Knowledge that Transforms

J. M. Keynes' theory of portfolio management (modified and refined by Tobin)occupied an important role in his analysis of the demand for money. According to this theory, financial investors were thought to vary the composition of their portfolios between money and securities on the basis of expected yields on securities. When yields were expected to rise, investors would shift out of securities and into money. Conversely, when yields were expected to fall, investors would shift out of money and into securities. Hence, the asset, or portfolio, demand for money was argued to be negatively related to the expected yields on securities.

The behavioral assumptions which economists call “perfect competition,” imply that decentralized decision making under certain conditions leads to a social optimum. This is a central result of classical economic theory. The author discusses the result, and shows that it cannot be expected to hold when uncertainty is introduced. The point is illustrated by a simple example from business finance.

Robert J. Saunders, On the Interpretation of Models Explaining Cross Sectional Differences Among Commercial Banks, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Mar., 1969), pp. 25-35

Consider an economy consisting of individuals and firms with the following characteristics: all individuals are rational in the von Neumann- Morgenstern sense and non-neutral toward risk; the dividend streams of some firms are certain, while the dividend streams of the other firms are uncertain; and the economy is equipped with perfect financial markets. In this economy, as we show in the present paper, the value of each firm with a certain dividend stream depends only on the dividend stream itself and the set of future interest rates—i.e., the market value of such firms is independent of the attitudes toward risk and the level of wealth of any individual. However, the value of each firm with an uncertain dividend is, with one exception, not independent of anything: it depends not only on the firm's own dividend stream, the set of future interest rates, and (all) individuals' risk attitudes, but also on the wealth levels of these individuals and on the dividend streams of all other firms with uncertain dividends even when these streams are stochastically independent. The exception occurs when the individuals have exponential utility functions of money. In this case, the market value of each firm with uncertain dividends is independent of other dividend streams and of individual wealth levels if these variables are statistically independent of the firm's dividends. Exponential utility functions of money, of course, are not considered empirically plausible.

Most books on capital budgeting have been written by economists, or from the point of view of economics. The primary focus of this literature has been the development of models and criteria for making an optimal selection of investment projects. Fred Hanssmann, Professor of Operations Research at the University of Munich, has written a book that takes a much more pragmatic and eclectic point of view. According to Hanssmann, the outcome of an operations research analysis of a capital investment opportunity cannot be a decision about which projects to accept, because "decision-making situations involve conflicting objectives and therefore require the use of multiple criteria" (p. 13). The proper weight to attach to these criteria is a matter of managerial judgment. The role of operations research is to provide better information to management.

In this article, we shall discuss several of the alternative definitions of risk that have been proposed from time to time. We shall show that one definition — risk is the probability of loss — leads to a formulation of the investment decision problem as a chance constrained problem. Three different strategies are then proposed by which an investor can reduce risk. It is our belief that professional investors utilize all three strategies and that risk, in many such cases, is not a substantial constraint on investor behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to construct a model for the computation of an optimal cash balance for a bank, although it could be adapted to any organization. By a bank we mean to include both commercial banks and savings banks (mutual savings banks and savings and loan associations). One might also be able to adapt the model to an “international bank” such as the United States holdings of gold and foreign exchange.

This article examines some aspects of the portfolio selection problem when the “no-easy-money-condition” holds and the investor is constrained to stay solvent. The possible presence of a non-capital income is also taken into consideration.

The concept of profit sharing—whereby a company provides employees with a contribution above and beyond their regular wages based upon business profits—is very old indeed. Implementation of this concept is witnessed by the many profit sharing plans of all kinds in existence today. However, even though the concept is old and the use widespread, there is a complete void in published literature on the nature of optimal profit sharing plans. It is the purpose of this paper to investigate this subject.

This article has two goals. The first is to contrast two widely used definitions of risk aversion. The second is to establish the feasibility of plunging behavior, in the sense that a possibly large number of risk averse investors will not be diversifiers.