Stewart C. Myers, Dynamic Programming Applications in Finance: Discussion, The Journal of Finance, Vol. 26, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the American Finance Association Detroit, Michigan December 28-30, 1970 (May, 1971), pp. 538-539

In “Valuation Under Uncertainty, ” which recently appeared in this Journal (September 1967), Houng-Yhi Chen argues [1, pp. 313–314] that “Robichek and Myers' criticism [2, 3] of the use of the risk-adjusted discount rate is unfounded, ” and suggests that our “conclusions must be based in part on a misunderstanding of the risk-adjusted discount rate method.” These charges are without foundation, as we will show here.

This paper considers several related problems in the theory of optimal capital structure for corporations. It is divided into four sections, which may be briefly summarized as follows.1. Modigliani and Miller (MM) proposed that under the assumption of perfect markets and in the absence of taxes on corporate income, the total market value of the firm is unaffected by leverage. They showed that the leverage irrelevance proposition holds for “non-growth” firms when all investors agree in their estimates of the expected amount and the risk of each firm's future earnings. In section I, we show that this conclusion is not affected by growth trends or heterogeneous investor expectations. However, our analysis uncovers several additional assumptions which must be made explicitly for MM's Proposition I to hold. These additional assumptions pertain to the effects of leverage on the firm's future financing needs and future investment decisions. The generalized state-preference framework used for this demonstration is retained for subsequent discussion.

This paper tests traditional capital structure models against the alternative of a pecking order model of corporate financing. The basic pecking order model, which predicts external debt financing driven by the internal financial deficit, has much greater time-series explanatory power than a static tradeoff model, which predicts that each firm adjusts gradually toward an optimal debt ratio. We show that our tests have the power to reject the pecking order against alternative tradeoff hypotheses. The statistical power of some usual tests of the tradeoff model is virtually nil.

This paper considers a firm that must issue common stock to raise cash to undertake a valuable investment opportunity. Management is assumed to know more about the firm's value than potential investors. Investors interpret the firm's actions rationally. An equilibrium model of the issue-invest decision is developed under these assumptions. The model shows that firms may refuse to issue stock, and therefore may pass up valuable investment opportunities. The model suggests explanations for several aspects of corporate financing behavior, including the tendency to rely on internal sources of funds, and to prefer debt to equity if external financing is required. Extensions and applications of the model are discussed.

We develop a dynamic agency model of a public corporation. Managers underinvest because of risk aversion. They smooth rents and payout. They do not exploit interest tax shields fully. The interactions of investment, debt, and payout decisions can change drastically depending on managers’preferences. Managers with power utility set investment, debt, and payout proportional to the firm’s net worth, generating a constant (possibly negative) net debt ratio. With exponential utility, investment decisions are separated from decisions about debt and payout. More profitable firms become cash cows, and less profitable firms accumulate debt, as in a pecking-order model.

This paper is a progress report on our effort to measure and analyze the profitability of U.S. corporations over the postwar period. We are particularly interested in comparing the behavior of manufacturing corporations (MC) to that of the larger aggregate of all nonfinancial corporations (NFC). We analyzed NFCs in an earlier paper using data from both capital markets and the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA). This paper's approach is basically the same.' Rates of return derived from the NIPA are solid, useful numbers. However, we believe the capital market data are essential. A decline in the real rate of return on capital does not make investors worse off or weaken the incentive to invest if the real cost of capital declines proportionally. Also, an independent measure of rate of return can be obtained from returns realized by investors in debt and equity securities. If the only object were to measure corporate profitability, we believe market rates of return would be superior to the NIPA figures. However, both types of data are needed to investigate the determinants of profitability and to assess profitability relative to the cost of capital.