An algorithm to estimate the composition of efficient sets by the stochastic dominance (SD) rules was developed and made available to the public by Porter, Wart, and Ferguson (PWF) [1]. Up to that time the computer central processing unit (CPU) time required for the determination of the SD efficient set was prohibitive for a large number of portfolios. The Porter, Wart, and Ferguson algorithm made possible studies that examined the performance of mutual funds, common stocks, and portfolios using the SD rules. Unfortunately, the FORTRAN program developed by PWF and titled D0MIN2 still requires a large amount of CPU time when the number of portfolios exceeds 100.

Firms with high levels of organization capital (OK), a firm-specific production factor provided by key employees, are known to be risky and earn high stock returns. We argue that fragility of OK (i.e., its sensitivity to potential disruptions) is an independently important dimension of this risk. We proxy for fragility by the size of the top management team and show that firms with small teams outperform firms with big teams by 5% annually. The return spread increases in the level of OK and correlates with the outside options of top executives. Further supporting our interpretation, shocks to team composition from unexpected deaths of chief executive officers cause larger value losses in smaller teams.

We use a unique set of equities in the when-issued market to provide new tests of the law of one price in financial markets. We compare the prices of when-issued and regular way shares of publicly traded subsidiaries and their parents around the time the subsidiaries are fully divested and we find that the when-issued shares of the subsidiary trade at a discount. Pricing differences stem from measurement factors such as exchange location and bid-ask clustering that bias the observed when-issued pricing differential away from zero. The remaining difference is due to asymmetric movements in bid and ask quotes in the two markets. We also find evidence of temporary price pressures on the date of execution of the spinoff of the subsidiary firms that bear resemblance to the pricing in the when-issued market. We interpret the evidence as consistent with the law of one price in the presence of transaction costs and microstructure phenomena.

It is shown that the existing tax law with its incomplete tax-loss offset will often lead to leasing contracts being advantageous to firms. This result obtains even if firms are in the same tax bracket and have the same probability of having positive taxable income.

Recent literature has witnessed the emergence of an impressive body of empirical evidence relating to the relationship which exists between successive security price changes. The great majority of this evidence has tended to support what has come to be known as the theory of random walks in security prices—that is, the theory that successive security price changes behave as independent random variables, which implies that knowledge of “the past history of a series of price changes cannot be used to predict future changes in any ‘meaningful’ way.”

Intermediation, and in particular financial intermediation, is a frequently observed class of activities for which the literature provides little definition. Although intermediaries exist in major proportions of the economy, a precise characterization of an intermediary's function has not appeared. Rather, the academic and pragmatic literature refer to intermediaries by example, generally agreeing that such institutions as banks, insurance companies, etc., are intermediaries. This research addresses the issue of what an intermediary is; that is, what distinguishes the activity of intermediation from other economic activity.

We provide new evidence on how performance-based compensation plans affect CEO decision-making, especially risk-taking. Our main finding is that relative performance evaluation (RPE) plans provide incentives for CEOs to make decisions that generate more idiosyncratic performance outcomes; absolute performance evaluation (APE) plans do not. After switches from APE to RPE, the correlation between firm stock return and industry index return falls and firm idiosyncratic risk increases. Further, switches to RPE are followed by larger deviations in financial, investment, and operating policies from industry norms (i.e., more idiosyncratic strategies). All results are opposite for switches to APE.

We design an experiment to test the hypothesis that, in violation of Bayes’ rule, some people respond more forcefully to the strength of information than to its weight. We provide incentives to motivate effort, use naturally occurring information, and control for risk attitude. We find that the strength–weight bias affects expectations but that its magnitude is significantly lower than originally reported. Controls for nonlinear utility further reduce the bias. Our results suggest that incentive compatibility and controls for risk attitude considerably affect inferences on errors in expectations.

Recent studies on agency problems in private equity fueled the suspicion that fund managers strategically manipulate performance estimates around fundraising times. While these studies use aggregated portfolio data, this paper offers the first analysis of “window dressing” in private equity based on deal-level performance. In contrast to previous findings of a smoking gun at the fund level, I do not find any evidence of inflated performance at the deal level. Fund performance peaks are driven by a cohort effect whereby late investments are made under pressure before fundraising and have lower returns than those made earlier in the fund’s life.

Insiders must disclose indirect trades made through accounts they control, including family, trust, retirement, and foundation accounts. Indirect trades through these accounts are more profitable than direct trades in the insider’s own account. They are also more likely to be made by “opportunistic” insiders who make nonroutine trades, or who trade profitably before earnings announcements, or who have a short investment horizon. These trades contain more predictive information about earnings surprises and large price changes, and they tend to be made by insiders at firms with high information asymmetry. Insiders also make fewer indirect trades following periods of intense regulatory scrutiny.

