Event studies in international finance research

Event studies are widely used in finance research to investigate the implications of announcements of corporate initiatives, regulatory changes, or macroeconomic shocks on stock prices. These studies are often used in a single-country setting (usually the U.S.), but little work has yet been conducted in an international context, perhaps due to the complexities inherent in implementing cross-country studies. This paper explores the methodological challenges of conducting event studies in international finance research. We emphasize how scholars should choose an event, select the study period (short vs. long term), estimate abnormal returns, infer statistically whether the event under consideration produces a reliable price reaction, and explore the role of formal and informal institutions in explaining cross-country differences in price reactions. We also provide an extension of event studies to an important but less studied asset class in an international setting - the fixed-income market. We conclude by offering practical recommendations for researchers conducting cross-country finance event studies and identifying opportunities for future research. Given the increasing number of global events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, Brexit, and the Paris and Trans-Pacific Partnership agreements, we believe our paper is especially timely.

A review of the internationalization of state-owned firms and sovereign wealth funds: Governments' nonbusiness objectives and discreet power

We review and bridge the literature on the internationalization of state-owned firms and sovereign wealth funds to provide a novel understanding of how government ownership affects foreign investments in three ways. First, we explain how state-owned firms and funds behave differently from private ones because they need to balance governments' nonbusiness objectives and firms' business goals. This results in competing predictions on whether government ownership helps or hinders internationalization due to particular nonbusiness objectives. Second, building on the review, we provide suggestions on how to extend research topics and theories of the firm by incorporating these nonbusiness objectives in the internationalization decisions in four areas: home government's endowments, characteristics, and attitudes; host-country expansion's support, influence, and impact; home- and host-country relationship conflicts, mediation, and disguising; and management's orientation, opacity, and arbitrage. Third, we capture how governments may use state-owned multinationals and sovereign wealth funds to nudge host-country governments by introducing the concept of discreet power and the use of four strategies (recognition, values, development, and supremacy) to achieve it. This helps to outline the beginning of a unified approach to how governments use their foreign investments to achieve nonbusiness goals.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41267-022-00522-w.

The event study in international business research: Opportunities, challenges, and practical solutions

The event study or event study method (ESM) is an empirical technique for capturing investors' reaction to an event affecting one or more publicly traded firms. The ESM has been little employed in international business (IB) research despite its frequency in accounting, economics, and finance; for example, only two percent of the empirical articles in JIBS over 1970-2019 include an event study. While this scarcity could indicate a lack of demand, we argue that the field of IB studies offers many interesting and important research opportunities for an event study. We believe that the challenges arise primarily from the supply side, because conducting an event study involves overcoming a variety of data and analytical hurdles. We examine these methodological challenges and offer practical solutions designed to encourage adoption of the ESM. An online appendix with coding and examples provides additional resources.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41267-022-00509-7.

Globalization/deglobalization: lessons from liberal monetary orders

Economic globalization never proceeded in a smooth steady trajectory. The current international economy, organized around liberal principles, faces potential problems unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Two popular theoretical approaches offer varying reasons for the survivability of the contemporary order. One stresses the benefits associated with participating in liberal international orders, claiming such arrangements are essentially self-sustaining. The rival view emphasizes the uneven distribution of gains, emphasizing the role of leadership, especially for dampening crises. To examine the support for each argument, I examine the evolution of international monetary arrangements. International monetary orders lie at the heart of liberal international economies; no prior liberal monetary order has proven self-sustaining. Liberal international monetary sub-orders depend upon leadership as much as cooperation for their survival-leaders exert efforts to shape followers' actions so long as the leader draws sufficient benefits to make such efforts worthwhile. The economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic provides the latest illustration of this point, though these arguments also suggest experiences across issue-areas will vary.