We construct a simple economy with consumption only at the final date in which we “endogenize” the stochastic behavior of prices assumed in the Black-Scholes model. Certain preferences (constant proportional risk aversion) and beliefs are shown to be sufficient and necessary, in certain respects, for the existence of such an equilibrium. The analysis is then generalized to a continuous-consumption framework, in which we embed the Merton proportional dividend model.

Using an intuitive approach that also provides new intuition concerning the Black and Scholes equation, this paper extends the results of Johnson and Stulz to the pricing of options on the minimum or the maximum of several risky assets.

Most research dealing with portfolio selection under uncertain inflation is carried out by assuming either one of the following two approximations: a linear or a quadratic approximation. In this paper, we analyze the general case, namely assume that the nominal return is the product of the real return and one plus the rate of inflation. We demonstrate that the general analysis leads to the following results that are not found in the two approximations: (1) even if we assume that nominal returns are independent of inflation, the nominal and real efficient sets will not necessarily coincide. Mean-Variance (M-V) analysis leads to a nominal efficient set, that is, a subset of the real M-V efficient set, whereas the opposite holds assuming investors maximize expected utility of real wealth. (2) Similar results are obtained when real returns are independent of inflation (the Fisher hypothesis). Assuming normality of nominal returns, we derive the CAPM in real terms or its zero beta counterpart.

This paper examines the demand for municipal bond insurance in the context of a competitive signaling equilibrium model. The study compares the pricing of new bond issues that are insured to similar issues that are not insured. The results indicate that issuers who purchase bond insurance, on average, are able to reduce their new issue borrowing cost more than enough to offset the cost of the insurance premium. Furthermore, the net benefit to the issuer increases as the underlying credit quality of the bond declines.

This paper investigates the impact of managerial hedging on shareholder wealth when managers are able to choose the level of effort they expend in managing firms' investments. We demonstrate that shareholders will prefer managers to hedge observable unsystematic risks because they expect that this will induce managers to be more productive. We begin with the case where the risk being hedged is independent of managerial effort. In this case, we show that if shareholders are able to adjust incentive contracts either in anticipation of hedging or after observing hedging, but before managers expend effort, then they will benefit from that hedging. When the insurable risk is also dependent on managerial effort, then we have what we term an “embedded moral hazard” problem. In this case, the optimal contract may entail either over or under insurance by the manager, relative to that preferred by shareholders.

This paper argues that an aggregate preferred habitat for investors exists on (or about) the last day of the calendar month, due to standardizations in the nation's payments system resulting in a concentrated flow of funds on this date. Thus, equilibrium yield discounts are predicted for securities maturing on such dates. Empirical tests on monthly and daily Treasury bill data support the principal hypothesis, as well as several ancillary hypotheses. The results have implications for Treasury debt management, for the short-term cash and debt management practices of businesses and banks, and for the empirical estimation of daily, weekly, or monthly return premiums on risky securities.

This paper presents evidence that the mean-adjusted returns and raw-market returns models are misspecified when the event under investigation occurs during either bull or bear markets. To demonstrate this phenomenon, simulation techniques as well as an actual event are employed to examine the reliability of four different return-generating models. When the event occurs during a bull (bear) market, both the mean-adjusted and raw-market returns models produce upwardly (downwardly) biased positive (negative) abnormal returns. This results in statistically significant cumulative abnormal returns over selected preevent and postevent intervals. In contrast, both the market-adjusted and single-index models show far less evidence of any unusual price activity over these same intervals.

We show that a well-diversified portfolio of randomly chosen stocks must include at least 30 stocks for a borrowing investor and 40 stocks for a lending investor. This contradicts the widely accepted notion that the benefits of diversification are virtually exhausted when a portfolio contains approximately 10 stocks. We also contrast our result with the levels of diversification found in studies of individuals' portfolios.

This paper demonstrates that the impact of the existing tax law is not uniform across projects with different variances of payoffs. A bias exists against projects with greater uncertainty of payoffs, which leads to an underinvestment in high risk projects. The bias against higher variance projects offers a theoretical justification for such tax incentives as the research and development tax credit.

This paper points out an error and implications of the error in the model of hedging effectiveness proposed by Howard and D'Antonio (1). The error would lead to ambiguous results if the model were used in practical applications to select the best hedging instrument. This paper proposes a new measure of hedging effectiveness that eliminates the error in the original model and resolves the ambiguity.

In this reply, we point out that Chang and Shankar's measure of hedging performance, which they label HE1, is not an adequate measure. We describe an alternative measure, labeled HBS, which has a number of desirable ex ante and ex post statistical properties.