The most widely accepted empirical dividend model is that proposed by Lintner, who argued that firms smooth dividends over time. Many theoretical dividend models, however, either predict that dividends should be highly variable, or at least offer no support for the smoothing hypothesis. We use a...

Investment ratings (e.g., by Morningstar) provide a simple ordinal scale (e.g., 1 to 5) for comparing investments. Typically, ratings are assigned within categories — groups of assets sharing common characteristics — but using the same ordinal scale for all groups. Comparing such categorized...

Equilibrium in the market for real assets requires that the price of those assets be bid up to reflect the tax shields they can offer to levered firms.Thus there must be an equality between the market values of real assets and the values of optimally levered firms. The standard measure of the...

It is well-documented that stock prices rise significantly prior to an equity issue, and fall upon announcement of the issue. We expand on earlier studies by using a large sample which includes OTC firms, by examining the cross-sectional properties of the price rise, and by using accounting data...

This paper develops a formal model of the timing and pricing of new equity issues, assuming that managers are better informed than new investors about the quality of the firm. Firms will prefer to issue equity when the market is most informed about the quality of the firm. This implies that...

Policy makers and market participants alike wish to understand the amount, economic significance, and concentration of derivatives trading activity. This paper suggests that systematic measuring and reporting of margin by market participants, disaggregated by asset class, would provide more...

This paper shows how government financing decisions can influence the corporate decision to use debt or equity finance. In particular, it is shown that an increase in the stock of taxable government debt reduces the equilibrium quantity of corporate debt, and that an increase in the stock of...

Banks know more about the quality of their assets than do outside investors. This informational asymmetry can distort investment decisions if the bank must raise funds from uninformed outsiders, and assets sold will be subject to a lemons discount. Using a three-period equilibrium model we...

This paper applies the Capital Asset Pricing Model to help explain the anomalous behavior of real interest rates during the last several years. Specifically,we are able to show that the increased volatility of bond prices since the change in Federal Reserve operating procedure in October 1979...

This paper presents an information-theoretic, infinite horizon model of the equity issue decision. The model's predictions about stock price behavior and issue timing explain most of the stylized facts in the empirical literature: (a) equity issues on average are preceded by an abnormal positive...