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Event Study Methodology/Evidence
Method evidence record

Event Study Methodology

Event study methodology measures the stock-market reaction to a discrete corporate event by isolating the portion of a firm's return that cannot be explained by normal market movements. Under semi-strong market efficiency, new information about an acquisition, earnings announcement, alliance, CEO change, or regulatory shock is impounded into prices almost immediately, so the abnormal return around the event date is a clean, forward-looking estimate of the event's value consequences. A. Craig MacKinlay's 1997 survey codified the canonical pipeline -- define the event and windows, estimate a normal-return benchmark, compute abnormal returns, accumulate them into a cumulative abnormal return (CAR), and test significance. Brown and Warner's 1985 study established the statistical properties of these procedures with daily data, showing when simple methods are well specified and how variance and clustering must be handled. The method is the workhorse for linking strategic decisions to shareholder value.

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Event Study Methodology (Abnormal Returns and Cumulative Abnormal Returns around Corporate Events)
Taxonomic method record · process-pipeline / strategic-management
  • MacKinlay, A. C. (1997). Event Studies in Economics and Finance. Journal of Economic Literature, 35(1), 13-39. · DOI 10.2307/2729691
  • Brown, S. J., & Warner, J. B. (1985). Using Daily Stock Returns: The Case of Event Studies. Journal of Financial Economics, 14(1), 3-31. · DOI 10.1016/0304-405X(85)90042-X
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Related methods

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Same method familyDiversification-Performance Analysis (Rumelt Categories)machine-suggested · Relational suggestion, not evidence.Same method familyMerger and Acquisition Performance Event Studymachine-suggested · Relational suggestion, not evidence.Used in the same domainTobin's Q Firm Value Analysismachine-suggested · Relational suggestion, not evidence.

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2 recorded citations, copied from the method source record.

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