This article suggests that the lack of use of rights offerings in the United States, a phenomenon referred to as the equity underwriting paradox, can be explained by transaction costs. A sample of underwritten rights offerings provides support for the explanation. Firms making underwritten rights offerings paid lower underwriter fees but incurred significantly larger price drops just prior to the offering than did firms making underwritten offerings. Further analysis reveals that the underwritten-rights-offering price concessions are a form of transaction cost that is not found in underwritten public offerings.

This paper investigates empirically a model of aggregate consumption and leisure decisions in which utility from goods and leisure is nontime-separable. The nonseparability of preferences accommodates intertemporal substitution or complementarity of leisure and thereby affects the comovements in aggregate compensation and hours worked. These cross-relations are examined empirically using postwar monthly U. S. data on quantities, real wages, and the real return on the one-month Treasury bill. The estimated values of the parameters governing preferences differ significantly from the values assumed in several studies of real business models. Several possible explanations of these discrepancies are discussed.