The Journal of Finance publishes leading research across all the major fields of finance. It is one of the most widely cited journals in academic finance, and in all of economics. Each of the six issues per year reaches over 8,000 academics, finance professionals, libraries, and government and financial institutions around the world. The journal is the official publication of The American Finance Association, the premier academic organization devoted to the study and promotion of knowledge about financial economics.
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How Big is the Tax Advantage to Debt?
Published: 07/01/1984 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.1984.tb03678.x
ALEX KANE, ALAN J. MARCUS, ROBERT L. McDONALD
This paper uses an option valuation model of the firm to answer the question, “What magnitude tax advantage to debt is consistent with the range of observed corporate debt ratios?” We incorporate into the model differential personal tax rates on capital gains and ordinary income. We conclude that variations in the magnitude of bankruptcy costs across firms can not by itself account for the simultaneous existence of levered and unlevered firms. When it is possible for the value of the underlying assets to jump discretely to zero, differences across firms in the probability of this jump can account for the simultaneous existence of levered and unlevered firms. Moreover, if the tax advantage to debt is small, the annual rate of return advantage offered by optimal leverage may be so small as to make the firm indifferent about debt policy over a wide range of debt‐to‐firm value ratios.
DISCUSSION
Published: 05/01/1966 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.1966.tb00236.x
J. Marcus Fleming, Arthur I. Bloomfield
Tracing the International Transmission of a Crisis through Multinational Firms
Published: 04/08/2024 | DOI: 10.1111/jofi.13338
MARCUS BIERMANN, KILIAN HUBER
We show that multinational firms transmit shocks across countries through their internal capital markets. We study a credit supply shock to parent firms in Germany. International affiliates outside Germany supported their parents through internal lending, became financially constrained themselves, and experienced lower real growth. We find that managers were “Darwinist” with respect to international affiliates but “Socialist” in the home country, that internal capital markets transmitted the credit shock more strongly than a nonfinancial shock, and that access to developed credit markets attenuated the real effects. The total real impact of shock transmission through multinationals on foreign economies was large.
Valuation and Optimal Exercise of the Wild Card Option in the Treasury Bond Futures Market
Published: 03/01/1986 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.1986.tb04499.x
ALEX KANE, ALAN J. MARCUS
The Chicago Board of Trade Treasury Bond Futures Contract allows the short position several delivery options as to when and with which bond the contract will be settled. The timing option allows the short position to choose any business day in the delivery month to make delivery. In addition, the contract settlement price is locked in at 2:00 p.m. when the futures market closes, despite the facts that the short position need not declare an intent to settle the contract until 8:00 p.m. and that trading in Treasury bonds can occur all day in dealer markets. If bond prices change significantly between 2:00 and 8:00 p.m., the short has the option of settling the contract at a favorable 2:00 p.m. price. This phenomenon, which recurs on every trading day of the delivery month, creates a sequence of 6‐hour put options for the short position which has been dubbed the “wild card option.” This paper presents a valuation model for the wild card option and computes estimates of the value of that option, as well as rules for its optimal exercise.
A Reexamination of the Conglomerate Merger Wave in the 1960s: An Internal Capital Markets View
Published: 12/17/2002 | DOI: 10.1111/0022-1082.00139
R. Glenn Hubbard, Darius Palia
One possible explanation for bidding firms earning positive abnormal returns in diversifying acquisitions in the 1960s is that internal capital markets were expected to overcome the information deficiencies of the less‐developed capital markets. Examining 392 bidder firms during the 1960s, we find the highest bidder returns when financially “unconstrained” buyers acquire “constrained” targets. This result holds while controlling for merger terms and for different proxies used to classify firms facing costly external financing. We also find that bidders generally retain target management, suggesting that management may have provided company‐specific operational information, while the bidder provided capital‐budgeting expertise.
