International audienceThis paper investigates the impact of family control on French acquirers' performance.We consider a sample of 239 acquisitions undertaken by French listed companies between January 1997 and December 2006. Comparing both, short-termand long-termperformance,we find that family-controlled firms outperformnon-family firms. We find that the relationship depends on the control level. The higher operating performance of family firms is statistically significant for an intermediate level of control. Around the announcement date, family firms with a high level of control outperform non-family firms. Using the calendar time approach, we find that long-term stock performance of family firms is positive and statistically significant. Robustness tests showthat our findings seem to not be driven by the endogeneity problem. Finally, we find that family wedge, due to the use of the pyramidal structure and the double voting rules, has no statistical significant effect

The main purpose of this paper is to examine empirically the time series properties of the French Market Volatility Index (VX1). We also examine the VX1's ability to forecast future realized market volatility and finds a strong relationship. More importantly, we show how the index can be used to generate volatility forecasts over different horizons and that these forecasts are reasonably accurate predictors of future realized volatility.

Implied standard deviation is widely believed to be the best available forecast of the volatility of returns over the remaining contract life (Jorion, 1995). In this paper, we take this result two steps further to the higher moments of the distribution (skewness and kurtosis) based on a Gram ± Charlier series expansion of the normal distribution (Corrado and Su, 1996) using long-term CAC 40 option prices contract, named PXL. First, we found that implied first moments contain a substantial amount of information for future moments of CAC 40 returns although this amount decreases with respect to the moment's order. Secondly, we found that the different shapes of the volatility smile are consistent with different distribution of the underlying returns. Based on these results, we also observed that including other implied moments significantly improves the out-of-sample pricing performance of the Black ±Scholes, (1973) model.

The aim of this paper is to value interest rate structured products in a simpler and more intuitive way than Turnbull (1995). Considering some assumptions with respect to the evolution of the term structure of interest rates, the price of a European interest rate digital call option is given. Recall it is a contract designed to pay one dollar at maturity if a reference interest rate is above a prespecified level (the strike), and zero in all the others cases. Combining two options of this type enables us to value a European range digital option. Then using a one factor linear gaussian model and the new well-known change of numeraire approach, a closedform formula is found to value range notes which pay at the end of each defined period, a sum equal to a prespecified interest rate times the number of days the reference interest rate lies inside a corridor.

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