Knowledge that Transforms

Prior work with competitive rational expectations equilibrium models indicates that there should be a positive relation between trading volume and differences in beliefs or information among traders. We show that this result is sensitive to whether and how transaction costs are modeled. In a specialist market with endogenous transaction costs we show that trading volume can be negatively related to the degree of informational asymmetry in the market. Our analysis highlights the dependence of volume on market structure, and our results suggest that the “volume effects” of corporate or macroeconomic events reflect a decrease, rather than an increase, in heterogeneity of beliefs or asymmetry of information.

This article examines the effect of tax factors on the equity values of U.S. multinational corporations making foreign acquisitions. Abnormal stock returns are found to be related to a tax variable that captures differences in the international tax status of acquiring firms but not related to a naive tax variable that captures differences between tax rates in target countries and the United States. Our evidence suggests that aggregate intercountry differentials in after‐tax returns are competed away, while firm‐specific, tax‐related advantages (or disadvantages) are reflected in abnormal returns around the announcement date of the acquisition.

This article uses the articles and citations from a set of eight finance journals to explore interjournal citation patterns, the research interests of individual journals, each journal's influence in particular areas, areas of recent interest to finance, and the extent of interdisciplinary borrowing by finance. We find the following: two journals comprise the research core of finance research, most journals publish in a variety of research areas but are influential in a smaller number, a higher level of interest in financial markets than in corporate finance or financial institutions, and an overall low level of borrowing from outside disciplines.

In 1936, the Federal Government unexpectedly imposed a tax on undistributed corporate profits. Despite the direct costs of the tax, its announcement produced a positive revaluation of corporate equity, particularly among lower‐payout firms. We interpret this as evidence of a divergence between managerial and shareholder preferences regarding dividend payout policies, consistent with the presence of agency costs. We also find that despite the incentives created by the tax, the actual growth in dividends during 1936 was lower among firms judged more likely to be subject to higher agency costs after controlling for liquidity, debt, and the growth in earnings.

Merton H. Miller, Jayaram Muthuswamy, Robert E. Whaley, Mean Reversion of Standard & Poor's 500 Index Basis Changes: Arbitrage-Induced or Statistical Illusion?, The Journal of Finance, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Jun., 1994), pp. 479-513

The Euler equations derived from intertemporal asset pricing models, together with the unconditional moments of asset returns, imply a lower bound on the volatility of the intertemporal marginal rate of substitution. This paper develops and implements statistical tests of these lower bound restrictions. While the availability of short time series of consumption data often undermines the ability of these tests to discriminate among different utility functions, we find that the restrictions implied by a number of widely studied financial data sets continue to pose quite a challenge to the current generation of intertemporal asset pricing theories.

Numerous empirical studies document patterns in the means and variances of security returns measured over periods that are punctuated by market closures. This article develops a multiperiod model in which closures delay the resolution of uncertainty, thereby redistributing risk across time and agents. Since agents are risk averse in the model, this redistribution affects the equilibrium price, altering risk premia, liquidity costs, and the degree of informational asymmetry. As a consequence, closures alter both the means and variances of returns. The article demonstrates that closures can generate a variety of mean and variance effects, including those that mirror the empirical phenomena.

This article analyzes the interaction between a firm's dynamic investment, operating, and financing decisions in a model with operating adjustment and recapitalization costs. Using numerical analysis, we solve the model for cases that highlight interaction effects. We find that higher production flexibility (due to lower costs of shutting down and reopening a production facility) enhances the firm's debt capacity, thereby increasing the net tax shield value of debt financing. While higher financial flexibility (resulting from lower recapitalization costs) has a similar effect, production flexibility and financial flexibility are, to some extent, substitutes. We find that the impact of debt financing on the firm's investment and operating decisions is economically insignificant.