International Cross‐Listing, Firm Performance, and Top Management Turnover: A Test of the Bonding Hypothesis
Published: 07/19/2008 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.2008.01377.x
UGUR LEL, DARIUS P. MILLER
We examine a primary outcome of corporate governance, namely, the ability to identify and terminate poorly performing CEOs, to test the effectiveness of U.S. investor protections in improving the corporate governance of cross‐listed firms. We find that firms from weak investor protection regimes that are cross‐listed on a major U.S. Exchange are more likely to terminate poorly performing CEOs than non‐cross‐listed firms. Cross‐listings on exchanges that do not require the adoption of stringent investor protections (OTC, private placements, and London listings) are not associated with a higher propensity to remove poorly performing CEOs.
Affine Term Structure Models and the Forward Premium Anomaly
Published: 12/17/2002 | DOI: 10.1111/0022-1082.00325
David K. Backus, Silverio Foresi, Chris I. Telmer
One of the most puzzling features of currency prices is the forward premium anomaly: the tendency for high interest rate currencies to appreciate. We characterize the anomaly in the context of affine models of the term structure of interest rates. In affine models, the anomaly requires either that state variables have asymmetric effects on state prices in different currencies or that nominal interest rates take on negative values with positive probability. We find the quantitative properties of either alternative to have important shortcomings.
Sources of Entropy in Representative Agent Models
Published: 08/12/2013 | DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12090
DAVID BACKUS, MIKHAIL CHERNOV, STANLEY ZIN
We propose two data‐based performance measures for asset pricing models and apply them to models with recursive utility and habits. Excess returns on risky securities are reflected in the pricing kernel's dispersion and riskless bond yields are reflected in its dynamics. We measure dispersion with entropy and dynamics with horizon dependence, the difference between entropy over several periods and one. We compare their magnitudes to estimates derived from asset returns. This exercise reveals tension between a model's ability to generate one‐period entropy, which should be large, and horizon dependence, which should be small.
Disasters Implied by Equity Index Options
Published: 11/14/2011 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.2011.01697.x
DAVID BACKUS, MIKHAIL CHERNOV, IAN MARTIN
We use equity index options to quantify the distribution of consumption growth disasters. The challenge lies in connecting the risk‐neutral distribution of equity returns implied by options to the true distribution of consumption growth. First, we compare pricing kernels constructed from macro‐finance and option‐pricing models. Second, we compare option prices derived from a macro‐finance model to those we observe. Third, we compare the distribution of consumption growth derived from option prices using a macro‐finance model to estimates based on macroeconomic data. All three perspectives suggest that options imply smaller probabilities of extreme outcomes than have been estimated from macroeconomic data.
Accounting for Forward Rates in Markets for Foreign Currency
Published: 12/01/1993 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.1993.tb05132.x
DAVID K. BACKUS, ALLAN W. GREGORY, CHRIS I. TELMER
Forward and spot exchange rates between major currencies imply large standard deviations of both predictable returns from currency speculation and of the equilibrium price measure (the intertemporal marginal rate of substitution). Representative agent theory with time‐additive preferences cannot account for either of these properties. We show that the theory does considerably better along these dimensions when the representative agent's preferences exhibit habit persistence, but that the theory fails to reproduce some of the other properties of the data—in particular, the strong autocorrelation of forward premiums.
Private Benefits of Control, Ownership, and the Cross‐listing Decision
Published: 01/23/2009 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.2008.01438.x
CRAIG DOIDGE, G. ANDREW KAROLYI, KARL V. LINS, DARIUS P. MILLER, RENÉ M. STULZ
This paper investigates how a foreign firm's decision to cross‐list on a U.S. stock exchange is related to the consumption of private benefits of control by its controlling shareholders. Theory has proposed that when private benefits are high, controlling shareholders are less likely to choose to cross‐list in the United States because of constraints on the consumption of private benefits resulting from such listings. Using several proxies for private benefits related to the control and cash flow ownership rights of controlling shareholders, we find support for this hypothesis with a sample of more than 4,000 firms from 31 countries.
