Existing studies on women directorships present equivocal results on the association between appointing women directors and firm performance. These studies tend to focus on western countries and largely ignore investors' reactions to such appointments. This paper applies the financial event study method and finds that investors generally respond positively to the appointment of women directors in Singaporean firms. Regression analyses also reveal that investors are most receptive when the women are independent directors and are least receptive when the directors assume the CEO role. This study not only tests the theory of gender diversity in an Asian context but also examines whether investors react systematically to the different positions that women directors hold on corporate boards, a question that has received little attention in prior studies.

In this study, we argue that share price reaction to a ®rm's capital expenditure decisions depends critically on the market's assessment of the quality of its investment opportunities. We postulate that announcements of increases (decreases) in capital expenditures positively (negatively) a ect the stock prices of ®rms with valuable investment opportunities. Contrarily, we predict that announcements of increases (decreases) in capital spending negatively (positively) a ect the share prices of ®rms without such opportunities. Our empirical results are generally consistent with these predictions. Overall, empirical evidence supports our conjecture that it is the quality of the ®rm's investment opportunities rather than its industry a liation which determines the share price reaction to its capital expenditure decisions. Ó 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classi®cation: G14

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This study examines the intertemporal and cross-sectional association between the bidask spread and insider trading. Empirical results from the cross-sectional regression analysis reveal that market makers establish larger spreads for stocks with a greater extent of insider trading. The time-series regression analysis, however, finds no evidence of spread changes on insider trading days. These results suggest that although market makers may not be able to detect insider trading when it occurs, they protect themselves by maintaining larger spreads for stocks with a greater tendency of insider trading. The results also reveal that market makers establish larger spreads when there are unusually large transactions. In addition, this study finds that spreads are positively associated with risk and negatively with trading volume, the number of exchange listings, share price, and firm size.

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