expected inflation and the real rates of interest on taxable and tax exempt bonds this paper analyzes the impact of inflation on rates of return on taxable corporate bonds and tax exempt municipal bonds the paper considers a differential tax system where the tax rate depen ds on both the identity of the investor and the source of income it also consid ers the possibility that inflation may induce investors to switch from holding one asset to holding another it is demonstrated that while inflation should increase the pre personal tax real rate of interest on taxable bonds it should reduce the real rate of interest on tax exempt bonds copyright 1987 by ohio state university press

extrinsic uncertainty and the informational role of prices abstract we study a financial economy with finitely many states of private information there are two agents informed and uninformed we define agents expectations on future equilibrium prices as a probability distribution over k distinct values i e we introduce k extrinsic events we show that there are open sets of economies with nonrevealing and also with partially revealing equilibria for an appropriate choice of self fulfilling price expectations observable equilibrium prices are signal invariant journal of economic literature classification numbers d52 d82 d84

tax adjusted discount rates this paper develops models for discount rates that are adjusted for the interest tax shields of an infra marginal firm in a general tax equilibrium where there is cross sectional variation in corporate tax rates under the assumption that the firm optimally maintains a predetermined debt ratio a tax adjusted riskless discount rate model is given for valuing certainty equivalents and a tax and risk adjusted discount rate model is given for valuing expected cash flows for the latter case the asset equity debt and tax shield betas are derived and a weighted average cost of capital interpretation is given the tax adjusted capm apt security market lines for expected returns in stock and bond markets both have the same slope but different intercepts a formula is also provided for the present value of the interest tax shield when the firm optimally maintains a predetermined debt level the analysis here also differs from the existing literature in the following respects it allows for cross sectional variation in corporate tax rates and personal tax rates it shows that the market values of risky and riskless interest tax shields differ only to the extent that tax laws provide for nonlinear taxation of gains and losses it also shows that interest tax shields should be discounted at a tax adjusted discount rate that reflects the fact that they accrue to equity investors rather than debt investors continuous time simplifications of the formulas in this paper and the previous literature are also given

the structure of financial equilibrium with exogenous yields the case of incomplete markets1 this paper presents an analysis of the structure of competitive equilibrium in a model whose principal feature is incomplete financial markets formulated in the spirit of arrow specifically the overall payoffs or returns from financial instruments are assumed to be fixed or predetermined independently of the operation of the economy and these instruments are assumed to be fewer in number than required to span all potential spot markets for commodities our main result establishes that market incompleteness generates a corresponding degree of allocation indeterminateness suppose there are n 1 spot markets but only 0 m n linearly independent financial instruments so that the deficiency in financial markets is 0 n n m n then subject to some relatively innocuous technical qualifications the set of equilibrium allocations contains a smooth n dimensional submanifold we also indicate how real indeterminacy may increase when returns for example the market price and promised interest on an ordinary bond are treated as variables rather than parameters

taxes on tax exempt bonds implicit tax rates priced in the cross section of municipal bonds are approximately two to three times as high as statutory income tax rates with implicit tax rates close to 100 using retail trades and above 70 for interdealer trades these implied tax rates can be identified because a portion of secondary market municipal bond trades involves income taxes after valuing the tax payments market discount bonds which carry income tax liabilities trade at yields around 25 basis points higher than com parable municipal bonds not subject to any taxes the high sensitivities of municipal bond prices to tax rates can be traced to individual retail traders dominating dealers and other institutions the issue of how taxes affect asset prices is an important issue in finance accounting and economics in theoretical models examining the effect of taxes

taxes and transaction costs in asset market equilibrium abstract this paper examines the effects of capital taxation in an imperfect capital market in which acquiring risky assets incurs costs individual portfolio choice has two distinct aspects the extensive choice of which assets to hold in the portfolio and the intensive choice of what fraction of wealth to invest in each asset held the traditional assumption of zero transaction costs obscures the extensive choice this paper shows that if trading in assets is costly capital taxes have extensive effects as well as the intensive effects previously studied

