Big Board Research Articles

CORPORATE BOARD SIZE, COMPOSITION AND CORPORATE FAILURES IN RETAILING INDUSTRY[1

ABSTRACTIn recent years some activists have advanced proposals to reform corporate boards, notably their structure and process, to assure desirable corporate governance. the empirical question, however, is whether such formal board changes would guarantee good governance. This paper examines this issue by studying the differences in the board size and board composition of 21 pairs of failed and non‐failed firms. the results suggest that the non‐failed retailing firms, as compared to failed ones, tend to have bigger boards within the size range suggested by the activists. the differences in the percent of outsider directors and multiple offices held by C.E.O.s between the failed and non‐failed firms were not significant. Implications of the results for the evaluation of board reforms are discussed.

Institutional biosafety committees and the inadequacies of risk regulation.

It is now clear that is destined to play a major role in evolution of U.S. capitalism. With relative decline of types of mechanical-industrial production that had long been a mainstay of U.S. economy, with too many people questioning whether better living really comes through new chemistry of plastics and food additives, and with electronics subject to heavy competition from abroad, biological activities have become an area of choice for investment of American capital.' Amazing scientific developments, coupled with new liaisons between once-reclusive laboratory scientists and press agents and financial investment firms, have led to front page news stories and a host of novel public policy problems. In no area is this change more evident than in research on recombinant DNA. As a former Director of National Science Foundation-escaping from usual blandness of bureaucratic language-has put it, the advances we are witnessing in molecular biology are staggering. ... suffice it to say recombinant DNA research] is putting molecular biology on 'Big Board.' ,,2 Recombinant DNA research has primarily been done in university laboratories, although a small but significant portion of research has been conducted in private firms. This research can have either or both of two objectives: to study cellular processes and/or to make a product useful to humanity and profitable to its producers. Recombinant DNA activity is therefore both a science and a technology. Many of researchers have been socialized into professional roles as academic laboratory scientists only to find themselves thrust

Bid-Asked Spreads on the AMEX and the Big Board

Bid-Asked Spreads on the AMEX and the Big Board

Corporate Management’s Inclination to Disclose Financial Information

(1) Retrospective view of corporate financial disclosure: Corporate management disclosed very little; or n.o financial information to stockholders until the turn of the century. Several corporations did not hold any annual meetings for decades, while others did not publish annual reports for years. The first conventional annual report in the American Business Community was issued, in 1858 by Borden Company.' For a long period of time thereafter, even the largest corporations considered it best to disclose as little information as possible about their operations. In 1895, the New York Stock Exchange began recommending the practice of issuing annual reports and five years later requested companies applying for listing to publish them. The first modern annual report was published in 1902 by United States Steel Company. Its president, Judge E. H. Gary, commented in the. sam.e year, Corporations cannot work on a principle of locked doors and shut lips. Most of the corporations at that tim.e reacted unfavorably to this break with tradition, and failed to follow United States Steel Company's lead. A census by the New York Stock Exchange in 1926 showed that 242 of the 957 corporations then listed on the Big Board were issuing quarterly reports and 339 were issuing annual reports.2 Since a large number of the corporations failed to issue annual reports, the New York Stock Exchange in 1926 required that a listed corporation must publish and submit to stockholders at least fifteen days in advance of their annual meeting an annual report containing its financial statements. In the years following, the Exchange intensified its efforts to secure ad.equately informative financial reports from listed corporations. By 1933, however, a large number of listed corporations were still failing to disclose such important financial facts as sales and cost of sales.

The Big Board: A History of the New York Stock Market

The Big Board: A History of the New York Stock Market

The Big Board: A History of the New York Stock Market

The Big Board: A History of the New York Stock Market

A Place on the Big Board

A Place on the Big Board

Rivals and Interlopers in the History of the New York Security Market

r THE dramatic and picturesque history of the New York Stock ExI change has been told many times. The gradual transformation of an informal gathering of dealing in securities as well as in commodities into a powerful symbol of Wall Street, the struggles of railway kings, spectacular failures, and a long series of panics have found their place in the textbooks of economic history. The purpose of this paper is to throw some new light on a neglected aspect of the history of the New York security market. The New York Stock Exchange traces its ancestry to a small group of who at the end of the eighteenth century began to deal in securities. This organization, which originally was little more than a street market, strove during the whole nineteenth century to preserve for its members the monopoly of trading in securities. The exclusiveness of the Stock Exchange, known as the Old, Big, or the Regular Board resulted in the formation of a fluid group of brokers composed of of good financial standing who were unable to gain admittance to the Big Board as well as of more obscure dealers of little means and of reckless speculators. On several occasions, when the volume of transactions increased rapidly or a new kind of securities appeared on the market and became the object of an active speculation, the overflowing business invigorated the outside market,

Detroit Succeeds under a New Organization

For eight years the people of Detroit educated themselves to a knowledge of efficient self-government. They reformed their election methods, doing away with repeating, faking and ballot box stuffing, resulting in a breakup of the precinct boss system. They abolished the old ward-elected, forty-two man council, and substituted a council of nine men elected at large. They made their election of city officials non-partisan. They abolished the big wardelected board of education and substituted a school board of seven members elected at large.