Using data from a decade of surveys of corporate managers, I find evidence that firms with higher expected stock returns have a higher perceived cost of equity and use higher discount rates in capital budgeting. Variation in expected stock returns, as measured by exposure to equity risk factors,...

In this paper, we illuminate the importance of accounting conservatism adjustments when estimating the implied cost of capital (ICC) with the Residual Income Valuation (RIV) and the Abnormal Earnings Growth (AEG) model. Specifically, we adjust for three main limitations in the research of ICC,...

There are various valuation methodologies applicable to both the financial evaluation of projects as to the valuation of companies. First, have developed methods of Discounted Cash Flows (DCF), which allow discounting, or bring to present value, a series of projected future cash flows over time....

The computation of implied cost of capital (ICC) is constrained by the lack of analyst forecasts for half of all firms. Hou, van Dijk, and Zhang (2012, HVZ) present a cross-sectional model to generate forecasts in order to compute ICC. However, the forecasts from the HVZ model perform worse than...

This paper presents three different approaches for calculating the levered annual values for a finite cash flow profile. In the first approach, we use K_U, the return to unlevered equity to calculate the annual tax savings and use K_U to calculate the (present) value of the tax savings. In 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,...

The capital asset pricing model (CAPM) receives both criticism and widespread adoption by practitioners and academics as the weighted average cost of capital (WACC) equity component. This study introduces two new costs of equity measures to address CAPM criticisms and provide new perspective on...

The tax shield as present value of debt-related tax savings plays an important role in firm valuation. Driving the risk of future debt levels, the firm's strategy to adjust the absolute debt level to future changes of the firm value, labeled as (re-)financing policy, affects the value of tax...

Employing a basic model of an economy comprising both the real and financial sectors, I show that the primitive risk measure for real investment decisions is earnings beta — defined as the (normalized) covariance between firm profitability (return on investment) and the aggregate profitability...

Previous research on insurer cost of equity (COE) focuses on single-period asset pricing models. In reality, however, investment and consumption decisions are made over multiple periods, exposing firms to time-varying risks related to economic cycles and market volatility. We extend the...