Especially with the evaluation of non-listed (medium-sized) companies, the following problems and significant restrictions pertaining to the applicability of the CAPM must be taken into account when determining cost of capital. 1. Homogeneity of expectations and planning consistency. Given the...

Market portfolio composition substantially affects cost of equity estimates. Adding Treasury securities to an equity-only market portfolio substantially changes both estimated market betas and the estimated market excess return. Though the sign and magnitude of the net impact of these changes is...

Traditional risk factor models indicate that hedge funds capture pre-fee alphas of 6% to 10% per annum over the period from 1996 to 2012. At the same time, the hedge fund return series is not reliably distinguishable from the returns of mechanical S&P 500 put-writing strategies. We show that the...

Central banks and supervisory authorities regularly conduct stress tests of banks. As losses accumulate in stress scenarios, banks' equity position worsens, and they must pay higher interest rates to retain funding. I explore how variations of Merton-type models can be used to measure bank risk,...

Bonds issued in high and low interest-rate environments often list at different prices despite very similar characteristics. From a risk-neutral investor's perspective, higher current prices imply higher losses in case of default, which must be compensated, if markets are efficient. We call this...

Eaton Corporation, a diversified industrial conglomerate, had been changing its strategic focus and re-configuring its portfolio of businesses for the past 15 years. Through more than 70 acquisitions and 50 divestitures, Eaton had narrowed its strategic focus considerably and was now pursuing a...

We consider the portfolio decision problem of a risky investor. The investor borrows at a rate higher than his lending rate, and invests in a risky bond whose market price is correlated with the credit quality of the investor. By viewing the concave drift of the wealth process as a continuous...

This study provides evidence for a positive association between mutual fund holdings’implied cost of capital (ICC) and future performance. Consistent with large transactioncosts of ICC-based investments impeding their exploitation and employing a ICC-basedstrategy reflecting skill,...

This paper compares two alternative strategies, paid-in risk capital and insurance, which firms use to financially manage a catastrophic risk. The paper first presents a reminder that in the traditional cost of capital model, neither strategy can improve shareholder wealth by reducing a firm’s...

We develop a dynamic model with time variation in external equity financing costs and show that variation in these costs is important for the model to quantitatively capture the joint dynamics of firms' asset prices, real quantities, and financial flows in the U.S. economy. Growth firms and high...