There is substantial evidence on the influence of political outcomes on the business cycle and stock market. We further hypothesize that uncertainty about the outcome of a U.S. presidential election should be reflected in pre-election common stock returns. Prior research pools returns based on the party of the winning candidate, assuming that the outcome of the election is known a priori. We use candidate preference (i.e., polling) data to construct a measure of election uncertainty. We find that if the election does not have a candidate with a dominant lead, stock market volatility (risk) and average returns rise. 2006 The Southern Finance Association and the Southwestern Finance Association.

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In this paper we investigate the effect of golden parachute (GP) adoptions on shareholder wealth. We control for the potential effect a GP adoption has on the probability that a firm will receive a takeover bid by investigating the wealth effects for firms that are in play when the GP is adopted. We find that announcements are wealth neutral when firms are in play and wealth increasing when firms are not in play when a GP is adopted. The results suggest that GPs have no influence on the success of a tender offer, refuting the hypotheses that they either align manager and shareholder interests or that they entrench inefficient managers. The difference in the results for in-play and not-in-play firms is consistent with the hypothesis that GPs signal an increased likelihood that a firm will receive a takeover bid.

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