Cognitive mapping the topic of share repurchase

Cognitive mapping the topic of share repurchase

Joseph Kim-keung Ho

Independent Trainer

Hong Kong, China

Abstract: The topic of share repurchase in the subject of Accounting and Finance is complex. By making use of the cognitive mapping technique to conduct a brief literature review on the share repurchase topic, the writer renders a systemic image on the topic of share repurchase. The result of the study, in the form of a cognitive map on share repurchase, should be useful to those who are interested in the topics of cognitive mapping, literature review and share repurchase.

Key words: Share repurchase, cognitive mapping, literature review

Introduction

As a topic in Accounting and Finance, share repurchase is complex. It is thus useful to employ some learning tool to conduct its study, notably for literature review purpose. For a teacher in research methods, systems thinking and management, the writer is specifically interested in finding out how the cognitive mapping technique can be employed to go through a literature review on  share repurchase. This literature review exercise is taken up and reported in this article.

On the cognitive mapping exercise for literature review

Literature review is an important intellectual learning exercise, and not just for doing final year dissertation projects for tertiary education students. On these two topics of intellectual learning and literature review, the writer has compiled some e-learning resources. They are the Managerial intellectual learning Facebook page and the Literature on literature review Facebook page. Conducting literature review with the cognitive mapping technique is not novel in the cognitive mapping literature, see Eden and Simpson (1989), Eden, Jones and Sims (1983), Open University (n.d) and the Literature on cognitive mapping Facebook page. In this article, the specific steps involved in the cognitive mapping exercise are as follows:

Step 1: gather some main points from a number of academic journal articles on Share repurchase. This result in the production of a table (Table 1) with the main points and associated references.

Step 2: consolidate  the main points from Table 1 to come up with a table listing the cognitive map variables (re: Table 2).

Step 3: link up the cognitive  map variables in a plausible way to produce a cognitive map (re: Figure 1) on the topic under review.

The next section applies these three steps to produce a cognitive map on share repurchase.

Descriptions of cognitive map variables on the share repurchase topic

From the reading of some academic articles on Share repurchase, a number of main points (e.g., viewpoints, concepts and empirical findings) were gathered by the  writer. They are shown in Table 1 with explicit referencing on the points.

