The need for a corporate marginal cost of capital to be used for internal accept-reject decisions (either as a rate of discount for net-present-value (NPV) computations or as a “cut-off” rate with the internal rate of return (IRR) criterion) has led numerous textbook writers to advocate some variant of a weighted average cost of capital. These authors agree substantially on how costs of individual sources of capital are to be assessed but are uncertain of how the weights should be determined, whether they should reflect the firm's existing capital structure, a target structure, or the mix, however determined, in the firm's forthcoming capital budget, and whether they should be based on book or market values. Moreover, it is not obvious how book or even market values should be measured. These writers have not proven that their intuitively held definitions do in general, for capital budgeting, imply maximizing shareholder wealth.

A major benefit of efficient markets is that observed market prices can be assumed to provide an accurate reflection of underlying intrinsic values. For a market to be efficient, however, sufficient numbers of market participants must engage in trading activity to ensure that observed prices are representative of the true but unobserved equilibrium price. Even though the pricing mechanism may impound the effect of all available information, the market price may be biased from the equilibrium price if the market is thin. This paper uses the price behavior of standardized call options traded on the Chicago Board Options Exchange to examine the relation between volume and inside efficiency.

In the evaluation of investment opportunities risk is often a primary consideration. Risk is usually not a factor of such importance, however, in the evaluation of borrowing opportunities. But when the borrowing opportunities include the borrowing of foreign currencies, then the possibility of exchange rate fluctuations during the loan period may introduce a significant component of risk. It is our purpose to develop a method for evaluating and selecting international borrowing sources in the face of exchange rate uncertainties.

In recent years the application of discriminant analysis to two-category (dichotomous) classification problems in empirical financial research has substantially increased. However, these studies have given relatively little attention to design and interpretation difficulties associated with discriminant analysis. Consequently, the conclusions and generalizations that can be drawn from such studies are frequently tenuous and questionable. This paper's purpose is to discuss the methodology of discriminant analysis. While the paper is oriented toward financial applications of discriminant analysis, our discussion is not peculiar to finance. Furthermore, many of the methodological issues we address are relevant to the general problem of developing and testing dichotomous classification models and arise whether model developing is by discriminant analysis or some other method.

Early studies on the effect of holding company affiliation on bank performance yield some curious results (see [9], [11], [12]). Specifically, these studies did not find that holding company affiliation results in changes in capital-asset ratios or bank profitability.

Prior to the recent experience with relatively flexible exchange rates, there was much concern that a high degree of exchange-rate flexibility might somehow overburden the institutions of the foreign-exchange market, particularly the forward market, with disruptive consequences for international commerce. While seldom clearly stated, the reasoning underlying this concern usually proceeded along the following lines. Substantial exchange-rate flexibility would lead business management to expect greater exchange-rate variations, with the result that businesses would seek to cover much more of their foreign-exchange exposure (i.e., would seek to “insure” against the greater exchange-rate risk) by purchasing or selling foreign currency forward. However, foreign-exchange traders either could not accommodate this greatly increased demand for their services, or could accommodate it only at substantially higher cost. Consequently, business firms would significantly reduce the volume of their international transactions.

The efficient market hypothesis implies that the issuance of market information is quickly, reflected in price changes and that the opportunity to profit from its content is highly improbable. This hypothesis has encouraged empirical research, and based on the consensus of evidence, the value of traditional security analysis is strongly questioned. Despite the rigor of these analyses the argument against traditional security analysis remains behaviorally and theoretically limited.

The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically the dividend, investment, and financing decisions of French firms. A basic premise of the study is that increased perspective in business finance can be gained through better understanding of the financial behavior of companies outside one's domestic economy. While the literature of finance and economics includes many significant empirical studies based on dividend, investment, and financing data on American firms, the body of evidence on continental European firms is still relatively small, owing in large part to the difficulties encountered in gathering meaningful financial data on individual firms. In order to examine for the first time the relationship of dividend and investment decisions in France, using well-known models of financial bahavior, we were able to obtain annual data on a sample of French companies over a seven-year period. Our intent is to add to the understanding of the robustness of these models by demonstrating their empirical validity in Europe and to report several differences from previous empirical findings for American firms.

The problem of allocating a fixed set of time-phased investment allowances among competing investment projects and proposals has received great attention in the literature since Weingartner [11] established a linear/integer programming formulation. Reviews of the literature can be found in Weingartner [12], Hunter [6], Hodges [5], and Bernhard [2].

The purpose of this paper is to examine the intertemporal relationship between variations in the prices of individual common stocks and variations in the rest of the stock market. Empirical data are analyzed to determine the frequency with which stock prices precede, occur simultaneously, and follow movements in the market average.

