The mathematical difficulties encountered when attempting to express the internal rate of return (IRR) of a combination of two or more investments as a weighted algebraic sum of the individual investments' IRRs has been recognized in the financial literature for some time. However, in a recent issue of this journal, Professors Reilly and Wecker (hereafter R-W) [3] apply the well-known mathematical impossibility of expressing the root(s) of a polynomial as an algebraic combination of the roots of related polynomials to question the validity of the weighted cost of capital (kw) concept.

Rita Rodriguez's paper examines the factors involved in the decisions of foreign exchange management. It consists of four major parts: a) the concept and definition of foreign exchange risk, b) the finance function and foreign exchange management, c) management's attitudes towards foreign exchange risk, and d) the effect of differences in management's attitudes towards foreign exchange risk on the monetary system. The conclusions and results of the paper are drawn from surveys and interviews with over 50 multinational corporations in the United States.

Several titles reflecting different approaches to our subject matter were considered for the paper. An historical but somewhat pedantic approach to the teaching of investments might have been titled “Pedagogical Developments in Investments: Past, Present, and Future.” Another possibility was “Sex and the Single Investor,” a title which probably would have attracted a larger audience. “Beat the Dealer Versus Beat the Market” might well have been an appropriate title in view of our presence here in Las Vegas and also because of recent experience in the securities markets. We finally decided on simply “A Portfolio Analysis of the Teaching of Investments,” because this seems to better capture the essence of our viewpoint.

Much work on the term structure of interest rates has focused on comparing and testing opposing theories–expectations versus liquidity-preference versus hedging-pressure–using aggregated econometric models. This emphasis has resulted in a restricted view of the microeconomic behavior behind term-structure theory.

This paper investigates the relationship between interest-rate risk and liquidity premiums on U.S. Treasury bills. Interest-rate risk stems from uncertainty about the future general level of market interest rates.

The goal of American stock market reform is the establishment of a central market in which public orders are executed at the best price obtainable in an environment of competitive market makers. Among the measures needed to achieve this are: a consolidated tape, a consolidated quotation system, and competitive commission rates.

The problem of what to teach in investments courses can hardly have any one answerbecause teachers, students, levels, and purposes are too diverse. Even subject matter is debatable these days when one must make up his mind whether gold and antiques should be covered along with stocks and bonds, bills, and deposits. Thus what I offer here is one man's viewpoint, what seems most plausible to me out of 20 years' experience in brokerage and teaching: an opinion–no more, no less.

The purpose behind this review of recent research on financial decisions in the multinational corporation (MNC) has been, first, to further the discussion as to the appropriate normative framework applicable to financial decisions in the MNC, and second, to suggest directions for further research by pointing to open questions.

The analysis focuses on the major financial decision areas of the firm as well as on important new factors introduced by the international environment. Specific issues disussed are: capital-market segmentation, financing decision, financial structure and cost of capital, investment decision and exchange risk.

The principal conclusion presented as a basis for discussion is that the financial decision framework developed for the one-country firm can essentially be extended to the case of the MNC. This should hold true even if partial restrictions to capital flows exist. The only limiting requirement is that all subsidiaries be wholly owned, i.e., equity securities be issued by the parent firm only. A specific case in which the analogy to, the one-country firm breaks down arises when joint ventures are introduced.

A number of areas for further research are identified. Most prominent, perhaps, are (1) an operational concept of economic exchange risk exposure, i.e., measuring the impact of exchange rate changes on the value of foreign operations; (2) criteria for evaluating foreign investment projects consistent with the firm's cost of capital; and (3) empirical evidence on the extent to which MNCs are affected by capital-market segmentation.

In recent capital-market equilibrium theories it has been customary to entertain the assumption that corporate bonds are riskless. Attention has therefore been directed to the valuation of shares, since it is trivial to deal with the valuation of bonds under the assumption of riskless bond yield. In order to study the effect of leverage on equity and bond yields at the equilibrium while removing the assumption of riskless bonds, one must first deal with a valuation model for risky bonds. Consequently, one must face the necessity of making explicit the stochastic relationships between the risky bond returns and the risky share returns. To do this, each firm decides a dollar amount to be paid to the bondholders at the end of a period during which it generates random gross yields. The total return to bondholders is a random variable since it is possible that a firm's gross yield may be less than the dollar amount promised, a case of default. The total return to shareholders as a random variable is therefore conditional upon the choice of the promised amount to the bondholders. In other words, the explicit stochastic relationships between the bond returns and share returns will be conditional upon the choice of promised returns to bondholders by all firms. Employing the usual assumptions found in the capital-market equilibrium theories and the negative exponential utility function of final wealth, the model then generates conditional equilibrium prices of bonds and shares, and the resulting conditional equilibrium leverage and expected yields.

