Individuals’ stock market participation depends on the risk-return trade-off they expect to achieve. We find that the expected economic benefits of investing are highly heterogeneous. We define the personal equity risk premium (PERP) as the difference between an individual's expectation of returns and personal opportunity cost of capital. Higher PERP is associated with greater stock market participation. Our results hold after we control for known factors, such as financial literacy, trust, and loss aversion, and are stronger for the level of stock investment. Disentangling PERP shows that both components help explain both stock market participation and the level of participation.

We study incremental capital structure decisions of Dutch companies. From 1977 to 1996 these companies have made 110 issues of public and private seasoned equity and 137 public issues of straight debt. Managers of Dutch companies are entrenched. For this reason a discrepancy exists between managerial decisions and shareholder reactions. Confirming Zwiebel [American Economic Review (1996) 1197–1215] we find that Dutch managers avoid the disciplining role of debt allowing them to overinvest. However, the market reactions show that this overinvestment behavior is recognized. We do not find a confirmation of the adverse selection model of Myers and Majluf [Journal of Financial Economics (1984) 187–221]. This is probably due to the entrenchment of managers and the prevalence of rights issues.

This study investigates the announcement effects of offerings of convertible bond loans and warrant-bond loans using data for the Dutch market. The event study analysis shows that announcement effects of convertible bonds are associated with positive but insignificant abnormal returns and that announcements of warrant-bonds are associated with significant positive abnormal returns. These findings are similar to the results for Japanese hybrid debt, as reported by Kang et al. (1995) (Kang, J.K., Kim, Y.C., Park, K.J., Stulz, R.M., 1995. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, pp. 257–270) and Kang and Stulz (1996) (Kang, J.K., Stulz, R.M., 1996. Review of Financial Studies, pp. 109–139), but they contrast with studies for the United States that generally find significant negative abnormal returns for convertible bond loans and insignificant negative abnormal returns for warrant-bond loans. Our results cannot be attributed to differences in the corporate governance structures of the Netherlands and the United States. We find that the positive abnormal returns for the warrant-bond loans are caused by the packaging of the announcements with other (good) firm-specific news.

One-period expected returns on futures contracts with different maturities differ because of risk premia in the spreads between futures and spot prices. We analyze the expected returns for futures contracts with different maturities using the information that is present in the current term structure of futures prices. A simple affine one-factor model that implies a constant covariance between the pricing kernel and the cost-of-carry cannot be rejected for heating oil and German Mark futures contracts. For gold and soybean futures, the risk premia depend on the slope of the current term structure of futures prices, while for live cattle futures, the evidence is mixed.

The question of why individual investors want dividends is investigated by submitting a questionnaire to a Dutch investor panel. The respondents indicate that they want dividends partly because the cost of cashing in dividends is lower than the cost of selling shares. Their answers provide strong confirmation for the signaling theories of Bhattacharya (1979) [Bhattacharya, S., 1979. Imperfect information, dividend policy and the “bird in the hand” fallacy. Bell Journal of Economics 10, 259–270] and Miller and Rock (1985) [Miller, M., Modigliani, F., 1961. Dividend policy, growth and the valuation of shares. Journal of Business 34, 411–433]. They are inconsistent with the uncertainty resolution theory of Gordon (1961, 1962) [Gordon, M., 1961. The Investment, Financing, and Valuation of the Corporation, Richard D. Irwin, Homewood, IL; Gordon, M., 1962. The savings, investment and valuation of a corporation. Review of Economics and Statistics 44, 37–51.] and the agency theories of Jensen (1986) [Jensen, M.C., 1986. Agency costs of free cash flow, corporate finance and takeovers. American Economic Review 76, 323–329] and Easterbrook (1984) [Easterbrook, F.H., 1984. Two agency-cost explanations of dividends. American Economic Review 74, 650–659]. The behavioral finance theory of Shefrin and Statman (1984) [Shefrin, H.M., Statman, M., 1984. Explaining investor preference for cash dividends. Journal of Financial Economics 13, 253–282] is not confirmed for cash dividends but is confirmed for stock dividends. Finally, our results indicate that individual investors do not tend to consume a large part of their dividends. This raises some doubt as to whether a reduction or elimination of dividend taxes will stimulate the economy.

Competitive threats motivate firms to use convertible debt because the possibility of future conversion enhances financial flexibility. Consistent with this intuition, we find that the intensity of competitive threats is positively associated with convertible debt financing at both the extensive and intensive margins. By using large tariff reductions as exogenous shocks to competition we show that this relation is likely causal. Convertible debt usage in response to competitive threats strongly depends on a firm’s relative financial and competitive conditions. In addition, firms increase the probability of future conversion by tailoring convertible debt features.

We review the literature on the issuance motives, shareholder wealth effects, and design of convertible bonds. Empirical studies on convertible debt issuance mainly focus on testing the predictions of four traditional theoretical models based on convertibles' potential to mitigate agency or adverse selection costs, and obtain mixed evidence. Recent studies on shareholder wealth effects of convertible bond issues highlight the need to control for arbitrage-related short selling and post-issuance risk changes. Studies on the determinants of convertible bond design uncover earnings management, as well as catering incentives to convertible arbitrage funds, as important determinants of innovations in convertible bond characteristics. Overall, our review indicates that recent empirical research on convertible debt provides valuable insights into issue motives and determinants of financial innovations, but also considers the broader question of how investor demand characteristics impact corporate finance decisions. We conclude with an overview of potential research questions to be addressed by future research on hybrid securities.

We present a simple model implying that futures risk premia depend on both own‐market and cross‐market hedging pressures. Empirical evidence from 20 futures markets, divided into four groups (financial, agricultural, mineral, and currency) indicates that, after controlling for systematic risk, both the futures own hedging pressure and cross‐hedging pressures from within the group significantly affect futures returns. These effects remain significant after controlling for a measure of price pressure. Finally, we show that hedging pressure also contains explanatory power for returns on the underlying asset, as predicted by the model.

We analyze call announcement returns taking into account two recent developments in the convertible bond market: the inclusion of dividend protection clauses in convertibles' terms, and the high fraction of convertible issues purchased by hedge funds. Calls of dividend-protected convertible bonds are predictable, yet we still observe a negative stock price reaction that cannot be explained by signaling. Greater hedge fund involvement prior to a call means less short selling in response to the call and we document a reduced price reaction. We conclude that price pressure and not signaling underlies the negative announcement effect of convertible bond calls.