communicative action. We highlight the role of the collective in assessing individual behaviours. Our contribution is a framework that allows identification of when particular actions cross over from acceptable to unacceptable practice. Thus, this article provides grounds for developing scientific standards to raise the quality of scientific research.