Table 1: Main points from the share repurchase literature and referencing

Main points from the share repurchase literature	Referencing
Point 1: "The main reasons for a company to buy back its own shares are that it will increase the following: * Earnings per share. * The share price. * The value of executive stock options".	Goddard, M. 2005. "Technical matters: Share buybacks" Financial Management October, The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, UK.
Point 2: "For several years now, share buybacks have been extremely popular. ...... There are several reasons for their popularity, including the fact that if a company had surplus cash in the past there was always a problem about what to do with it. Some directors have used the extra funds to build empires by embarking on ill-considered takeovers with disastrous results. Surplus cash can also make managers complacent".	Goddard, M. 2005. "Technical matters: Share buybacks" Financial Management October, The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, UK.
Point 3: "In theory, the best time to put a share buyback into operation is after a stock market crash, when the shares of many companies can be purchased for less than net asset value".	Goddard, M. 2005. "Technical matters: Share buybacks" Financial Management October, The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, UK.
Point 4: "Share repurchases form an important component of a modern corporation’s overall payout policy. In Australia The First Corporate Law Simplification Act No. 115 (1995) altered the Corporations Act requirements surrounding share buybacks, paving the way for their increased use as a method of capital management. Within this framework, companies can repurchase shares on-market in the ordinary course of trading on the stock exchange".	Brown, C. and D. Norman. 2010. "Management choice of buyback method: Australian evidence" Accounting and Finance  50: 767-782.
Point 5: "There are five types of buyback in Australia: on-market, selective, employee, equal access and minimum holding.2 On-market buybacks occur in the ordinary course of trading on the stock exchange; the other types are undertaken off-market".	Brown, C. and D. Norman. 2010. "Management choice of buyback method: Australian evidence" Accounting and Finance  50: 767-782.
Point 6: "The tax treatment of off-market buybacks has led to them becoming an economically important mechanism for Australian companies to return cash and franking credits to shareholders. For example, over the years 1996 to 2008 almost $27 billion was spent by Australian companies in off-market buybacks, with around $7.6 billion of franking credits distributed (Brown and Davis, 2009). In the United States, on-market repurchases dominate in terms of both number of buybacks and the dollars distributed to shareholders".	Brown, C. and D. Norman. 2010. "Management choice of buyback method: Australian evidence" Accounting and Finance  50: 767-782.
Point 7: "Share repurchase has been an active area of financial research for the last four decades. It has also been increasingly significant in global financial markets. For example, in 1999, for the first time in history, the dollar volume of share repurchase exceeded the total amount of dividends paid by U.S. firms.1 In addition, regulators in foreign markets have been relaxing restrictions on buybacks, leading to the rapid growth of repurchase outside the U.S.".	Boudry, W., J.G. Kallberg and C.H. Liu. 2013. "Investment opportunities and share repurchases" Journal of Corporate Finance 23, Elsevier: 23-38.
Point 8: "Wansley et al. (1989) present survey data on the motives for share repurchase. They list six possible motives: (i) Repurchase can act as a substitute for dividend payments: firms may view both dividends and repurchase as alternative mechanisms for distributing cash to shareholders; the firm could prefer one mechanism over another because of tax, signaling implications etc. (ii) As a method to adjust leverage or control: repurchase will increase the firm's leverage and potentially give insiders more  control of the firm. (iii) To provide shares for reissue (e.g., for option exercise). (iv) Because of a lack of investment opportunities or an excess of available cash. (v) To signal favorable information about the firm's prospects or to signal that insiders view the shares as undervalued .... (vi) To transfer wealth to selling shareholders. The strongest agreement from survey respondents was for (v), (ii) and (iv)".	Boudry, W., J.G. Kallberg and C.H. Liu. 2013. "Investment opportunities and share repurchases" Journal of Corporate Finance 23, Elsevier: 23-38.
Point 9: "Brav et al. (2005) surveyed 348 financial executives with regard to their perspectives on dividends and share repurchase. Among their key findings were the following: repurchase decisions are made after investment decisions are undertaken; firms are concerned with the impact of repurchase on EPS15; firms opt to repurchase when they hold excess cash or have a lack of good investment opportunities".	Boudry, W., J.G. Kallberg and C.H. Liu. 2013. "Investment opportunities and share repurchases" Journal of Corporate Finance 23, Elsevier: 23-38.
Point 10: "There are numerous studies on the motivations of open-market repurchases. The signaling of undervaluation has been found to be one of the most popular motivations that emerge from these studies. The empirical evidence is supported by management surveys, where managers consider stock price undervaluation as one of the most important considerations when deciding whether to repurchase shares".	Akyol, A.C. and C.C. Foo. 2013. "Share Repurchase Reasons and the Market Reaction to Actual Share Repurchases: Evidence from Australia" International Review of Finance 13(1): 1-37.
Point 11: "Although signaling of undervaluation is found to be important in many studies, the traditional theories of signaling (Bhattacharya 1979; Vermaelen 1984; Miller and Rock 1985) do not consider management statements – that the firm is undervalued – as credible signals and judge them as ‘cheap talk’ as pointed out by Peyer and Vermaelen (2009). According to these theories, for the signal to be credible it should be costly".	Akyol, A.C. and C.C. Foo. 2013. "Share Repurchase Reasons and the Market Reaction to Actual Share Repurchases: Evidence from Australia" International Review of Finance 13(1): 1-37.
Point 12: "One of the key features of open-market repurchases is that they do not commit the firm to repurchase shares in the open market. A repurchase announcement effectively grants the firm an option to repurchase shares in the open market at management’s discretion".	Akyol, A.C. and C.C. Foo. 2013. "Share Repurchase Reasons and the Market Reaction to Actual Share Repurchases: Evidence from Australia" International Review of Finance 13(1): 1-37.