Nonstandard Errors
Published: 04/17/2024 | DOI: 10.1111/jofi.13337
ALBERT J. MENKVELD, ANNA DREBER, FELIX HOLZMEISTER, JUERGEN HUBER, MAGNUS JOHANNESSON, MICHAEL KIRCHLER, SEBASTIAN NEUSÜß, MICHAEL RAZEN, UTZ WEITZEL, DAVID ABAD‐DÍAZ, MENACHEM (MENI) ABUDY, TOBIAS ADRIAN, YACINE AIT‐SAHALIA, OLIVIER AKMANSOY, JAMIE T. ALCOCK, VITALI ALEXEEV, ARASH ALOOSH, LIVIA AMATO, DIEGO AMAYA, JAMES J. ANGEL, ALEJANDRO T. AVETIKIAN, AMADEUS BACH, EDWIN BAIDOO, GAETAN BAKALLI, LI BAO, ANDREA BARBON, OKSANA BASHCHENKO, PARAMPREET C. BINDRA, GEIR H. BJØNNES, JEFFREY R. BLACK, BERNARD S. BLACK, DIMITAR BOGOEV, SANTIAGO BOHORQUEZ CORREA, OLEG BONDARENKO, CHARLES S. BOS, CIRIL BOSCH‐ROSA, ELIE BOURI, CHRISTIAN BROWNLEES, ANNA CALAMIA, VIET NGA CAO, GUNTHER CAPELLE‐BLANCARD, LAURA M. CAPERA ROMERO, MASSIMILIANO CAPORIN, ALLEN CARRION, TOLGA CASKURLU, BIDISHA CHAKRABARTY, JIAN CHEN, MIKHAIL CHERNOV, WILLIAM CHEUNG, LUDWIG B. CHINCARINI, TARUN CHORDIA, SHEUNG‐CHI CHOW, BENJAMIN CLAPHAM, JEAN‐EDOUARD COLLIARD, CAROLE COMERTON‐FORDE, EDWARD CURRAN, THONG DAO, WALE DARE, RYAN J. DAVIES, RICCARDO DE BLASIS, GIANLUCA F. DE NARD, FANY DECLERCK, OLEG DEEV, HANS DEGRYSE, SOLOMON Y. DEKU, CHRISTOPHE DESAGRE, MATHIJS A. VAN DIJK, CHUKWUMA DIM, THOMAS DIMPFL, YUN JIANG DONG, PHILIP A. DRUMMOND, TOM DUDDA, TEODOR DUEVSKI, ARIADNA DUMITRESCU, TEODOR DYAKOV, ANNE HAUBO DYHRBERG, MICHAŁ DZIELIŃSKI, ASLI EKSI, IZIDIN EL KALAK, SASKIA TER ELLEN, NICOLAS EUGSTER, MARTIN D. D. EVANS, MICHAEL FARRELL, ESTER FELEZ‐VINAS, GERARDO FERRARA, EL MEHDI FERROUHI, ANDREA FLORI, JONATHAN T. FLUHARTY‐JAIDEE, SEAN D. V. FOLEY, KINGSLEY Y. L. FONG, THIERRY FOUCAULT, TATIANA FRANUS, FRANCESCO FRANZONI, BART FRIJNS, MICHAEL FRÖMMEL, SERVANNA M. FU, SASCHA C. FÜLLBRUNN, BAOQING GAN, GE GAO, THOMAS P. GEHRIG, ROLAND GEMAYEL, DIRK GERRITSEN, JAVIER GIL‐BAZO, DUDLEY GILDER, LAWRENCE R. GLOSTEN, THOMAS GOMEZ, ARSENY GORBENKO, JOACHIM GRAMMIG, VINCENT GRÉGOIRE, UFUK GÜÇBILMEZ, BJÖRN HAGSTRÖMER, JULIEN HAMBUCKERS, ERIK HAPNES, JEFFREY H. HARRIS, LAWRENCE HARRIS, SIMON HARTMANN, JEAN‐BAPTISTE HASSE, NIKOLAUS HAUTSCH, XUE‐ZHONG (TONY) HE, DAVIDSON