During the first half of the 1960s the U.S. Treasury conducted eleven advanced refundings. Publicly held Treasury securities aggregating $188, 631 million were made eligible for exchange and $62, 642 million were exchanged — an aggregate exchange ratio of 33 percent.

This paper presents the results of a study which sought to determine whether the status of large member banks as owner-controlled or management-controlled has borne a significant relation to bank profit rates during recent years. The impetus for the study was provided by the view, encountered frequently in the literature, that management-controlled firms may place less emphasis on profit rate than owner-controlled firms, sacrificing it for performance goals regarded as more consistent with management interest. W. Baumo.1 [1, p. 4 and pp. 101–104], for example, has argued that management-controlled firms may sacrifice profit rate in order to achieve higher growth rate and reduced risk acceptance. R. Monsen and A. Downs [11] suggest that such firms may sacrifice both profit rate and growth rate for reduced risk acceptance. K. Cohen and S. Reid, in their study of bank merger activity during 1952–1961 [5], argue that bank managers, as compared to bank owners, place more emphasis on growth rate and less emphasis on profit-associated variables. Other possibilities present themselves. Management-controlled firms may sacrifice profit rate directly for management salaries, bonuses, and fringe benefits, including benefits associated with management prestige. The management-controlled firms may simply pursue efficiency less vigorously.

The arithmetic formulas appearing in the mathematics of finance are practically useless unless one has available either excellent tables and infinite patience, or working computer programs, a machine, and a budget. The present article shows how a number of useful topics in this area can be dealt with effectively by the more tractable mathematics of continuous processes. The methods yield approximate answers of high quality, and in some cases exact answers as well, with small effort, and have obvious applications in “truth in lending” investigations.

In a recent article in this Journal, Jacob B. Michaelson and Robert C. Goshay (hereafter M-G) argue that the rule of maximizing share values does not adequately explain the portfolio selection practices of financial intermediaries. Moreover, M-G suggest that their analysis “has ramifications that reach far beyond financial intermediaries.” In particular, they state that “the asset holdings of conglomerate firms and the rationale for mergers may not be fully explicable in terms of maximizing behavior.”

This paper presents the results of a simulation study of the dynamic characteristics of the model built by Professor Chow whose purpose was to study statistically the relevance of the multiplier, accelerator, and liquidity preference as determinants of the national income of the United States.

One of the difficulties of evaluating formula plans by testing them in the light of past experience is the fact that there is no index of bond experience which simulates typical portfolio performance. Bond indices are stated in terms of yields with constant maturities, but the capital values of bonds vary according to their maturities given the same yield. Cottle and Whitman used elaborate techniques to make their bond portion of the total portfolio realistic, but were only partially successful. This writer also attempted to eliminate the problem of simulating the bond portfolio in a previous paper by assuming that the defensive portion of the portfolio was invested in a Savings and Loan account receiving the national average return. This procedure thus ignored the problem of bond maturities and variation in capital values due to changes in interest rates.

Recent theoretical and empirical work in portfolio theory has exhibited a natural evolution from the two-moment EV model popularized by Markowitz through the higher moment models to selection on the basis of the entire probability function. This latter approach, referred to as the Stochastic Dominance (SD) approach to portfolio selection, has been shown to be theoretically superior to all of the “moment methods” and has been the focus of an increasing volume of empirical work.

Most textbooks in finance are apparently embarrassed by the Modigliani-Miller (MM) theorem on capital structure. The intense controversy it has provoked in academic circles over the past sixteen years makes it hard to ignore, and yet many textbook writers seem to be unable to distill anything from it that might be of interest to their readers. A typical example might begin by laying out the economist's conventional perfect market assumptions and showing that the theorem may be derived deductively from these assumptions. It is then observed that markets are not perfect and it is implied that perfect market theorems, while perhaps interesting to ivory-tower academics, are of no use to a businessman who has to act in imperfect real-world markets. (For example, Weston and Brigham [16], in their appendix to Chapter 11, on p. 339 state: “Given their assumptions, their theoretical arguments were quite correct. However, their assumptions have been questioned extensively, and very few authorities today accept the MM position.”) We are then returned rather uneasily to the traditional world of U-shaped cost of capital curves, in which managers are required to examine such holy relics as financial break-even charts (Van Home [15, p. 231]) or to exercise judgment about the stockholders' utility preferences (Weston and Brigham [16, p. 258]) in order to make their debt/equity decision.

J. Michael Pinegar, R. Ravichandran, U.S. Investors' Perceptions of Corporate Control in Mexico: Evidence from Sibling ADRs, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Mar., 2003), pp. 213-230