This paper is concerned with empirical measurement, analysis, and comparison of the returns expected by investors in U. S., German, French and Japanese equity markets. The expedited return to equity is a pivotal concept in capital market theory because of the concern of this theory with analyzing relationships between expected returns to the general market and expected returns to individual securities. Because the expected equity returns are not directly observable, the approach almost uniformly taken in the empirical testing of capital market theory is to make additional behavioral assumptions beyond those contained in the basic theory that enable it to be translated into an analysis of market relationships among ex-post returns. Empirical tests then become tests of both the basic theory and the appended assumptions. A new approach to the empirical testing of capital market relationships is to develop empirical approximations to the returns expected in the equity market, and to employ these expectational measures to directly test capital market relationships. This paper formulates and examines this approach. Empirical approximations of the expected equity return for a representative group of major international stock exchanges are formulated, estimated, and analyzed, leading to a direct test of the International Asset Pricing model in its original form.

Capital market equilibrium has been extensively studied in the recent past, mostly in a mean-variance framework. In a perfect capital market with riskless assets and homogenous expectations among risk-averse investors, Sharpe and Lintner have shown that the efficient set of all investors could be described by only two portfolios (or mutual funds):

(1) the market portfolio

(2) the riskless asset.

It has been shown by Haley and Schall [4], Modigliani and Miller [7], Myers [8], Solomon [10], and Vickers [12] that if (1) a firm's investments always yield cash flows that are constant forever, and if (2) the firm maintains, likewise into perpetuity, a constant debt/equity ratio in terms of market values, a constant per period cost of capital can be derived which involves as weights the market values of debt and equity. Since these sufficient conditions, which were set forth for positive purposes, pose severe limitations on the usefulness of these results for normative purposes, derivations which are less restrictive would be helpful for decision making.

Short interest is the number of shares of a stock borrowed for sale (and not yet replaced) by investors who anticipate a decline in the stock's price. After its price falls, the stock is purchased to replace the borrowed shares, the selling price being higher than the purchase price whence the profit. The New York and American Stock Exchanges disclose the current outstanding short interest for the market as a whole and for selected stocks around the 15th of each month.

The certainty-equivalent method of evaluating risky investments has been widely discussed in the literature ([2], [5], [14, p. 356], [19], [20]) and consists of applying a multiplicative factor, αt, to each period's expected cash flow, μt, to produce a certainty-equivalent flow, αtμt. The certainty-equivalent flow is then discounted with the riskless rate of interest, αtμt/(l + i)t. Although there has been much discussion of αt, researchers have not derived explicit expressions for αt, relying instead on ad hoc graphs [24, p. 328] or arguments involving mean-variance indifference curves [2] which may not even exist ([4], [12], [22], [23]). In this paper, I will (1) provide a rigorous definition of αt, (2) derive formal expressions for a for αt three special cases, (3) discuss relationships between αt and σt, the standard deviation of the period t cash flow, (4) formally derive the period t risk-adjusted discount rate, kt, from assumptions concerning the decision maker's (d. m.'s) risk preferences and cash flow distribution, and (5) apply the preceding results to a specific problem involving calculation of the risk-adjusted present value of an uncertain cash flow stream.

In this issue of the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Beranek [2] has presented a clever but cumbersome analysis showing that, for a simple multiperiod situation, computing a project's net present worth by discounting its cash flows at particular “costs of capital” and accepting the project if that net present worth is positive is completely consistent with raising the net present wealth of stockholders, initial investment from whom provides partial funding for the project.

Recent economic research efforts in rate of return regulation of public utilities have for the most part been couched in a static, steady-state framework, “Averch-Johnson” hypotheses being the most obvious examples [3]. Nevertheless, standard classical microeconomic analysis of rate of return regulation seems to have two important drawbacks: first, it does not address itself to multiperiod relationships; and secondly, it cannot be represented in current-practice financial terms. This paper first outlines rate of return regulation as typically practiced. It then describes the essential features of a model designed to examine intertemporally the financial and capital expansion decision tradeoffs a public utility faces given corporate, institutional, and regulatory constraints. Decision tradeoff questions have assumed substantial policy importance in recent years not only because of the ambiguities in rate of return regulation effects conceptualized in the Averch-Johnson literature but because of the behavioral (occasionally legal) importance of purely financial constraints, such as interest coverage requirements, on corporate investment and financing choices.