HEATH, SIMON HEDIGER, TERRENCE HENDERSHOTT, ANN MARIE HIBBERT, ERIK HJALMARSSON, SETH A. HOELSCHER, PETER HOFFMANN, CRAIG W. HOLDEN, ALEX R. HORENSTEIN, WENQIAN HUANG, DA HUANG, CHRISTOPHE HURLIN, KONRAD ILCZUK, ALEXEY IVASHCHENKO, SUBRAMANIAN R. IYER, HOSSEIN JAHANSHAHLOO, NAJI JALKH, CHARLES M. JONES, SIMON JURKATIS, PETRI JYLHÄ, ANDREAS T. KAECK, GABRIEL KAISER, ARZÉ KARAM, EGLE KARMAZIENE, BERNHARD KASSNER, MARKKU KAUSTIA, EKATERINA KAZAK, FEARGHAL KEARNEY, VINCENT VAN KERVEL, SAAD A. KHAN, MARTA K. KHOMYN, TONY KLEIN, OLGA KLEIN, ALEXANDER KLOS, MICHAEL KOETTER, ALEKSEY KOLOKOLOV, ROBERT A. KORAJCZYK, ROMAN KOZHAN, JAN P. KRAHNEN, PAUL KUHLE, AMY KWAN, QUENTIN LAJAUNIE, F. Y. ERIC C. LAM, MARIE LAMBERT, HUGUES LANGLOIS, JENS LAUSEN, TOBIAS LAUTER, MARKUS LEIPPOLD, VLADIMIR LEVIN, YIJIE LI, HUI LI, CHEE YOONG LIEW, THOMAS LINDNER, OLIVER LINTON, JIACHENG LIU, ANQI LIU, GUILLERMO LLORENTE, MATTHIJS LOF, ARIEL LOHR, FRANCIS LONGSTAFF, ALEJANDRO LOPEZ‐LIRA, SHAWN MANKAD, NICOLA MANO, ALEXIS MARCHAL, CHARLES MARTINEAU, FRANCESCO MAZZOLA, DEBRAH MELOSO, MICHAEL G. MI, ROXANA MIHET, VIJAY MOHAN, SOPHIE MOINAS, DAVID MOORE, LIANGYI MU, DMITRIY MURAVYEV, DERMOT MURPHY, GABOR NESZVEDA, CHRISTIAN NEUMEIER, ULF NIELSSON, MAHENDRARAJAH NIMALENDRAN, SVEN NOLTE, LARS L. NORDEN, PETER O'NEILL, KHALED OBAID, BERNT A. ØDEGAARD, PER ÖSTBERG, EMILIANO PAGNOTTA, MARCUS PAINTER, STEFAN PALAN, IMON J. PALIT, ANDREAS PARK, ROBERTO PASCUAL, PAOLO PASQUARIELLO, LUBOS PASTOR, VINAY PATEL, ANDREW J. PATTON, NEIL D. PEARSON, LORIANA PELIZZON, MICHELE PELLI, MATTHIAS PELSTER, CHRISTOPHE PÉRIGNON, CAMERON PFIFFER, RICHARD PHILIP, TOMÁŠ PLÍHAL, PUNEET PRAKASH, OLIVER‐ALEXANDER PRESS, TINA PRODROMOU, MARCEL PROKOPCZUK, TALIS PUTNINS, YA QIAN, GAURAV RAIZADA, DAVID RAKOWSKI, ANGELO RANALDO, LUCA REGIS, STEFAN REITZ, THOMAS RENAULT, REX W. RENJIE, ROBERTO RENO, STEVEN J. RIDDIOUGH, KALLE RINNE, PAUL RINTAMÄKI, RYAN RIORDAN, THOMAS RITTMANNSBERGER, IÑAKI RODRÍGUEZ LONGARELA, DOMINIK ROESCH, LAVINIA ROGNONE, BRIAN ROSEMAN, IOANID ROŞU, SAURABH ROY, NICOLAS RUDOLF, STEPHEN R. RUSH, KHALADDIN RZAYEV, ALEKSANDRA