During the last 15 years, the Eurodollar deposit market has grown from perhaps $1 billion to a level now estimated to exceed $200 billion. This growth has prompted numerous arguments and investigations as to its cause [cf. 14, 22, 27], factors influencing it [cf. 24, 28, 29, 32], its import for U.S. banking and monetary policy [cf. 2, 38], its role in international financial market integration [cf. 1, 9, 39], and its impact on the internationalization of U.S. monetary policy [cf. 18, 23]. Over this same period of time, an increasing empirical interest has developed in the term structure of interest rates. Yet most empirical studies of the Eurodollar market [cf. 2, 28, 29, 32] have employed the 90-day Eurodollar CD rate as though it were “the rate of interest” in this market. This tendency has resulted more from the empirical ease of computing covered interest differentials in conjunction with the three–month forward exchange rate than from theoretical considerations [cf. 32, p. 7].

Statistical analyses of price series generated by auction markets has been oriented historically toward the detection of structure (or lack of structure). While the results of such studies have been mixed, insufficient empirical evidence has been obtained on the properties of the measures employed to capture the inherent behavior of the price series. The first differences of the closing price have been shown, theoretically, to be unbiased for a random walk process. The use of averages, particularly the first differences of the midrange, has been shown to introduce spurious serial dependence in mathematical time series. It is the purpose of this article to examine the properties of both the delta close and delta midrange as measures, and to perform a variety of statistical tests and analyses to establish empirically the relationship between them. The predominant effort in seeking this relationship consisted of the spectral analysis of 11 years of May potato futures prices. The results obtained support the contention that the delta midrange amplifies the delta close, and that the amount of amplification is stochastic distortion in the delta midrange.

This paper develops a hypothesis regarding the factors which influence the average maturity of corporate debt, and the hypothesis is tested with a cross-sectional sample of large industrial firms. The sample consists of 159 companies from the Fortune 500 list of the largest industrial firms as of 1971. A linear regression model is developed with the firm's average debt maturity expressed as a function of the firm's asset maturity, size, variability of income, growth, and the proportion of debt in the firm's capital structure.

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.

There is broad consensus that three types of risk confront the potential bond purchaser: the risk of default (possible interest and/or principal loss), the risk of interest rate changes (possible principal loss or gain if the bonds are sold before maturity), and price level risk (loss of purchasing power). The analysis in this paper is directed toward the first of these risks, the risk of default. By assuming that investors require interest rate adjustments on debt subject to default sufficient to give them an expected present value equal to the present value associated with the investment of their funds in default-free securities, we examine the process that determines the risk-adjusted equilibrium interest rate and the factors affecting that rate. We also examine the implications of the model for the cost of debt and a firm's debt capacity.

In their 1958 article Modigliani and Miller showed that if two firms are in the same risk class and in an economy with a perfect capital market having no transaction costs, taxes, or no bankruptcy costs, then their relative market values are independent of their capital structures.

Among the risks inherent in international business operations the exchange rate risk represents one of the important considerations for the managers of multinational firms. Three techniques are well known as effective methods against the erosion of value due to the exchange rate fluctuation. These are (1) use of a forward market, (2) use of monetary balance, and (3) use of foreign currency swap arrangements. While the use of a forward market represents an effective tool against the exchange rate loss in ordinary transactions, the other two are designed for different purposes. The use of monetary balance is a protective device against the erosion of the value of the assets due to the exchange rate fluctuation, whereas the foreign currency swap is a device primarily to protect the value of the investment in countries whose currencies are “soft” in that the likelihood devaluation is so high that forward markets do not even exist.

The investment managers of financial institutions face a multiplicity of factors that influence the performance of fixed coupon securities in their investment portfolios. These factors can be classified under three headings:

1) Condition of the economy–changes in interest rate levels and spreads;

2) Nature of the financial institution–institution's tax rate, economic factors such as deposit variability and loan demand for banks, and premium inflow and benefit payments for insurance companies;

3) Characteristics of individual securities–(a) their attractiveness in terms of risk level and marketability; and (b) their contractual factors (coupon level and maturity) and tax status.

Strides have been made recently in the discovery and refinement of theoretical models which purport to describe the relationship between asset prices and their risk attributes. (See especially Lintner [13,14,15], Sharpe [19], Mosin [17,18] and Fama [7,8.9].) The models have gained widespread acceptance because of their intuitive appeal and because most reported empirical evidence [1,4,5,11,20,21] allegedly supports their predictive value. It is our purpose to analyze critically one aspect of the nature of this evidence, reveal its inherent weakness, and to design an alternative test to examine the risk-return function. After observing the performance of an extremely large number of issues over long periods of time, we find little support for the notion that risk premiums have, in fact, manifested themselves in realized rates of return.

The measurement and determination of risk have received considerable attention in recent years. One measure of risk is systematic risk, defined in terms of the covariance of a security's return with the return from the market portfolio. The relationship is often standardized by dividing the covariance by the variance of return from the market portfolio. Hereafter, this measure of standardized systematic risk shall be referred to as beta.