Point 13: "Among the numerous studies, the most widely accepted theories for share repurchases are the information signaling hypothesis (e.g., Chan et al. 2004; Ikenberry et al. 1995; Lie 2005; Peyer and Vermaelen 2009) and the free cash flow hypothesis (e.g., Grullon and Michaely 2004; Nohel and Tarhan 1998). Specifically, the information signaling hypothesis suggests that the firm has an incentive to buy back its own shares as a good self-investment signal when its stock price is undervalued. Alternatively, the free cash flow hypothesis presents the repurchase shares as a way to distribute a firm’s excess cash flow to prevent wasteful investments".	Liang, W.L., K. Chan, W.H. Lai and Y.Z. Wang. 2013. "Motivation for Repurchases:  A Life Cycle Explanation" J Financ Serv Res 43: 221-242.
Point 14: ".... compared with their more mature counterparts, firms in the early stage of the life-cycle (i.e., the growth stage) have greater investment opportunities and more serious information asymmetry about the firm’s future operating performance than the ones in the mature stage do. Conversely, firms in the late stage (i.e., the mature stage) tend to have greater free cash flow due to lower growth opportunities. Therefore, we hypothesize that firms in the early stage may buy back stocks to signal better performance rather than to reduce free cash flow and firms in the late stage may repurchase to prevent infusing free cash flows into negative net present value projects. That is, the motivation of repurchases is related to the stage of the firm".	Liang, W.L., K. Chan, W.H. Lai and Y.Z. Wang. 2013. "Motivation for Repurchases:  A Life Cycle Explanation" J Financ Serv Res 43: 221-242.
Point 15: "Bhattacharya (1979), John and Williams (1985), and Miller and Rock (1985) propose that firms disburse funds to signal favorable information to the capital market. Nissim and Ziv (2001) and Lie (2005a) report evidence in favor of the signaling theory, whereas Benartzi et al. (1997), Grullon, Michaely, and Swaminathan (2002), Grullon et al. (2005), and Gong et al. (2008) question this evidence. Related to the signaling theory, Brav et al. (2005) report that CFOs and Treasurers deem undervaluation of the stock to be the most important consideration for the decision to repurchase shares (but not to pay dividends). Alternatively, Easterbrook (1984) argues that payouts mitigate agency problems between managers and shareholders by reducing funds available to managers, but the empirical evidence on this in Denis et al. (1994), Lang and Litzenberger (1989), Yoon and Starks (1995)), and Lie (2000) is also mixed".	Jiang, Z., K.A. Kim, E. Lie and S. Yang. 2013. "Share repurchases, catering, and dividend substitution" Journal of Corporate Finance 21, Elsevier: 36-50.
Point 16: "There is ..... no study on managers catering to time-varying demand for share repurchases. This is surprising, because share repurchases are similar to dividends and have become increasingly popular during the last couple of decades".	Jiang, Z., K.A. Kim, E. Lie and S. Yang. 2013. "Share repurchases, catering, and dividend substitution" Journal of Corporate Finance 21, Elsevier: 36-50.
Point 17: "A growing body of empirical evidence provides support for the free cash flow hypothesis by showing that buybacks are initiated as a result of reductions in capital expenditures caused by deteriorating future investment opportunities (Grullon and Michaely 2004; Lee and Suh 2011). However, a lack of investment opportunities can also be viewed as a portfolio of growth options that are temporarily out of the money. Managers may reevaluate the use of corporate funds when investment opportunities move into the money again. Thus, it seems reasonable to posit that firms cancel announced buybacks in response to changes in the value of their investment opportunity sets".	Mietzner, M. 2016. "Why do firms decide to stop their share repurchase programs?" Rev Manag Sci Aug 19, Springer (DOI 10.1007/s11846-016-0206-z).
Point 18: "Chen and Wang (2012) document that share buybacks are associated with significant decreases in cash holdings and investments for financially constrained firms, while Brav et al. (2005) note that buyback decisions are inferior to investment decisions. Grullon and Michaely (2004) find that repurchasing firms reduce their investments after share buybacks, which indicates that excess liquidity is being used for share repurchases".	Mietzner, M. 2016. "Why do firms decide to stop their share repurchase programs?" Rev Manag Sci Aug 19, Springer (DOI 10.1007/s11846-016-0206-z).
Point 19: "It is widely documented in the literature that share repurchase announcements are followed by significant excess market increases at the time of announcement (Vermaelen 1981; Gunthorpe 1993; Ikenberry et al. 1995, 2000; Peyer and Vermaelen 2009; McNally and Smith 2007) which tend to persist in the long-run, hence offering economic sources of gain to long-term shareholders".	Andriosopoulos, D., C. Gaganis and F. Pasiouras. 2016. "Prediction of open market share repurchases and portfolio returns: evidence from France, Germany and the UK" Rev Quant Finan Acc 46: 387-416.
Point 20: "Since open market share repurchases are not firm commitments, they are essentially options that managers can use when they believe the firm’s share price is undervalued. When firms repurchase shares in the open market without announcing earlier their intention to do so, managers apply an ‘‘early-adoption’’ strategy and use their inside information to repurchase shares before the undervaluation is discovered by the market (Ikenberry and Vermaelen 1996). In contrast, when firms announce their intention to repurchase shares prior to any buyback trades, managers still reserve the option to exploit any stock undervaluation but lose the advantage of exploiting a significant mispricing as the market has already been alerted at the time of the announcement".	Andriosopoulos, D., C. Gaganis and F. Pasiouras. 2016. "Prediction of open market share repurchases and portfolio returns: evidence from France, Germany and the UK" Rev Quant Finan Acc 46: 387-416.
Point 21: "Bozanic (2010) argue that firms which make repurchases are jointly timing their repurchases to perceived undervaluation and the presence of discretionary cash flow. Chen and Wang (2012) demonstrated that share repurchases can produce negative returns for financially constrained firms; Rau and Vermaelen (2002) and Lee et al. (2005) do not find long-term excess returns for repurchase activities in the U.K. and Korea, and they conclude that the abnormal returns are due to differences in the tax and regulatory environments".	Hsu, C.H., H.G. Fung and Y.P. Chang. 2016. "The performance of Taiwanese firms after a share repurchase announcement" Rev Quant Finan Acc 47: 1251-1269.

