HEC Paris

About: HEC Paris is a education organization based out in Jouy-en-Josas, France. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Investment (macroeconomics) & Market liquidity. The organization has 584 authors who have published 2756 publications receiving 104467 citations. The organization is also known as: Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales & HEC School of Management Paris.

Value Creation and Value Capture under Moral Hazard: Exploring the Micro-Foundations of Buyer-Supplier Relationships

Abstract: We analyze the determinants of value creation and capture in a buyer-supplier relationship. In particular, we study how key contracting parameters, such as production efficiency, transactional integrity, incentive gaming and alignment affect outcomes when buyer faces competing suppliers. Bringing together the formalism of principal-agent framework with value-based analysis, we seek to understand the contracting micro-foundations behind choice of contracting partners and division of value. We show that transactional integrity and production efficiency are substitutes. We also find that distortion and resulting incentive gaming is unambiguously bad for welfare and hurts the buyer. For some suppliers however, value captured is maximized at intermediate levels of distortion. For alignment, we find that neither of the parties has incentives to sign a contract that maximizes value creation.

Repurchasing Shares on a Second Trading Line

Abstract: This paper studies a unique buyback method allowing firms to reacquire their own shares on a separate trading line where only the firm is allowed to buy shares. This temporary trading platform is opened concurrently with the original trading line on the stock exchange. This share repurchase method is called the Second Trading Line and has been extensively used by Swiss companies since 1997. This type of repurchase is unique for two reasons. First, unlike open market programs, the repurchasing company does not trade under the cover of anonymity. Second, all transactions made by the repurchasing firm are publicly available in real time to every market participant. This is a case of instantaneous disclosure which contrasts sharply with other markets characterized by delayed or no disclosure. Using actual repurchase data from all buybacks implemented through second trading lines, we find that managers exhibit timing ability for the majority of programs. We also document that the daily repurchase decision is statistically associated with short-term price changes. However, we reject the opportunistic repurchase hypothesis and find no evidence that managers exploit their information advantage when reacquiring shares. We also find that repurchases on the second trading line have a beneficial impact on the liquidity of repurchasing firms (i.e., higher trading volumes, smaller bid-ask spreads, and thicker total depths). Exchanges and regulators may consider the second trading line an attractive share reacquisition mechanism because of its transparency and positive liquidity effects.

Beware of black swans: Taking stock of the description–experience gap in decision under uncertainty

Abstract: Uncertainty pervades most aspects of life. From selecting a new technology to choosing a career, decision makers rarely know in advance the exact outcomes of their decisions. Whereas the consequences of decisions in standard decision theory are explicitly described (the decision from description (DFD) paradigm), the consequences of decisions in the recent decision from experience (DFE) paradigm are learned from experience. In DFD, decision makers typically overrespond to rare events. That is, rare events have more impact on decisions than their objective probabilities warrant (overweighting). In DFE, decision makers typically exhibit the opposite pattern, underresponding to rare events. That is, rare events may have less impact on decisions than their objective probabilities warrant (underweighting). In extreme cases, rare events are completely neglected, a pattern known as the “Black Swan effect.” This contrast between DFD and DFE is known as a description–experience gap. In this paper, we discuss several tentative interpretations arising from our interdisciplinary examination of this gap. First, while a source of underweighting of rare events in DFE may be sampling error, we observe that a robust description–experience gap remains when these factors are not at play. Second, the residual description–experience gap is not only about experience per se but also about the way in which information concerning the probability distribution over the outcomes is learned in DFE. Econometric error theories may reveal that different assumed error structures in DFD and DFE also contribute to the gap.

Nothing like the Enron affair could happen in France (

Abstract: This paper reviews the reactions of the French accounting profession and academia following the collapse of both Enron and Andersen. It considers policy statements and declarations on the part of the accounting profession, legislative changes, the general impact on university accounting education programmes and specific developments in accounting teaching at my own institution, HEC. It considers the value of using corporate scandals in the teaching process and claims that more accounting theory and ethical issues should be introduced in accounting educational programmes.