This article provides a stochastic valuation framework for bond and stock returns that builds on three different pricing traditions: affine models of the term structure, present-value pricing of equities, and consumption-based asset pricing. Our model provides a more general application of the...

During the decade 1983-1992, approximately 1.4 trillion dollars of municipal bonds were sold in 87 thousand separate issues, primarily to finance capital projects for education, electric power, transportation, health care, housing and other public and private purpose activities. Approximately...

We present evidence that the mix of transitory and permanent shocks to consumption is changing over time. We study the implications of this finding for asset prices. The uncovered dynamics of consumption implies modestly upward sloping real bond and equity curves, upward sloping nominal yield...

The very low real interest rates on bonds in the 1970's were accompanied by a large drop in the value of common stocks relative to dividends and earnings. More generally, a number of authors have demonstrated that the real prices of debt and equity claims do not covary closely, and often move in...

The purpose of this paper is to compare the pricing of bank loans and bonds in international markets. The results obtained, using data on LDC debtors, indicate that in both markets the country risk premium has responded to some of the variables suggested by the theory. However, the way in which...

This paper tests several competing models of municipal bond market equilibrium. It analyzes the influence of changes in both personal and corporate tax reforms on the yield spread between taxable and tax-exempt interest rates. The findings suggest that changes in personal income tax rates have...

This paper explores the risk structure of interest rates. More specifically, we ask whether yields on industrial and commercial bonds indicate that market participants base their evaluations of a bond issue's default risk on agency ratings or on publically available financial statistics. Using a...

The assumption that bondholders follow either a buy-and-hold or a continuous realization trading policy, rather than the optimal trading policy,is at variance with reality and, as we demonstrate, may seriously bias the estimation of the yield curve and the implied tax bracket of the marginal...

This paper explores both theoretically and enirically the role of nominalbonds of various maturities in investor portfolios in the U.S. One of its principal goals is to determine whether an investor who is constrained to limithis investment in bonds to a single portfolio of money-fixed debt...

I believe that every tax-paying firm's defined benefit pension fund portfolio should be invested entirely in bonds (or insurance contracts). Although the firm's pension funds are legally distinct from the firm, there is a close tie between the performance of the pension fund investments and the...