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Journal of Political Economy Vol. 91 No. 1 1983

Effects of Nominal Contracting on Stock Returns

Kenneth R. French; Richard S. Ruback; G. William Schwert

open access

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of unexpected inflation on the returns to the common stock of companies with different short-term monetary positions, and different long-term monetary positions, and different amounts of nominal tax shields. Unlike most previous studies of the effects of nominal contracting, we distinguish between expected and unexpected inflation in our tests. Surprisingly, over the 1947-79 period there is little evidence that stockholders of net debtor firms benefit from unexpected inflation relative to the stockholders of net creditor firms. We conclude that wealth effects caused by unexpected inflation are not an important factor in explaining the behavior of stock prices.

DOI
10.1086/261129
Volume
91
Issue
1
Pages
70-96
Language
en
Sources
openalex crossref

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