With a set of main points collected, the writer produces a set of cognitive map variables. These variables are informed by the set of main points from Table 1. These variables are presented in Table 2.

Table 2: Cognitive map variables based on Table 1

Cognitive map variables	Literature review points
Variable 1: Drivers of interest in share repurchase	Point 2: "For several years now, share buybacks have been extremely popular. ...... There are several reasons for their popularity, including the fact that if a company had surplus cash in the past there was always a problem about what to do with it. Some directors have used the extra funds to build empires by embarking on ill-considered takeovers with disastrous results. Surplus cash can also make managers complacent". Point 6: "The tax treatment of off-market buybacks has led to them becoming an economically important mechanism for Australian companies to return cash and franking credits to shareholders. For example, over the years 1996 to 2008 almost $27 billion was spent by Australian companies in off-market buybacks, with around $7.6 billion of franking credits distributed (Brown and Davis, 2009). In the United States, on-market repurchases dominate in terms of both number of buybacks and the dollars distributed to shareholders". Point 7: "Share repurchase has been an active area of financial research for the last four decades. It has also been increasingly significant in global financial markets. For example, in 1999, for the first time in history, the dollar volume of share repurchase exceeded the total amount of dividends paid by U.S. firms.1 In addition, regulators in foreign markets have been relaxing restrictions on buybacks, leading to the rapid growth of repurchase outside the U.S.".
Variable 2: Improve intellectual understanding of share repurchase	Point 1: "The main reasons for a company to buy back its own shares are that it will increase the following: * Earnings per share. * The share price. * The value of executive stock options". Point 5: "There are five types of buyback in Australia: on-market, selective, employee, equal access and minimum holding.2 On-market buybacks occur in the ordinary course of trading on the stock exchange; the other types are undertaken off-market". Point 10: "There are numerous studies on the motivations of open-market repurchases. The signaling of undervaluation has been found to be one of the most popular motivations that emerge from these studies. The empirical evidence is supported by management surveys, where managers consider stock price undervaluation as one of the most important considerations when deciding whether to repurchase shares". Point 11: "Although signaling of undervaluation is found to be important in many studies, the traditional theories of signaling (Bhattacharya 1979; Vermaelen 1984; Miller and Rock 1985) do not consider management statements – that the firm is undervalued – as credible signals and judge them as ‘cheap talk’ as pointed out by Peyer and Vermaelen (2009). According to these theories, for the signal to be credible it should be costly". Point 13: "Among the numerous studies, the most widely accepted theories for share repurchases are the information signaling hypothesis (e.g., Chan et al. 2004; Ikenberry et al. 1995; Lie 2005; Peyer and Vermaelen 2009) and the free cash flow hypothesis (e.g., Grullon and Michaely 2004; Nohel and Tarhan 1998). Specifically, the information signaling hypothesis suggests that the firm has an incentive to buy back its own shares as a good self-investment signal when its stock price is undervalued. Alternatively, the free cash flow hypothesis presents the repurchase shares as a way to distribute a firm’s excess cash flow to prevent wasteful investments". Point 14: ".... compared with their more mature counterparts, firms in the early stage of the life-cycle (i.e., the growth stage) have greater investment opportunities and more serious information asymmetry about the firm’s future operating performance than the ones in the mature stage do. Conversely, firms in the late stage (i.e., the mature stage) tend to have greater free cash flow due to lower growth opportunities. Therefore, we hypothesize that firms in the early stage may buy back stocks to signal better performance rather than to reduce free cash flow and firms in the late stage may repurchase to prevent infusing free cash flows into negative net present value projects. That is, the motivation of repurchases is related to the stage of the firm". Point 15: "Bhattacharya (1979), John and Williams (1985), and Miller and Rock (1985) propose that firms disburse funds to signal favorable information to the capital market. Nissim and Ziv (2001) and Lie (2005a) report evidence in favor of the signaling theory, whereas Benartzi et al. (1997), Grullon, Michaely, and Swaminathan (2002), Grullon et al. (2005), and Gong et al. (2008) question this evidence. Related to the signaling theory, Brav et al. (2005) report that CFOs and Treasurers deem undervaluation of the stock to be the most important consideration for the decision to repurchase shares (but not to pay dividends). Alternatively, Easterbrook (1984) argues that payouts mitigate agency problems between managers and shareholders by reducing funds available to managers, but the empirical evidence on this in Denis et al. (1994), Lang and Litzenberger (1989), Yoon and Starks (1995)), and Lie (2000) is also mixed". Point 17: "A growing body of empirical evidence provides support for the free cash flow hypothesis by showing that buybacks are initiated as a result of reductions in capital expenditures caused by deteriorating future investment opportunities (Grullon and Michaely 2004; Lee and Suh 2011). However, a lack of investment opportunities can also be viewed as a portfolio of growth options that are temporarily out of the money. Managers may reevaluate the use of corporate funds when investment opportunities move into the money again. Thus, it seems reasonable to posit that firms cancel announced buybacks in response to changes in the value of their investment opportunity sets".