As part of an overall investigation of risk and capital adequacy in banks, we have examined the magnitudes by which Interest rate movements may alter reported rates of costs and returns for a typical commercial bank. At the same time, we have attempted to measure the manner in which banks adjust their loans and costs over time in reaction to shifting markets and rates.

There are seven academic finance associations in the United States; two are considered to be national and five are identified as regional. The national organizations are the American Finance Association (AFA) and the Financial Management Association (FMA), and the regional associations are the Eastern Finance Association (EFA), Midwest Finance Association (MFA), Southern Finance Association (SFA), Southwestern Finance Association (SWFA), and the Western Finance Association (WFA).

This study is concerned with establishing the determinants of banks' exposure to risk and with predicting risk in banking. Using the COMPUSTAT data base, prediction rules have been developed for two aspects of risk: systematic risk (risk that is related to covariance with the market portfolio) and residual risk (the aggregate of specific risk and extra-market covariance). For each type of risk, several models have been estimated: one model employs only measures of the asset and liability characteristics of the bank; a second employs these characteristics and other data taken from annual reports; a third model adds the history of the behavior of the price of the bank's common stock. The central conclusion of the study is that systematic and residual risk in banks can be predicted from predetermined data. Prediction rules estimated in this way can serve a useful function in monitoring bank risk.

The stated purpose of this review paper by Professors Bierwag, Kaufman, and Khang is (1) to clarify the record on what duration is and is not, and (2) to discuss its usefulness in the analysis of security portfolios. However, the implied, the more important, purpose is to focus the attention of the academic community on a subject that seems to warrant more attention than it has received. Indeed, it seems to me that the whole purpose of this session, which not incidentally is being chaired by coauthor Kaufman, is simply that: to show what can and cannot be done with the concept of duration.

Lanstein and Sharpe (LS) attempt to explain residual covariances between stocks on the basis of duration considerations. The results, by admission are mixed. Rather than to focus on these per se, I would like to further the work by making some suggestions with respect to the formal model development and the empirical tests-on the basis that both could be made crisper and thereby increase the value of what already is a contribution.

Intermediation, and in particular financial intermediation, is a frequently observed class of activities for which the literature provides little definition. Although intermediaries exist in major proportions of the economy, a precise characterization of an intermediary's function has not appeared. Rather, the academic and pragmatic literature refer to intermediaries by example, generally agreeing that such institutions as banks, insurance companies, etc., are intermediaries. This research addresses the issue of what an intermediary is; that is, what distinguishes the activity of intermediation from other economic activity.

The dynamic behavior of the corporation has been examined in recent literature by a number of authors. These efforts, however, although attempting to characterize the firm's optimal financing program have neglected to incorporate the threat of bankruptcy associated with these decisions. When the threat of default is appropriately considered, the investment and financing strategies are inexorably joined over time so that determination of an optimal policy becomes a multiperiod problem. The thrust of this paper is to address the problem of determining the firm's dynamic investment-financing program explicitly recognizing the uncertainty of financial ruin attributable to the firm's choice of capital structure.

The risk inherent in the price fluctuations of bonds has many dimensions. These include default risk, inflation risk, and call risk. The most important single source of risk, particularly for government and high-grade corporate bonds, is basis-risk price fluctuations caused by shifts in interest rates. For a given shift in the yield curve, and holding other factors unchanged, longer term-to-maturity bonds generally suffer greater price changes than shorter maturity bonds. This characterization is not exact because high coupon bonds are less volatile than low coupon bonds. Intuition says that this is to be expected because, other things being equal, high coupon bonds have a greater percentage of their value due to the interim coupons and, hence, have a shorter “effective” maturity. Duration may be interpreted as an attempt to quantify this qualitative statement through the use of a single, numerical measure intended to be used in place of maturity.

Much of the literature on the adequacy of bank capital is concerned with the role of such factors as default risk and faulty management. These factors are important but they neglect the role that purely stochastic elements can play in affecting the capital of a well-managed bank, even if it is free of default risk. Because banks raise funds by issuing liabilities with different maturities than the assets they acquire, changes in the interest rates paid on these liabilities relative to the interest rates on assets will affect earnings and, hence, bank capital.