Knowledge that Transforms

Robert A. Eisenbeis, Consequences of Deregulation for Commercial Banking: Discussion, The Journal of Finance, Vol. 39, No. 3, Papers and Proceedings, Forty-Second Annual Meeting, American Finance Association, San Francisco, CA, December 28-30, 1983 (Jul., 1984), pp. 803-805

This paper relates the value of additional information to asset prices in a pure exchange setting. The price structure of interest revolves around a “pricing-hypothesis”: the prices in an economy with less information are unbiased estimators of the prices that would obtain in a more informative economy. Two basic results are developed. First, if the incremental information is useless then the pricing-hypothesis applies. Second, if the pricing hypothesis is assumed valid, then the information is valuable in a weak sense. The results are also considered in the context of empirical research. The case is made for viewing statistical tests of association between prices and signals as tests of the social value of information.

This paper examines inflation-induced distortions in personal and corporate income taxes and discusses the implications for corporate dividend and financial structure policies and for shareholder unanimity. The tax effects relating to capital gains and debt interest cause changes in aggregate corporate borrowing and lead to equilibrium tax relationships which differ from the zero-inflation tax relationships.

This paper analyzes the economic role of commodity bonds by examining the nature of the demand for these securities. I show that while commodity bonds protect against relative price changes, they do so by introducing variability into the future real income stream. This variability limits the desirability of using commodity bonds to provide “price insurance” for future consumption. However, this variability may allow commodity bonds to hedge risks to consumption caused by stochastic changes in income. The analysis also suggests that it is this “income insurance” rather than “price insurance” that is important in hedging risks to future consumption.

This paper presents the Mean-Gini (MG) approach to analyze risky prospects and construct optimum portfolios. The method possesses the simplicity of the mean-variance model with the efficiency of stochastic dominance. Hence, Gini's mean difference is superior to the variance for evaluating the variability Of a prospect. The analysis is further extended with the concentration ratio that permits to classify different securities with respect to their relative riskiness. The MG approach is then applied to capital markets and the security valuation theorem is derived as a general relationship between average return and risk. This is further extended to include a degree of risk aversion that can be estimated from capital market data.

Ronald W. Masulis, How Big is the Tax Advantage to Debt?: Discussion, The Journal of Finance, Vol. 39, No. 3, Papers and Proceedings, Forty-Second Annual Meeting, American Finance Association, San Francisco, CA, December 28-30, 1983 (Jul., 1984), pp. 853-855

Stephen J. Brown, Benefits of Bank Diversification: The Evidence from Shareholder Returns: Discussion, The Journal of Finance, Vol. 39, No. 3, Papers and Proceedings, Forty-Second Annual Meeting, American Finance Association, San Francisco, CA, December 28-30, 1983 (Jul., 1984), pp. 893-894