Variable 3: Effective share repurchase practices	Point 3: "In theory, the best time to put a share buyback into operation is after a stock market crash, when the shares of many companies can be purchased for less than net asset value". Point 4: "Share repurchases form an important component of a modern corporation’s overall payout policy. In Australia The First Corporate Law Simplification Act No. 115 (1995) altered the Corporations Act requirements surrounding share buybacks, paving the way for their increased use as a method of capital management. Within this framework, companies can repurchase shares on-market in the ordinary course of trading on the stock exchange". Point 12: "One of the key features of open-market repurchases is that they do not commit the firm to repurchase shares in the open market. A repurchase announcement effectively grants the firm an option to repurchase shares in the open market at management’s discretion". Point 19: "It is widely documented in the literature that share repurchase announcements are followed by significant excess market increases at the time of announcement (Vermaelen 1981; Gunthorpe 1993; Ikenberry et al. 1995, 2000; Peyer and Vermaelen 2009; McNally and Smith 2007) which tend to persist in the long-run, hence offering economic sources of gain to long-term shareholders". Point 20: "Since open market share repurchases are not firm commitments, they are essentially options that managers can use when they believe the firm’s share price is undervalued. When firms repurchase shares in the open market without announcing earlier their intention to do so, managers apply an ‘‘early-adoption’’ strategy and use their inside information to repurchase shares before the undervaluation is discovered by the market (Ikenberry and Vermaelen 1996). In contrast, when firms announce their intention to repurchase shares prior to any buyback trades, managers still reserve the option to exploit any stock undervaluation but lose the advantage of exploiting a significant mispricing as the market has already been alerted at the time of the announcement".
Variable 4: Learn from share repurchase practices	Point 8: "Wansley et al. (1989) present survey data on the motives for share repurchase. They list six possible motives: (i) Repurchase can act as a substitute for dividend payments: firms may view both dividends and repurchase as alternative mechanisms for distributing cash to shareholders; the firm could prefer one mechanism over another because of tax, signaling implications etc. (ii) As a method to adjust leverage or control: repurchase will increase the firm's leverage and potentially give insiders more  control of the firm. (iii) To provide shares for reissue (e.g., for option exercise). (iv) Because of a lack of investment opportunities or an excess of available cash. (v) To signal favorable information about the firm's prospects or to signal that insiders view the shares as undervalued .... (vi) To transfer wealth to selling shareholders. The strongest agreement from survey respondents was for (v), (ii) and (iv)". Point 9: "Brav et al. (2005) surveyed 348 financial executives with regard to their perspectives on dividends and share repurchase. Among their key findings were the following: repurchase decisions are made after investment decisions are undertaken; firms are concerned with the impact of repurchase on EPS15; firms opt to repurchase when they hold excess cash or have a lack of good investment opportunities". Point 16: "There is ..... no study on managers catering to time-varying demand for share repurchases. This is surprising, because share repurchases are similar to dividends and have become increasingly popular during the last couple of decades". Point 18: "Chen and Wang (2012) document that share buybacks are associated with significant decreases in cash holdings and investments for financially constrained firms, while Brav et al. (2005) note that buyback decisions are inferior to investment decisions. Grullon and Michaely (2004) find that repurchasing firms reduce their investments after share buybacks, which indicates that excess liquidity is being used for share repurchases". Point 21: "Bozanic (2010) argue that firms which make repurchases are jointly timing their repurchases to perceived undervaluation and the presence of discretionary cash flow. Chen and Wang (2012) demonstrated that share repurchases can produce negative returns for financially constrained firms; Rau and Vermaelen (2002) and Lee et al. (2005) do not find long-term excess returns for repurchase activities in the U.K. and Korea, and they conclude that the abnormal returns are due to differences in the tax and regulatory environments".

