In a recent article Lloyd and Shick [3] examined a two-index model of bank stock returns with interest rates as the extra-market source of covariance. Based on their findings, the authors were optimistic that the inclusion of an interest rate index would prove to be worthwhile in market model regressions. The purpose of this comment is to question their conclusions by pointing out some specific deficiencies concerning their data, the statistical tests, and their interpretation of the results.

This paper has examined the investment performance of the common stock portfolios of 20 property-liability insurance companies over the period 1958–1967. The performance of these portfolios was compared with the performance of both equal-weighted and value-weighted random portfolios of common stocks. The evidence indicated that the returns earned by the insurance companies were significantly lower than the returns earned by random portfolios of equivalent risk.

While this study is not precisely comparable to the previously published studies of mutual funds in terms of either the methodology employed or the time period considered, the results are quite similar. An additional group of institutional investors can be seen not to have outperformed the “market.” The presumption of inferior performance is even stronger in the case of the property-liability companies because all the comparisons in this study were made on a gross basis. Most of the studies of mutual fund performance have compared fund returns net of investment expenses to the gross returns from random investments. In those instances where comparisons were made on a gross basis, the performance of fund portfolios was found to be very similar to the performance of random investments.

This paper shows that the integer efficient frontier for capital budgeting problems can be computed using a modified Markowitz approach. It is shown that if the quadratic integer capital budgeting problem is reformulated as a parametric programming problem on the right-hand side of the return constraint, the problem indicated by Baum, Carlson, and Jucker [1] is eliminated. The traditional Markowitz approach is to formulate the problem as an objective function parametric programming problem. Baum, Carlson, and Jucker [1] show that the traditional approach cannot generally be applied to solve quadratic zero-one integer capital budgeting problems. They show that this approach may fail to identify some efficient points. The failure results from the objective function parametric programming approach. Even though the objective function and the right-hand side parametric programming approaches are equivalent in the continuous case, they may not be equivalent in the integer case.

Linear programming models of specialized financial decision problems such as working capital management [21], short-term financing [22], or capital bug-geting [24] are deficient in that they may lead to decisions which are suboptimal with respect to the firm as a whole. Each model attacks a single decision problem and neglects its interaction with the other activities of the firm. On the other hand, a model which reflects these interdependences and interactions by including the various financing, investment, and operating decisions in a single model tends to become excessively large and inefficient to use. What is needed is a model that incorporates the efficiencies inherent in smaller, more specialized models which can be utilized on a decentralized basis and which can simultaneously lead to decisions that are optimal for the firm as a whole.

In this paper, we present a new version of the capital asset pricing model CAPM) that provides a linear pricing equation substantially different from that implied by the traditional CAPM of Sharpe [18], Lintner [12], and Mossin [14, 15] (hereafter SLM model). It is assumed that each of the investors has an initial endowment of real resources (say, corn) which can be either consumed invested in investment opportunities available to the investor. A set of simultaneous equations is derived from the model. The set of equations determines the equilibrium values of these interdependent endogenous variables: the amount to be consumed by the investor; the proportion of each investment project be owned by the investor; the amount to be invested in each of the available investment projects; the market value of each project; the market price of risk; and the return imputed by the capital market for a risky project which has a zero-beta risk. If a riskless project exists, the zero-beta rate is just a risk-free rate.

We show that demand effects generated by institutional frictions can influence systematic return predictability patterns in stocks and mutual funds. Identification relies on a reform to the Morningstar rating system, which we show caused a structural break in style-level positive feedback trading by mutual funds. As a result, momentum-related factors in stocks, as well as performance persistence and the “dumb money effect” in mutual funds, experienced a sharp decline. Consistent with the proposed channel, return predictability declined right after the reform, was limited to the U.S. market, and was concentrated in factors and mutual funds most exposed to the mechanism.

In this article, we show that statements of U.S. CEOs on contentious social issues are not necessarily an expression of their political views. Republican-donor CEOs are three times more likely to make social statements with a liberal slant. CEO activism is more likely if firms’ operating environment is politically polarized and employees are Democrat-leaning. Such statements are associated with a 3% increase in consumer visits to a firm’s Democrat County stores without significantly reducing them in Republican counties. CEO activism is associated with a 0.12% gain in firm value, increased quarterly sales, and a reduced likelihood of shareholder activism on social issues.

This article investigates how the asset-return variance risk premium changes leverage. I find that the premium reduces leverage by increasing risk-neutral bankruptcy probability and costs in a model where asset returns have stochastic variance with the risk premium. Empirically, the model calibrations verify a significant reduction in optimal leverage, closer to observed leverage than the model without the premium. In model-free regressions, I document that leverage correlates negatively with the variance premium. The highest negative correlation is among investment-grade firms with low asset beta and historical variance but high variance premiums because their assets have high exposure to the market’s variance premium.

A major issue with predicting inflation rates using predictive regressions is that estimation errors can overwhelm the information content. This article proposes a new approach that uses a monetary-policy rule as a bridge between inflation rates and short-term interest rates and relies on the forward-interest-rate curve to predict future interest-rate movements. The 2-step procedure estimates the predictive relation not through a predictive regression but far more accurately through the contemporaneous monetary-policy linkage. Historical analysis shows that the approach outperforms random walk out of sample by 30%–50% over horizons from 1 to 5 years.