The purpose of this paper is to obtain some quantitative evidence of whether what has been said of the capital markets of Central Europe is also true for the West-German capital market: that they lack depth, breadth, and resiliency; that they react strongly or even excessively to changes in demand and supply; and that they are vulnerable to adjustments in bank liquidity.

Recently, there has been no shortage of proposals for reforming the U.S. financial system. Proposals have been offered by the Hunt Commission, the Administration, and several other groups. All these proposals contain many common elements, attesting to the difficulty of obtaining comprehensive financial reform. The analysis here focuses primarily upon the Administration's 1973 recommendations.

This paper seeks to document some simple and not-so-simple facts. My thesis is that, to an unprecedented degree, Federal Reserve (F.R.) Board Chairman Arthur Burns has engaged himself and the System in political action. Burns' leadership has contributed to politicizing the monetary control process, the dialogue concerning the nature and effects of that process, and perhaps even F.R. decisions themselves. These tactics have reduced the Federal Reserve's power to resist external political influence, a power that Chairman McCabe “bled” for in 1951 and that over the next two decades Chairman Martin labored assiduously to consolidate. On the other hand, this behavior at least maintained and probably increased Burns' standing with President Nixon.

The purpose of this paper is to examine various measures of the structure of banking markets and to relate these measures to selected indices of bank prices. To this point most studies in the field (and court rulings as well) have relied almost exclusively on concentration ratios and the number of banks as measures of market structure. However, these simple measures have important deficiencies which may lead to erroneous conclusions.

The classic article about liquidity premiums is Kessel [3]. Kessel regresses the liquidity premium, measured as the difference between the forward rate and the actual future spot rate, against the current spot rate and observes a positive relation between the level of the current spot rate and the size of the liquidity premium. Olsen alters Kessel's model in two respects. First, he introduces a proxy for risk or uncertainty about interest rates as an additional determinant of the liquidity premium. Second, instead of using the actual future spot rate as a measure of the expected future spot rate, he specifies the expected future spot rate as a linear combination of the current and past spot rates.

Professor Mendelson's interesting paper reaches one conclusion with which I have no quarrel. Under his “most likely” future scenario, he argues for the need for the individual investor in the stock market to enhance the external equity capital-raising abilities of corporations. However, on the way to that conclusion, he dispenses a number of inconsistencies and confusing points.

Regulatory reform relating to commercial banks and other deposit financial institutions has been frequently observed to be “crisis-bred.” The National Banking Act, along with fundamental but complementary legislation of 1863 and 1864, was in large measure stimulated by problems of the Civil War. The Federal Reserve Act was an outgrowth of the Panic of 1907 which vividly demonstrated the need for a central bank. The McFadden Act of 1927, the Glass-Steagall Act of 1932, the Reconstruction Finance Act of 1932, the Federal Home Loan Bank Act of 1932, the Home Owners' Loan Act of 1933, the Emergency Banking Act and the Banking Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the Banking Act of 1935 all reflected reactions to crises of various dimensions.

The research report abstracted here addresses the question: do firms of low risk before financial leverage introduce relatively more financial leverage than firms of relatively high risk before leverage? Most of the received theory of corporation finance suggests an affirmative response. Our empirical work encourages us to be far more cautious.

This paper presents a descriptive theory of risk that may be applied to capital budgeting decisions. The proposed theory is actually much more general than a theory of financial risk and is consistent with reported laboratory experiments. The essential feature of this theory is the role that risk descriptively plays as a constraint in the decision-making process. Specifically, risk is modeled as a chance constraint such that projects are rejected if the probability of “failure” is larger than some prescribed level. This has the effect of making all investment decisions chance-constrained programming problems, although some classes of problems have trivial solution procedures. In this context, risk serves to “strike out” or eliminate alternatives from consideration.

The purpose of this paper is to survey monetary policy as it unfolded from the beginning of 1973 to the spring of 1974. This is, on the whole, a relatively uncomplicated period to discuss since there was, I would judge, rather less controversy about the aims and appropriateness of monetary policy over most of this period than is often the case. In brief, monetary policy focused primarily on producing a moderate degree of restraint, one that would relieve the excess demand pressures clearly evident during at least the first part of the period. The aim in doing so was to create a climate in which inflation could gradually be brought under control. This objective suffered serious competition only briefly, when, during the early stages of the oil boycott, the potential of that situation for creating economic weakness was still very unclear.

My remarks are divided into two sections. The first section briefly summarizes the major points of the two papers. I should acknowledge that I agree with almost all of the conclusions by Farrar and Mendelson regarding the reforms which have taken place and the beneficial effects of these reforms. The second section briefly discusses one adverse effect of the institutional market not remedied by the reforms. This adverse consequence is only briefly mentioned by Farrar, while it is discussed by Mendelson, but the full implications are not considered.