This paper uses an option valuation model of the firm to answer the question, quot;What magnitude tax advantage to debt is consistent with the range of observed corporate debt ratios?quot; We incorporate into the model differential personal tax rates on capital gains and ordinary income. We...

Active portfolio management is commonly partitioned into two types ofactivities: market timing, which requires forecasts of broad-based marketmovements, and security analysis, which requires the selection of individualstocks that are perceived to be underpriced by the market. Merton (1981)...

Equilibrium in the market for real assets requires that the price of those assets be bid up to reflect the tax shields they can offer to levered firms.Thus there must be an equality between the market values of real assets and the values of optimally levered firms. The standard measure of the...

It is well known that an unbiased forecast of the terminal value of a portfolio requires compounding at the arithmetic mean rate of return over the investment horizon. Yet, the procedure applied to the standard unbiased estimator of the mean return, while maximum likelihood, produces very biased...

The Chicago Board of Trade Treasury Bond Futures Contract allows the short position several delivery options as to when and with which bond the contract will be settled. The timing option allows the short position to choose any business day in the delivery month to make delivery. In addition,...

Equilibrium in the market for real assets requires that the price of those assets be bid up to reflect the tax shields they can offer to levered firms.Thus there must be an equality between the market values of real assets and the values of optimally levered firms. The standard measure of the...

This paper uses an option valuation model of the firm to answer the question, "What magnitude tax advantage to debt is consistent with the range of observed corporate debt ratios?" We incorporate into the model differential personal tax rates on capital gains and ordinary income. We conclude...

We examine abnormal stock returns surrounding contemporaneous earnings and dividend announcements in order to determine whether investors evaluate the two announcements in relation to each other.We find that there is a statistically significant interaction effect.The abnormal return...