In this paper, a model is developed for deriving the implied fixed cost of a bond flotation. Using a sample of electric utility companies over the 1961–1970 period, implied fixed costs are computed for 318 bond issues. These fixed costs then are evaluated in an effort to cast light on whether companies behave optimally with respect to the size and frequency of bond issues. Regression results are consistent with the adjustment of debt issuing behavior in keeping with: (1) expectations about the future course of interest rates; (2) variable costs increasing at a decreasing rate with the size of individual issue; and (3) differences in the cost of carrying excess liquidity which arise from differences in quality rating. An estimate of the average fixed cost of issuing bonds is evaluated as is the debt issuing behavior of individual companies. Over all, the model and its testing give considerable insight into the implied fixed costs of issuing debt.

It has been discovered in the context of various stock valuation models (see [1], [2] and [4]) that the shareholder is indifferent to the proceeds (or subscription) price chosen in a preemptive rights offering of equity capital, provided that the total equity capital raised by the offering is fixed. In this note we generalize this result to any stock valuation model in which arbitrage is present and which values only the total amount of the new investment, that is, places no value on holding more (or fewer) shares with a lower (or higher) market price.

The earliest successes in developing asset management theory focusing predominantly on short-term optimization of physical stock flow systems are due to Masse [13]; Arrow, Harris, and Marschak [1]; and Whitin [22]. This led to the development of burgeoning literature on what has come to be known as “inventory theory” followed by its application to cash management problems by Baumol [2]. In contrast to the conventional static analysis of Tobin [19] and Markowitz [12], Baumol's model incorporates what Hicks [11] referred to as “frictions” or the adjustment costs. More recently the pioneering works by Miller and Orr [14] Eppen and Fama [3], Weitzman [20], and Sethi [4] have sought to extend this basic model by incorporating different cash flow and operating cost assumptions.

Professor Morris' investigation of American railway management indicates that the railroads, which had been such innovative institutions in the nineteenth century, clung to ossified and outmoded managerial practices after the industry reached maturity. Inbred and inflexible systems of recruitment and promotion, he argues, were a noteworthy aspect of the economic decline of American railroads in the twentieth century.

An examination of the chief executives of leading British railways from 1850 through 1922 indicates that they emerged from predominantly upper-middle and upper class origins, and that they represented a new kind of bureaucratic business elite which enjoyed rising incomes and growing social status. In addition, available evidence reveals nothing to suggest that “executive immobility” was characteristic of British railway management, or that the railways were particularly inefficient or unprogressive in their choice of senior managers.

The adoption in 1972 of a new name by a major American oil company had deep historical roots reaching back to the 1911 Supreme Court decision in the Standard Oil antitrust case and to subsequent marketing conflicts between the Standard companies.

Intimate cooperation between American investment bankers and the diplomats of the Department of State occurred in the early 1920s because both groups shared similar goals and interests in Mexico. The resulting exercise in dollar diplomacy achieved some immediate ends but proved very short-sighted and self-defeating in the end.