Knowledge that Transforms

John G. McDonald, Bertrand Jacquillat, Maurice Nussenbaum, Dividend, Investment and Financing Decisions: Empirical Evidence on French Firms, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 10, No. 5 (Dec., 1975), pp. 741-755

In recent years the expected-utility approach to decision making under risk has gained increasing acceptance among portfolio theorists. On the other hand, the mean-variance (MV) approach of Markowitz [13], which has dominated portfolio theory in the past, continues to enjoy great popularity. In MV theory, the investor is assumed to rank his preferences for risky returns solely in terms of their means and variances, with higher means and lower variances, being preferred. Tobin [20] showed that MV theory is consistent with expected utility theory in the special case of joint-normally distributed asset returns. The MV approach enjoys a ready acceptance among practitioners, and requires only modest informational and computational inputs. Perhaps its most attractive feature is its ability to decompose the overall portfolio problem into a sequence of much simpler problems: first, the “efficient” set of portfolios (which minimize variance for any given mean return) is calculated, and then the investor chooses one of the efficient portfolios in a manner consistent with his personal preferences. This efficient set is the same for all investors having the same mean-variance-covariance estimates of risky-asset returns, and can, in principle, be determined once and for all using parametric quadratic programming [12, 22] Despite these real advantages, the MV theory embodies certain problems of principle in the case of nonnormally distributed asset returns, and this fact has led to increasing emphasis on the presumably more rational expected-utility theory.

Portfolio analysis has generally been restricted to problems in, at most, two dimensions, expected return and risk, the latter usually measured by standard deviation. In two papers Jean [2, 4] has attempted to extend the analysis to three and many dimensions by deriving risk premiums as functions of higher order moments. This paper corrects several errors in his work and derives a normative, individual pricing model for risky securities analogous to the capital market line within the framework of a perfect market.

It is not uncommon on occasions such as this to talk about the shortcomings in the theory of Finance, and to emphasize how little progress has been made in answering the basic questions in Finance, despite enormous research efforts. Indeed, it is not uncommon on such occasions to attack our basic "mythodology, " particularly the "Ivory Tower " nature of our assumptions, as the major reasons for our lack of progress. Like a Sunday morning sermon, such talks serve many useful functions. For one, they serve to deflate our professional egos. For another, they serve to remind us that the importance of a contribution as judged by our professional peers (the gold we really work for) is often not closely aligned with its operational importance in the outside world. Also, such talks serve to comfort those just entering the field, by letting them know that there is much left to do because so little has been done. While such talks are not uncommon, this is not what my talk is about. Rather, my discussion centers on the positive progress made in the development of a theory of Finance using the continuous-time mode of analysis. Hearing this in.1975, amidst an economic recession with a baffling new disease called "stagflation " and with our financial markets only beginning to recover from the worst

M. J. Brennan, The Optimal Number of Securities in a Risky Asset Portfolio When There are Fixed Costs of Transacting: Theory and Some Empirical Results, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Sep., 1975), pp. 483-496

William Beaver, James Manegold, The Association Between Market-Determined and Accounting-Determined Measures of Systematic Risk: Some Further Evidence, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Jun., 1975), pp. 231-284

John S. Hughes, Dennis E. Logue, Richard James Sweeney, Corporate International Diversification and Market Assigned Measures of Risk and Diversification, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 10, No. 4, 1975 Proceedings (Nov., 1975), pp. 627-637

In recent years the application of discriminant analysis to two-category (dichotomous) classification problems in empirical financial research has substantially increased. However, these studies have given relatively little attention to design and interpretation difficulties associated with discriminant analysis. Consequently, the conclusions and generalizations that can be drawn from such studies are frequently tenuous and questionable. This paper's purpose is to discuss the methodology of discriminant analysis. While the paper is oriented toward financial applications of discriminant analysis, our discussion is not peculiar to finance. Furthermore, many of the methodological issues we address are relevant to the general problem of developing and testing dichotomous classification models and arise whether model developing is by discriminant analysis or some other method.

The question of whether large banks should be allowed to fail brings us face to face with a conflict between two social goals. On the one hand, the goal of optimal resource allocation suggests that even very large banks, like other firms, should be allowed to fail. On the other hand, the stabilization goal suggests that, given the present institutional structure, failures of large banks should be prevented lest they lead to runs on other banks and to a significant reduction in the money stock. The solution suggested here for this conflict is small changes in the institutional structure.

Robert A. Haugen, A. James Heins, Risk and the Rate of Return on Financial Assets: Some Old Wine in New Bottles, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 10, No. 5 (Dec., 1975), pp. 775-784