the impact of inflation on the aggregate debt asset ratio this paper demonstrates that contrary to the results of previous studies the impact of inflation on the aggregate debt asset ratio cannot be determined theoretically however it is shown that inflation is likely to increase this ratio when personal income tax schedules are indexed to the price level and or when leverage related costs are relatively high and the personal tax rate on income from holding common stocks is relatively low studies concerning the effect of inflation on firms capital structure conclude that inflation enhances debt financing jaffe 9 modigliani and cohn 16 and modigliani 15 argue that nominal interest payments consist in part of true interest payments and in part of a compensation for the reduction in the real value of the principal the fact that firms are allowed to deduct their entire interest expense including the portion that is a return of principal reduces their cost of debt capital gordon 6 concludes that the equilibrium debt capital ratio rises when the inflation rate rises he argues that an increase in the nominal interest rate induced by inflation increases the tax advantage of debt financing thus debt financing becomes more attractive and a rise in leverage related costs is necessary to restore equilibrium gordon asserts that the increase in leveragerelated costs is brought about by an increase in the debt equity ratio all these studies however focus primarily on the tax benefits of debt financing to the corporation and implicitly assume that each firm has a unique optimal structure which may change with inflation in contrast miller 14 in a world without inflation concludes that firms are indifferent to their capital structure and that the aggregate debt equity ratio is determined by the ratio of the wealth of investors who for tax reasons choose to hold bonds to the wealth of those who choose to hold stocks this paper explicitly incorporates tax considerations of both investors and firms into the analysis of the effect of inflation on the aggregate corporate debtasset ratio it is demonstrated that the effect of inflation on the aggregate debtasset ratio cannot be determined theoretically however inflation is likely to increase this ratio when personal income tax schedules are indexed to the price level and or when leverage related costs are relatively high and the tax on income from holding common stocks is relatively low we consider an economy in which investors are subject to a progressive tax system income from corporate bonds

wealth and portfolio composition theory and evidence we examine a survey of 6010 u s households and estimate a model for household portfolio allocation we extend the conventional portfolio choice model in order to capture the observed incompleteness of household portfolios we show that the empirical specification of the joint discrete and continuous choice that characterizes household portfolio behavior is a switching regressions model with endogenous switching we go on to examine the impact of taxes on portfolio composition using detailed survey data to calculate precisely the marginal tax rate facing each household finally we estimate wealth elasticities of demand for a range of assets and liabilities

is ecommerce boundary less effects of individualism collectivism and uncertainty avoidance on internet shopping from publicly available data we identified two national culture dimensions individualism collectivism and uncertainty avoidance and their interaction that influences internet shopping rates across a wide spectrum of countries together these factors accounted for 14 of the explained variance on top of the combined variance of 63 explained by national income level educational level economic growth rate unemployment rate and crime rate in predicting internet shopping rates for countries lower in uncertainty avoidance individualist cultures show higher internet shopping rates than do collectivist cultures implications for national and internet firm level web design strategies are discussed

the significance of tax law asymmetries an empirical investigation this study uses tax return data for u s nonfinancial corporations for the period 1971 1982 to estimate the importance of restrictions on the ability of firms to use tax credits and to obtain refunds for tax losses our results suggest that the incidence of such unused tax benefits increased substantially during the early 1980s though we do not find these increases attributable to increased investment incentives during that period we present estimates of the marginal tax rate on interest payments which take into account unused tax benefits and emphasize the importance of distinguishing current tax payments from marginal tax rates in estimating the incentive to invest

preferred habitat taxable tax exempt yield spreads and cycles in property liability insurance several theories seek to explain the spread between the yields on taxable and tax exempt bonds of comparable maturity this paper reconsiders the market segmentation theory by focusing on property and liability insurance companies plics plics can provide evidence on the market segmentation theory both because they are major participants in the market for longer term tax exempt bonds and because of their industry s pronounced profit cycle which causes wide variations in plics need fortax shields if investors have preferred habitats as per the market segmentation theory their preferences should cause plics purchases and sales of tax exempts to have different impacts on taxable tax exempts yield spreads at different maturities this paper finds strong evidence of market segmentation during the 1972 84 period when the industry experienced two extremely pronounced cycles and weaker evidence of market segmentation during the 1959 71 and 1985 89 periods copyright 1992 by ohio state university press