A. RZEŹNIK, ANTHONY SANFORD, HARIKUMAR SANKARAN, ASANI SARKAR, LUCIO SARNO, OLIVIER SCAILLET, STEFAN SCHARNOWSKI, KLAUS R. SCHENK‐HOPPÉ, ANDREA SCHERTLER, MICHAEL SCHNEIDER, FLORIAN SCHROEDER, NORMAN SCHÜRHOFF, PHILIPP SCHUSTER, MARCO A. SCHWARZ, MARK S. SEASHOLES, NORMAN J. SEEGER, OR SHACHAR, ANDRIY SHKILKO, JESSICA SHUI, MARIO SIKIC, GIORGIA SIMION, LEE A. SMALES, PAUL SÖDERLIND, ELVIRA SOJLI, KONSTANTIN SOKOLOV, JANTJE SÖNKSEN, LAIMA SPOKEVICIUTE, DENITSA STEFANOVA, MARTI G. SUBRAHMANYAM, BARNABAS SZASZI, OLEKSANDR TALAVERA, YUEHUA TANG, NICK TAYLOR, WING WAH THAM, ERIK THEISSEN, JULIAN THIMME, IAN TONKS, HAI TRAN, LUCA TRAPIN, ANDERS B. TROLLE, M. ANDREEA VADUVA, GIORGIO VALENTE, ROBERT A. VAN NESS, AURELIO VASQUEZ, THANOS VEROUSIS, PATRICK VERWIJMEREN, ANDERS VILHELMSSON, GRIGORY VILKOV, VLADIMIR VLADIMIROV, SEBASTIAN VOGEL, STEFAN VOIGT, WOLF WAGNER, THOMAS WALTHER, PATRICK WEISS, MICHEL VAN DER WEL, INGRID M. WERNER, P. JOAKIM WESTERHOLM, CHRISTIAN WESTHEIDE, HANS C. WIKA, EVERT WIPPLINGER, MICHAEL WOLF, CHRISTIAN C. P. WOLFF, LEONARD WOLK, WING‐KEUNG WONG, JAN WRAMPELMEYER, ZHEN‐XING WU, SHUO XIA, DACHENG XIU, KE XU, CAIHONG XU, PRADEEP K. YADAV, JOSÉ YAGÜE, CHENG YAN, ANTTI YANG, WOONGSUN YOO, WENJIA YU, YIHE YU, SHIHAO YU, BART Z. YUESHEN, DARYA YUFEROVA, MARCIN ZAMOJSKI, ABALFAZL ZAREEI, STEFAN M. ZEISBERGER, LU ZHANG, S. SARAH ZHANG, XIAOYU ZHANG, LU ZHAO, ZHUO ZHONG, Z. IVY ZHOU, CHEN ZHOU, XINGYU S. ZHU, MARIUS ZOICAN, REMCO ZWINKELS
In statistics, samples are drawn from a population in a data‐generating process (DGP). Standard errors measure the uncertainty in estimates of population parameters. In science, evidence is generated to test hypotheses in an evidence‐generating process (EGP). We claim that EGP variation across researchers adds uncertainty—nonstandard errors (NSEs). We study NSEs by letting 164 teams test the same hypotheses on the same data. NSEs turn out to be sizable, but smaller for more reproducible or higher rated research. Adding peer‐review stages reduces NSEs. We further find that this type of uncertainty is underestimated by participants.