In this paper, I extend the results of Moskowitz and Vissing-Jørgensen (2002) on the returns to entrepreneurial investments in the United States. First, following the authors' methodology I replicate the original findings from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) for the period 1989 - 1998 and...

This paper examines the effect of accounting conservatism on firm-level investment during the 2007-2008 global financial crisis. Using a differences-in-differences design, we find that firms with less conservative financial reporting experienced a sharper decline in investment activity following...

In this paper we discuss the required return on equity for a simple project with a finite life. To determine a project's cost of equity, it is quite common to use Modigliani and Miller's ‘Proposition II' (1963). However, if the assumptions of MM do not hold, ‘Proposition II' will lead to...

We use earnings forecasts from a cross-sectional model to proxy for cash flow expectations and estimate the implied cost of capital (ICC) for a large sample of firms over 1968-2008. The earnings forecasts generated by the cross-sectional model are superior to analysts' forecasts in terms of...

We use an alternative model of capital investment to test for the effects of financing constraints and agency costs of free cash flows. This model, derivable from q theory and based on an established body of prior research, specifies capital investment growth as a function of stock returns....

I propose a neoclassical production economy with costly external financing, partial investment irreversibility, and endogenous investment/financing decisions to rationalize and quantify the well-documented interaction between the book-to-market equity effect and the financial leverage effect in...

We evaluate the influence of measurement error in analysts' forecasts on the accuracy of implied cost of capital estimates from various implementations of the ‘implied cost of capital' approach, and develop corrections for the measurement error. We document predictable error in the implied...

This paper rationalizes empirical patterns of market leverage, book leverage, book-to-market ratios, and stock returns across different book-to-market portfolios, using a model of firm financing and investment. The model shows analytically that tax-deductibility of interest payments increases...

The Equity risk-premium and volatility puzzles: Is it possible to have a high-equity premium and a low risk-free rate, and a high volatile stock return, have received a great deal of attention but beyond this, the fundamental issues are the following: What are the economic representations that...

When Capital Asset pricing Model (CAPM) is considered as valid asset pricing theory, Security Market Line (SML) is supposed to give ex-ante returns for the single period investment horizon. Since the required returns should be same as the cost of equity (discount rates) in efficient markets, SML...