Stock price discreteness adds noise to price series. The noise increases return variances and adds negative serial correlation to return series. Standard variance and serial covariance estimators therefore overestimate the variance and serial covariance of the underlying stock values. Discreteness-induced variance and serial covariance depend on underlying volatility and on the size of the bid/ask spread. Simple formulas for approximating the effects of discreteness on variance and serial correlation are derived and presented. The approximations, which are accurate in daily data, can be used to adjust the standard variance and serial covariance estimators.

This paper analyzes the impact of changes in monetary policy regimes on the relation between stock returns and changes in expected inflation. Post-war evidence from four countries reveals a direct link between these relations and the central banks' operating targets (i.e., money supply or interest rates). Specifically, the post-war negative relations between stock returns and changes in expected inflation are significantly stronger during interest rate regimes.

This paper examines the pricing of exchange-traded long-term corporate bond portfolios. Observable instruments measuring the term structure of interest rates, levels of bond and stock prices, and a January dummy are found to predict excess returns on corporate bonds. An intertemporal asset pricing model with changing expectations and unobservable factors is then estimated for the predictable excess returns using Hansen's Generalized Method of Moments. The results show that a multibeta linear time-vary ing model of conditional expected returns with constant betas can successfully value corporate bonds. Specifically, the tests indicate the presence of two time-varying hedge portfolios. The data, however, support a single latent variable specification when all January observations are excluded. This result suggests the existence of a strong January seasonal in one of the latent variables.

Previous studies have found that positive abnormal stock returns are associated with corporate spin-offs and divestitures. Using a simplified model of the process of investor tax trading, we show that an improvement in the value of the tax-timing option component of securities prices is a likely contributing factor to those abnormal returns. The analysis indicates that the same phenomenon also may be part of the explanation for the generally higher returns observed for spin-offs than for divestitures, both when leverage is and is not present in the restructuring transactions.

This paper generalizes the risk-return relationship implied by the traditional capital asset pricing model with finite investment horizons. It examines the effect of heterogeneous investment horizons on the functional form of capital asset pricing and proposes a translog model for estimating the risk-return relationship. In addition, this paper contends that some empirical findings that are inconsistent with the traditional CAPM have resulted from misspecification of the CAPM by ignoring the discrepancy between the observed data periods and the true investment horizons. Finally, the paper shows that under various conditions, the translog model is a suitable function for estimating the relationship between risk and expected returns.

This paper considers the capital structure and debt maturity choice for a value-maximizing corporation. In the model, interest expense is tax deductible, bankruptcy is costly, and debt is fairly priced at issue. In contrast to the results of Kane, Marcus, and McDonald (1985), optimal debt maturity does not always approach zero in the absence of transaction costs, and is increasing in the volatility of the assets of the firm. The model predicts a positive association between the value of leverage and total risk in some circumstances.

Using the FPE/multivariate Granger-causality modeling technique, this paper tests whether changes in Canadian stock returns are caused by a number of economic variables, including base money and fiscal deficits. The empirical results from monthly data show that lagged changes in fiscal deficits, in particular, Granger-cause stock returns. If expected returns to equity are not time-varying, such a finding appears inconsistent with market efficiency.

This paper examines the impact of the “Heard-on-the-Street” (HOTS) column of The Wall Street Journal on common stock prices. The results of the study indicate that the HOTS column appears to have an impact on stock prices on the publication day; however, we also find a smaller, but statistically significant, impact on two days preceding the publication. The significant abnormal returns on these days are associated with higher trading volume. The reaction of stock prices is symmetric with respect to the buy and sell recommendations, and the impact of single-company recommendations is greater than the impact of the multi-company recommendations.

A fundamental statistical test of serial independence developed by Ashley and Patterson (1986) to examine a possible form of serial dependence in daily stock returns is shown to be improperly constructed. As a consequence, the significance probabilities that they obtain are overstated. This paper presents a corrected version of their test. The test statistic obtained after correction is shown to possess the same limiting distribution as the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test statistic. Applying the corrected test procedure to data identical to that used by Ashley and Patterson, we find that their original null hypothesis can no longer be rejected at conventional significance levels.

We have confirmed that Corrado and Schatzberg's (1990) criticism of our test for serial independence in stock returns (Ashley and Patterson (1986)) is correct. The corrected results still favor rejection of the null hypothesis that the daily returns for several stocks (notably Holly Sugar (HLY) and E Systems (ESY)) are serially independent, but only at the 12-percent and 14-percent significance levels, respectively. Evidently, this kind of test is long on simplicity and intuitive appeal, but short on power.