Knowledge that Transforms

To assure that the commercial banking industry's performance serves the “convenience and needs” of the public, bank supervisory authorities have been vested with broad powers to alter the competitive environment in bank markets. While several criteria have been used to evaluate the effects of entry, merger, branching, and other changes in the allocation of bank resources, the results have been largely inconclusive. Since the regulatory authorities have pursued somewhat conflicting objectives in seeking a “failure-proof” system that is also “efficient, ” there may be no single criterion for evaluation of bank behavior that is wholly consistent with the behavior predicted by the neoclassical theory of the firm.

Articles by Sharpe [1], Lintner [2], and Hastie [3] introduce concepts of systematic and unsystematic risk associated with portfolio rate of return. Defining risk as variation in portfolio return, such risk comprises two elements:1. Systematic risk or variation, which is the covariation of portfolio rate of return with market rate of return.2. Unsystematic risk or variation, which is the difference between total portfolio variation and systematic variation. Unsystematic variation is therefore variation due to attributes of individual securities.

Robert H. Litzenberger, A. P. Budd, A Note on Geometric Mean Portfolio Selection and the Market Prices of Equities, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 6, No. 5 (Dec., 1971), pp. 1277-1282

Robert A. Haugen, James L. Pappas, Equilibrium in the Pricing of Capital Assets, Risk-Bearing Debt Instruments, and the Question of Optimal Capital Structure, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Jun., 1971), pp. 943-953

In the allocation of capital to investment projects, it is unlikely that optimal decisions will be reached unless anticipated inflation is embodied in the cash-flow estimates. Often, there is a tendency to assume that price levels remain unchanged throughout the life of the project. Frequently this assumption is imposed unknowingly; future cash flows are estimated simply on the basis of existing prices. However, a bias arises in that the cost-of-capital rate used as the acceptance criterion embodies an element attributable to anticipated inflation, while the cash-flow estimates do not. Although this bias may not be serious when there is modest inflation, it may become quite important in periods of high anticipated inflation. The purpose of this note is to investigate the nature of the bias and how it arises.

Markowitz [12] and Tobin [19] pioneered in the development of a portfolio selection model resting on the assumptions that the investor1. Chooses among alternative investment opportunities solely on the basis of expected return (E) and standard deviation of return 〈σ〉, and2. Prefers more expected return to less but will refuse to incur additional risk (measured by standard deviation) unless compensated by increased expected return.

A perfect capital market is a key assumption in recent theories of security pricing. It is assumed that the costs of transactions, information-gathering, and portfolio management are all zero, and that no investor is so large as to exert an appreciable effect on either the risk-free interest rate or the yield on risky securities. If, in this perfect capital market, investors have identical decision horizons and homogeneous expectations, then there is a unique optimal portfolio of risky securities. Since this unique portfolio must include every security in proportion to its relative valuation in the capital market, it is referred to as the “market” portfolio. When the capital market reaches equilibrium, the expected return of every security will be a linear function of the expected return of the market portfolio. From this relationship Lintner and Mossin have separately derived valuation formulas that express the market price of a security as a function of the security[s end-of-period expected value, its risk as measured by the variance and covariances of this end-of-period value, the market price of risk within the portfolio, and the risk-free rate of interest.

The advent of the computer has permitted financial theorists to collect and analyze large amounts of financial data. In the field of investments some of the most important work has focused on historical rates of return in investments in common stocks. The classical study in this area is the Fisher-Lorie study [8, 9] in which intern al rates of return were calculated for every security listed on the New York Stock Exchange from 1926–1965. Other studies related to the area have been complicated by Herzog [10], Fisher [6, 7], Latané and Young [11], Soldofsky and Biderman [12], and Evans [3, 4].

Some recent empirical studies have concluded that the common stock investor can virtually eliminate diversifiable risk with a portfolio that contains a “small” number of separate common stock issues [5, 6, 10, 11, 13]. The conclusion has several important implications. One of the inherent limitations of a portfolio manager is his inability to evaluate an infinite number of securities. The seriousness of this problem is directly related to the risks associated with a “small” portfolio. The economic function of a mutual fund industry is to provide diversification and professional management. If it is assured that a “small” portfolio can virtually eliminate diversifiable risk, the necessity of these functions may be questioned. In addition, the strategy of concentration may be less “risky” than is commonly supposed. Finally, the modern portfolio models generally assume that portfolio additions are costless.

The results of this study indicate that the individual common stocks in the Dow-Jones. Industrial Average were not consistent inflation hedges. Assuming an 8.2 percent normal required rate of return, none of the common stocks was a complete inflation hedge during all three recent inflationary periods tested. Even assuming a zero normal required rate of return á la traditional investment theory, only six (20 percent) of the thirty common stocks sampled were inflation hedges during all three inflationary periods.