In a recent article appearing in this journal [2] Jonathan Ingersoll developed a normative multidimensional security pricing model for the individual investor in which he corrected errors in an earlier attempt by William Jean [3] [4] [5] at developing such a model. The purpose of this correction is to clarify and correct certain parts of Ingersoll's correction of Jean's work.

This paper examines the random-walk hypothesis in the forward exchange market by applying spectral analysis to the three-month forward rates for dollars against sterling in the period 1961–1967.

Boquist, Racette, and Schlarbaum [3] and Livingston [6] show that a security systematic risk may be expressed as a function of its duration. These results have led to research examining the role of duration in explaining systematic risk, but Lanstein and Sharpe [5] indicate that Livingston's expression relies on the implicit assumption that extra-market covariances between securities are insignificant. Lanstein and Sharpe argue that such an assumption is unwarranted. They find a significant negative relationship between extra-market covariances and differences in duration between paired samples of common stock. Their paper suggests that duration may be associated with unsystematic risk and that any relation between duration and systematic risk is more complex than implied in [3] and [6].

Researchers and political analysts concerned with the inter-regional flow of mortgage funds have often pointed to the existence of yield differentials as prima facie evidence of misallocation of capital and national resources. Limited information and myopic lending horizons, with market imperfections reinforced by state laws and institutional segmentation, have been postulated. They are regarded as responsible for costly “frictions” in the export of capitalto the fast-growing, generally low-income, states, particularly those of the South. Both federal and state legislative action, intensified private arbitrage, and better secondary market facilities and instruments are then urged to improve inter-regional financial mediation to reduce or eliminate the yield differentials.

In a recent article, Professors Robichek and Van Horne have noted the importance of considering abandonment in the capital budgeting process. The basic point of their paper is that:

… a project should be abandoned at that point in time when its abandonment value exceeds the net-present value of the subsequent expected future cash flows discounted at the cost-of-capital rate.

The algorithm leading to a solution of the above question has been known at least since Kaplan's 1965 tutorial [5] on Sturm's theorem. The Sturm-Kaplan method has the power to count all zeros on the real axis between any two specified limits. A significant problem may arise, however, when one tries to generate the Sturmian functions which play a central part in the Sturm-Kaplan method. The rather arduous nature of the task derives from the necessity to perform several polynomial (synthetic) divisions. As the number of cash flows involved in the analysis increases, the time and effort required to determine the Sturmian functions increase as well.

Fewings [5] and Myers and Turnbull [13] have arrived at diametrically conflicting conclusions regarding the effect of growth on risk as measured by beta, the relative systematic risk in the Sharpe-Lintner-Mossin (SLM) capital asset pricing model. Fewings states his result in an unequivocal way: “…systematic capitalization risk of common stocks is undoubtedly a positive function of the rate of growth of expected corporate earnings” ([5, p. 53]) Myers and Turnbull, on the other hand, state their result in a more conditional form, making the result depend on the nature of market expectations revisions but conclude that “increasing the growth rate decreases B …” ([13], P. 327).

We utilize the decennial U.S. Census to study social effects in housing consumption across 4 million households from 126 ethnic groups and 2,071 geographic locations in the United States. We find that the homeownership decisions within ethnic groups are locally correlated, after controlling for the homeownership rates within the group and the region. Social influence is stronger for younger, less educated, and lower-income individuals; immigrants; and Americans with ancestors from more unequal, uncertainty-avoiding, and collectivistic cultures. Our results suggest that both status and information considerations play an important role in the social comparison process in capital markets.

We provide evidence on market structure and the cost of raising capital by examining changes in market structure in U.S. equity markets. Only the Order Handling Rules (OHR) of the Nasdaq, the one reform that reduced institutional trading costs, lowered the cost of raising capital. Using a difference-in-differences framework relative to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) that exploits the OHR’s staggered implementation, we find that the OHR reduced the underpricing of seasoned equity offerings by 1–2 percentage points compared with a pre-OHR average of 3.6%. The effect is the largest in stocks with the largest reduction in institutional trading costs after the OHR.

We examine impediments to liquidity provision by mutual funds to insurance companies during corporate bond fire sales. We find that financial regulation and limited capital capacity significantly affect liquidity provision. Mutual funds reduced their purchase of fire-sale bonds following regulatory changes after the 2008–2009 financial crisis. Funds facing more capital constraints (proxied by smaller cash and Treasury holdings, less liquid corporate bond investments, higher redemption risk, and less active investment styles) provide less liquidity. Mutual funds actively investing in fire-sale bonds earn significant returns from liquidity provision and demonstrate superior overall skills in corporate bond investments.