The law and finance of share repurchases in Europe

This article analyses the impact of the EU market abuse law on share repurchases. We find that the Member States' previous rules differed considerably, and therefore it can be said that the Regulation on share repurchases has provided uniformity as to the availability of a safe harbour for share repurchases. The picture, however, gets more difficult to assess if we consider our findings on the actual effect of the law. Our results do not confirm a “simple law and finance story“ according to which market participants would have just reacted as expected by the new legal rules. Rather, it seems to be the case that the value of legal certainty and the positive signal of common legal rules have also had an impact on the propensity to repurchase own stock.

The functional anatomy of the McCollough contingent colour after-effect

We report two functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments which reveal a cortical network activated when perceiving coloured grids, and experiencing the McCollough effect (ME). Our results show that perception of red-black and green-black grids activate the right fusiform gyrus (area V4) plus the left and right lingual gyri, right striate cortex (V1) and left insula. The ME activated the left anterior fusiform gyrus as well as the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, and in common with colour perception, the left insula. These data confirm the critical role of the fusiform gyrus in actual and illusory colour perception as well as revealing localized frontal cortical activation associated with the ME, which would suggest that a 'top-down' mechanism is implicated in this illusion.

Measurement of implicit leadership theories and their effect on leadership processes and outcomes

The leadership categorisation theory suggests that followers rely on a hierarchical cognitive structure in perceiving leaders and the leadership process, which consists of three levels; superordinate, basic and subordinate. The predominant view is that followers rely on Implicit Leadership Theories (ILTs) at the basic level in making judgments about managers. The thesis examines whether this presumption is true by proposing and testing two competing conceptualisations; namely the congruence between the basic level ILTs (general leader) and actual manager perceptions, and subordinate level ILTs (job-specific leader) and actual manager. The conceptualisation at the job-specific level builds on context-related assertions of the ILT explanatory models: leadership categorisation, information processing and connectionist network theories. Further, the thesis addresses the effects of ILT congruence at the group level. The hypothesised model suggests that Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) will act as a mediator between ILT congruence and outcomes. Three studies examined the proposed model. The first was cross-sectional with 175 students reporting on work experience during a 1-year industrial placement. The second was longitudinal and had a sample of 343 students engaging in a business simulation in groups with formal leadership. The final study was a cross-sectional survey in several organisations with a sample of 178. A novel approach was taken to congruence analysis; the hypothesised models were tested using Latent Congruence Modelling (LCM), which accounts for measurement error and overcomes the majority of limitations of traditional approaches. The first two studies confirm the traditional theorised view that employees rely on basic-level ILTs in making judgments about their managers with important implications, and show that LMX mediates the relationship between ILT congruence and work-related outcomes (performance, job satisfaction, well-being, task satisfaction, intragroup conflict, group satisfaction, team realness, team-member exchange, group performance). The third study confirms this with conflict, well-being, self-rated performance and commitment as outcomes.