The next step is to relate the cognitive map variables to make up a cognitive map on share repurchase. The cognitive map and its explanation are presented in the next section.

A cognitive map on share repurchase and its interpretation

By relating the four variables identified in Table 2, the writer comes up with a cognitive map on share repurchase, as shown in Figure 1.

These cognitive  map variables, four of them altogether, are related to constitute a systemic image of share repurchase. The links in the cognitive map (re: Figure 1) indicate direction of influences between variables. The + sign shows that an increase in one variable leads to an increase in another variable while a -ve sign tells us that in increase in one variable leads to a decrease in another variable.  If there no signs shown on the arrows, that means the influences can be positive or negative.  For further information on share repurchase, readers are referred to the Literature on share buyback Facebook page.

Concluding remarks

The cognitive mapping exercise captures in one diagram some of the main variables involved in share repurchase. The resultant cognitive map promotes an exploratory way to study share repurchase in a holistic tone. The experience of the cognitive mapping exercise is that it can be a quick, efficient and entertaining way to explore a complex topic such as share repurchase in Accounting and Finance. Finally, readers who are interested in cognitive mapping should also find the article informative on this mapping topic.

Bibliography

1.      Akyol, A.C. and C.C. Foo. 2013. "Share Repurchase Reasons and the Market Reaction to Actual Share Repurchases: Evidence from Australia" International Review of Finance 13(1): 1-37.

2.      Andriosopoulos, D., C. Gaganis and F. Pasiouras. 2016. "Prediction of open market share repurchases and portfolio returns: evidence from France, Germany and the UK" Rev Quant Finan Acc 46: 387-416.

3.      Boudry, W., J.G. Kallberg and C.H. Liu. 2013. "Investment opportunities and share repurchases" Journal of Corporate Finance 23, Elsevier: 23-38.

4.      Brown, C. and D. Norman. 2010. "Management choice of buyback method: Australian evidence" Accounting and Finance  50: 767-782.

5.      Eden, C. and P. Simpson. 1989. "SODA and cognitive mapping in practice", pp. 43-70, in Rosenhead, J. (editor) Rational Analysis for a Problematic World, Wiley, Chichester.

6.      Eden, C., C. Jones and D. Sims. 1983. Messing about in Problems: An informal structured approach to their identification and management, Pergamon Press, Oxford.

7.      Goddard, M. 2005. "Technical matters: Share buybacks" Financial Management October, The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, UK.

8.      Hsu, C.H., H.G. Fung and Y.P. Chang. 2016. "The performance of Taiwanese firms after a share repurchase announcement" Rev Quant Finan Acc 47: 1251-1269.

9.      Jiang, Z., K.A. Kim, E. Lie and S. Yang. 2013. "Share repurchases, catering, and dividend substitution" Journal of Corporate Finance 21, Elsevier: 36-50.

10. Liang, W.L., K. Chan, W.H. Lai and Y.Z. Wang. 2013. "Motivation for Repurchases:  A Life Cycle Explanation" J Financ Serv Res 43: 221-242.

11. Literature on cognitive mapping Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/Literature-on-cognitive-mapping-800894476751355/).

12. Literature on literature review Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/literature.literaturereview/).

13. Literature on share buyback Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/Literature-on-share-buyback-149652315604592/).

14. Managerial intellectual learning Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/managerial.intellectual.learning/).

15. Mietzner, M. 2016. "Why do firms decide to stop their share repurchase programs?" Rev Manag Sci Aug 19, Springer (DOI 10.1007/s11846-016-0206-z).

16. Open University. n.d. "Sign graph" Systems Thinking and Practice (T552): Diagramming, Open University, U.K. (url address: http://systems.open.ac.uk/materials/T552/) [visited at April 10, 2017].