Blockholder disclosure thresholds shape incentives for hedge fund activism, which are jointly determined with real investment and managerial behavior. Uninformed investors value lower thresholds (greater transparency) when the cost of trading against an informed activist outweighs the benefits of the activist’s disciplining of management. Conversely, activists may desire disclosure thresholds if the threat of their participation discourages managerial malfeasance, which is their source of profits. Hedge fund activism can be excessive: If market opacity sufficiently harms uninformed investors, the costs of reduced real investment outweigh the social benefits from managerial disciplining, and society benefits from lower thresholds.

We examine diseconomies of scale for two different investment approaches: quantitative and fundamental. Using separate account (SA) data where the investment approach is self-identified, we find that fundamental SAs exhibit greater diseconomies of scale than quantitative SAs. Looking at liquidity costs, we find that quantitative SAs hold more diversified portfolios of higher liquidity stocks than fundamental SAs, thereby reducing their expected liquidity costs. We also find that consistent with lower information processing/hierarchy costs, the speed of information diffusion is higher for quant SAs. Accounting for these differences helps to explain the differences in diseconomies of scale.

This paper provides a structural approach to testing investment equations based on the log-likelihood function of a nonlinear investment rule. The analysis integrates the predictions of the q-theory for the commonly studied active region of investment and provides new inferences on how real and financing frictions affect the probability that a firm invests. The empirical findings are consistent with the macro-finance literature suggesting that q-theory models with nonconvex investment frictions better explain the data. I also find that both real and financing costs of investment are related to the capital intensity of the industry in which firms operate.

The classical Capital Asset Pricing Model of Sharpe [5] and Lintner [4] has been generalized by Brennan [2, 3] to include the effect of investors' taxes. In Brennan's formulation, investors' portfolio incomes are divided into capital gains and ordinary income components whose marginal tax rates differ both from one another and across investors. In this paper, Brennan's model is further generalized to admit tax–exempt portfolio income as well. The results, which may accord with empirical data better than have those of the less general models, include a three–fund separation theorem, a three–term Capital Asset Pricing Formula which relates the excess rate of return of any risky portfolio to those of three fundamental risky portfolios whose rates of return are pairwise uncorrelated, and a representation suitable for empirical testing.

An equity-linked life insurance policy with an asset value guarantee (ELPAVG) is an insurance policy whose benefit payable on death or at maturity consists of the greater of some guaranteed amount and the value of a reference portfolio which is defined by the deemed investment of a predetermined component of the policy premium in a portfolio of common stocks or mutual fund–the reference fund. In an earlier paper we demonstrated that the benefit payable under an ELPAVG could be decomposed into the known guaranteed amount and an immediately exercisable call option to purchase the reference portfolio for an exercise price equal to the guaranteed amount. The principles of the option pricing model were then employed to derive the equilibrium premium for both a single premium ELPAVG contract and a periodic premium contract. It was further noted that the hedging arguments, which are the core of most of the recent theory of option pricing, could be employed to derive an investment strategy for the insurance company which would eliminate the risks associated with the sale of ELPAVGs: this is an important result, for ELPAVGs may pose a significant threat to the solvency of insurance companies since the risks of loss under different contracts are not independent, but are commonly related to the overall performance of the reference fund. Actuaries have responded to this threat by attempting to determine a level of reserves sufficient to reduce the probability of ruin to an acceptable level. On the other hand, adoption of the riskless investment strategy in theory eliminates the need to hold any reserves except against mortality risk.

This paper generalizes the past signaling literature from one variable to many. Multivariate models have been studied in the general rational expectations literature (e.g., Allen [1], Kraus and Sick [3]), but this appears to be the first multivariate signaling application. (Here, I distinguish signaling from rational expectations literature by the fact that agents may attempt to promulgate, suppress, or add noise to signals.) Talmor studies signaling models which are fully revealing (i.e., for which, in equilibrium, the values of the signaled parameters are correct).

This paper investigates the relationship between interest-rate risk and liquidity premiums on U.S. Treasury bills. Interest-rate risk stems from uncertainty about the future general level of market interest rates.

In this paper the results of some new structural estimates of liquidity preference may be found. The justification for presenting them is that they differ from earlier estimates in certain ways. In some cases, the implications of these estimates differ sharply from the implications drawn by other observers on the basis of their estimates.

This study presents theory and some exploratory empirical work on several separate strands of monetarism in an international context and reports the results of tests of the two interrelated hypotheses: (a) the United States' monetary expansion was responsible forthe exportation of inflation to the rest of the world during the period of generally fixed exchange rates that lasted from the end of World War II until August 1971 (followed by the Smithsonian revaluations and generalized floating in March 1973), and (b) foreign nations could not control their money supplies, even in the short run, to prevent importing inflation. Succinctly stated, the monetarist approach to macroeconomic phenomena holds that money is preeminent in determining the short-run shocks to real output and the long-run price level of an economy. However, received theory is simply not clear as to whose money is most important in an international context. Is it the domestic money stock which is kept relativelyindependent of foreign forces under fixed exchange rates through astute central bank policy, at least in the short run? Is it the rest of the world money stock which, under fixed exchange rates, is a close substitute for domestic money? Or is it the money stock of the so-called world's banker, the United States, which drives foreign economies? We address these issues and others in our empirical analysis.

The dividend decision is a residual corporate decision and yet it is not a residual corporate decision. This theme runs through Professor Higgins' paper. It is based on the one hand on Higgins' belief that other decisions are more important and should take precedence over the dividend decision, and on the other, that the dividend decision is a function of these more important decisions. If dividends were truly residual, they would be explained by the corporate budget identity. In the empirical analysis, however, dividends are a function of other balance sheet decisions. In this sense the decision is neither active nor residual but passive. The reader wonders why the author insists on this role for dividends when interdependency in decision making is the more appealing (and inevitable) framework.