Essays in automotive safety recalls /
This dissertation examines various aspects of automotive safety recalls. Recalls may send conflicting signals to consumers regarding product quality. These manufacturer mistakes may indicate a low quality producer which damages the reputation of a firm and reduces shareholder value. On the other ha...
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| Format: | Thesis Book |
| Language: | English |
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[Place of publication not identified] :
[publisher not identified] ;
2000.
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| Online Access: | http://proxy.library.tamu.edu/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=727712331&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=2945&RQT=309&VName=PQD |
| Summary: | This dissertation examines various aspects of automotive safety recalls. Recalls may send conflicting signals to consumers regarding product quality. These manufacturer mistakes may indicate a low quality producer which damages the reputation of a firm and reduces shareholder value. On the other hand, a recall may signal that a manufacturer is a high quality producer who is voluntarily taking this action to ``stand-behind'' the product, resulting in little reputational damage and only modest losses to shareholders. This dissertation investigates which recall characteristics are costly for shareholders. This thesis consists of three essays. The first essay models the recalls process and presents empirical evidence of who initiates the safety recall. The essay develops and tests a theory concerning which entity (the firm or the government) is most likely to initiate a given recall campaign. Consistent with the theory, the estimations reveal that the government initiates larger, less hazardous recalls involving older models and financially weak firms. Inexpensive recalls are more likely to be manufacturer initiated. The largest owner repair responses are associated with newsworthy hazardous defects of new domestic vehicles in their inaugural model year. The second essay finds empirical evidence for informational inefficiencies in the dissemination of automotive safety recalls. Since two distinct announcements for such recalls differ only in the number of people informed, a differential analysis can determine the impact of recall information on the market. The results indicate that the market reaction to the initial National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announcement is different (less negative) from the subsequent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) announcement. Given this difference, newspaper coverage of recalls (the panic factor) are also examined. Finally, the essay constructs abnormal dollar returns for WSJ announcements, providing the first estimates of variables that jointly determine equity returns. The final essay considers what recall characteristics are costly for shareholders. This empirical event study examines the equity response to NHTSA recall announcements. The stock price reaction to recall announcements generates negative abnormal returns of smaller magnitude than found previously. Most damaging to shareholder wealth are recalls by domestic manufacturers for minivans in the 1990s. |
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| Item Description: | Vita. "Major Subject: Economics". |
| Physical Description: | x, 97 leaves : illustrations ; 28 cm. Issued also on microfiche from University Microfilm Inc. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-96). |