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Econometrics of Event Studies

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“Econometrics of Event Studies” S. P Khotari and Jerold B. Warner Forthcoming in B. Espen Eckbo (ed.), Handbook of Corporate Finance: Empirical Corporate Finance, Volume A (Handbooks in Finance Series, Elsevier/North-Holland), Ch. 1, 2006 Econometrics of Event Studies S.P. Kothari Sloan School of Management, MIT Jerold B. Warner William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration University of Rochester May 19, 2006 Key words: Event study, abnormal returns, short-horizon tests, long-horizon tests, crosssectional tests, risk adjustment This article will appear in the Handbook of Corporate Finance: Empirical Corporate Finance (Elsevier/North-Holland), which is edited by B. Espen Eckbo. We thank Espen Eckbo, Jon …show more content…

1 5 much attention. In the field of law and economics, event studies are used to examine the effect of regulation, as well as to assess damages in legal liability cases. The number of published event studies easily exceeds 500 (see section 2), and continues to grow. A second and parallel literature, which concentrates on the methodology of event studies, began in the 1980’s. Dozens of papers have now explicitly studied statistical properties of event study methods. Both literatures are mature. From the methodology papers, much is known about how to do – and how not to do – an event study. While the profession’s thinking about event study methods has evolved over time, there seems to be relatively little controversy about statistical properties of event study methods. The conditions under which event studies provide information and permit reliable inferences are well-understood. This chapter highlights key econometric issues in event study methods, and summarizes what we know about the statistical design and the interpretation of event study experiments. Based on the theoretical and empirical findings of the methodology literature, we provide clear guidelines both for producers and consumers of event studies. Rather than provide a comprehensive survey of event study methods, we seek to sift through and synthesize existing work

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