This paper examines the association between the initialadoption of stock options for senior-level executives and subsequent changes in corporate dividend policy. The primary research hypothesis is that the addition of a stock option to a manager's compensation package provides an incentive for the executive to reduce corporate dividends. This hypothesis follows from the observation that executive stock options are generally not “dividend protected.” The results suggest that dividends are reduced relative to expected dividends. We interpret these results as suggesting that the personal incentives of executives can affect certain aspects of the observed corporate dividend policy.

In a dynamic framework, the advantage of leverage depends upon the firm's recapitalization policy. We show that if bonds are callable at par, then equityholders have an incentive to recapitalize too early. Call premia and issue discounts, however, mitigate the agency problem of early recapitalization. The model provides the optimal call premium and issue discount as a function of firm-specific characteristics. An analysis of a bond sample supports the model's prediction that the optimal call premium is positively related to firm risk.

We derive formulas for the valuation of call options on stocks and bonds when the defaultfree rate is stochastic. The formulas highlight the role of the correlation between the unanticipated returns on the underlying security and the changes in the short-term rate in determining the options value. Our numerical analysis indicates that option prices predicted by the proposed formula differ from those predicted by the Black and Scholes formula when this correlation is relatively large and the short-term rate's instantaneous variance is relatively large as well. Moreover, the proposed formula predicts higher (lower) stock option prices than those predicted by the Black and Scholes formula for correlation values that are lower (higher) than some positive critical value.

Among the possible consequences of agency problems between corporate owners and managers is a tendency by managers to make investment decisions for their firms that are deliberately aimed at reducing firm risk, as a means to control managers’ personal wealth risk. The literature has suggested that such behavior may occur to the detriment of shareholder wealth, and that mergers may be a particular class of investment decisions for which the behavior would be observable. We test these hypotheses empirically, but find no evidence from our merger sample that risk reduction for the acquiring firm is the typical outcome nor that, when it occurs, it is differentially costly for shareholders.

A contingent claims approach to capital budgeting may be preferable to traditional methods where uncertainty and managers' strategic reactions to changing conditions are important. As an example of such a case, we solve the classical problem of the duration of an investment in forestry resources (i.e., when to cut down the trees) in the general case of stochastic output prices and stochastic natural growth rate and timber inventories. A contingent claims approach is used to value the forestry resources as a function of: (1) stochastic prices and inventories, and (2) an asymmetric, optimal production policy that incorporates the option to halt timber production temporarily.

The first part of this paper presents a general approach to valuing a financial institution's contracts when there is credit risk. The approach uses contingent claims pricing theory and is particularly appropriate for an off-balance sheet contract, such as a swap, that can have either a positive or a negative value to the counterparty. The second part of the paper extends the analysis by considering the problem, faced by bank supervisory authorities, of determining capital requirements for off-balance sheet contracts.

This paper explores the determinants of monitoring activity provided by security analysts. Jensen and Meckling have argued that analysts play the role of monitors of managerial performance as a means of reducing agency costs of debt and equity. The other major role analysts play is that of making security markets more informationally efficient. The empirical results reported in this paper support the role of analyst monitoring as an efficient device for controlling agency-related costs of debt and equity and as a response to the information demands of investors.

Errors in recorded security prices are a source of misspecification in the market model. If recorded price errors are sufficiently nonrandom, they result in biased returns and in biased and inconsistent estimates of market model regression coefficients. This paper argues that tax-induced flow-supply pressures cause end-of-the-year recorded price errors to be nonrandom enough to create the appearance of anomalous turn-of-the-year stock return behavior. Empirical tests of returns and market model regression coefficients during the turn-of-the-year period cannot reject this errors-in-variables explanation of the turn-ofthe-year effect.

A piecewise linear weighting function for Black-Scholes implied volatilities is used in conjunction with the Black-Scholes call pricing model to approximate stochastic volatility European call prices. A sensitivity analysis is conducted to compare simulated stochastic volatility call prices to the Black-Scholes prices calculated with the weighted implied volatilities. The analysis indicates that a simple model can provide close approximations to the simulated prices with far less computational effort.

An analysis of the dual problem described by Ronn (1987) reveals that it provides a powerful and easily interpretable test for the hypothesis of a single class of marginal investors, including models of equilibrium based on a “representative tax bracket.” When Ronn's empirical tests are interpreted via the dual, they lend additional support to his conclusions in providing a strong rejection of the representative tax bracket hypothesis. A valid dual LP used to test the hypothesis can be obtained with fewer assumptions than Ronn's primal; in addition, a minor error in Ronn's presentation of the dual is corrected.