This paper is concerned with empirical measurement, analysis, and comparison of the returns expected by investors in U. S., German, French and Japanese equity markets. The expedited return to equity is a pivotal concept in capital market theory because of the concern of this theory with analyzing relationships between expected returns to the general market and expected returns to individual securities. Because the expected equity returns are not directly observable, the approach almost uniformly taken in the empirical testing of capital market theory is to make additional behavioral assumptions beyond those contained in the basic theory that enable it to be translated into an analysis of market relationships among ex-post returns. Empirical tests then become tests of both the basic theory and the appended assumptions. A new approach to the empirical testing of capital market relationships is to develop empirical approximations to the returns expected in the equity market, and to employ these expectational measures to directly test capital market relationships. This paper formulates and examines this approach. Empirical approximations of the expected equity return for a representative group of major international stock exchanges are formulated, estimated, and analyzed, leading to a direct test of the International Asset Pricing model in its original form.

A recent study by Larner [11] concluded that the managerial revolution analyzed earlier by Berle and Means [4] was close to completion because a large percentage of the nation's 200 largest nonfinancial corporations was controlled by nonowner managers. This finding makes more significant any substantial differences in financial performance that may exist between owner-controlled and manager-controlled firms, and it increases the potential impact of numerous related theories; for example, see Berle [3], Donaldson [5], Gordon [6, 7 ], Mason [14], Monsen and Downs [16], Williamson [21], and others.

J. W. Elliott, H. L. Uphoff, Predicting the Near Term Profit and Loss Statement with an Econometric Model: A Feasibility Study, Journal of Accounting Research, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Autumn, 1972), pp. 259-274