incentives learning and compensation a theoretical and empirical investigation of managerial labor contracts this article analyzes properties and implications of multiperiod managerial labor contracts under two alternative hypotheses incentives in which productivity depends on unobservable effort and learning in which ability is unknown and is revealed over time shared and conflicting implications of these competing models are developed in terms of experienceearnings profiles and the relation between compensation and performance i empirically examine these theoretical results by using a longitudinal sample of 1 488 chief executive officers followed from 1974 1985 the data yield mixed evidence that generally supports the learning hypothesis over the incentive hypothesis

international entrepreneurship in internet enabled markets abstract despite the increasing numbers of businesses that are already using the internet to pursue international opportunities and the latent potential for such activity from rising internet adoption levels the international entrepreneurship literature has paid limited attention to the phenomenon to address this gap we review past research in international entrepreneurship as well as the broader fields of entrepreneurship international business marketing management and management information systems to identify firm level resources that are associated with the successful pursuit of international opportunities in internet enabled markets we identify three such internet related firm level resources online reputation online technological capabilities and online brand communities we develop a propositional inventory of the expected relationships identify measures expected to be useful to future scholars in this area and present the implications of our review for future international entrepreneurship research

differential income taxation and household asset allocation this article empirically investigates the effects of differential income taxation on households portfolio choice and asset allocation applying a two stage budgeting model of asset demand to german survey data the model is structured into the discrete and the continuous asset choice cross sectional variation in marginal tax rates appropriately instrumented as well as over time variation from a major tax reform are used to identify the tax effects households with higher tax rates are found to have relatively greater demand for tax privileged assets such as nonowner occupied housing mortgage repayments building society deposits stocks insurances and consumer credits than households with lower tax rates demand at higher tax rates is lower for owner occupied housing bank deposits and bonds

withdrawal location with progressive tax rates optimal withdrawal strategies are developed for retirees with multiple types of tax advantaged savings accounts in an environment of progressive tax rates the ability to convert pretax funds in traditional iras at low tax rates substantially increases investors residual accumulations and withdrawal sustainability specifically informed withdrawal location strategies in which traditional ira distributions can be applied against exemptions deductions and lightly taxed tax brackets can increase residual accumulations by more than 1 million in these strategies the optimal tax bracket through which an investor should take distributions is directly related to the investor s wealth level

default risk yield spreads and time to maturity this paper extends the default model of yield spreads for bonds by showing that in gen eral they are a complex function of maturity and in particular are not always monotoni cally increasing contrary to what one traditional view suggests our results may help explain the apparently conflicting empirical results found in the literature

risk returns and values in the presence of differential taxation abstract we show that there exist separate security market lines smls for debt and equity securities in an equilibrium with differential taxation of debt and equity we characterize the conditions under which these smls have the same price of risk with different intercepts and the conditions under which the tax effect of leverage is linear in debt value as in the adjusted present value method we explore the implications of our results for cost of capital calculations how to calculate the cost of capital for debt and equity and how to unlever betas correctly accounting for differential taxation

political uncertainty and public financing costs evidence from u s gubernatorial elections and municipal bond markets this research investigates how political uncertainty around u s gubernatorial elections in uences the borrowing costs of public debt measured by yields of municipal bonds our evidence from both the new issuance market and the secondary market shows that yields of municipal bonds increase sharply by 6 to 8 basis points before elections and then reverse afterward elections have more pronounced impact during economic downturns when outcomes are less predictable and when states have more outstanding debt several state institutions such as gaap budgeting spending limits and tax increase limits help to mitigate the adverse impact of political uncertainty

taxable and tax deferred investing a tax arbitrage approach we analyze an intertemporal portfolio problem with both taxable and tax deferred retirement accounts using a tax arbitrage argument we identify conditions under which the optimal location decision where to place an asset is separable from the allocation decision how much to allocate to each asset investors place highly taxed assets in the tax deferred account to maximize the tax benefit and adjust their taxable portfolios to achieve the optimal risk exposure we show that the two account problem can be reduced to a taxable account only problem the results are robust to capital gains tax deferrals consumption and contribution decisions and stochastic tax rates

municipal bond liquidity and default risk this paper examines the pricing of municipal bonds i use three distinct complementary approaches to decompose municipal bond spreads into default and liquidity components and find that default risk accounts for 74 to 84 of the average spread after adjusting for tax exempt status the first approach estimates the liquidity component using transaction data the second measures the default component with credit default swap data and the third is a quasi natural experiment that estimates changes in default risk around pre refunding events the price of default risk is high given the rare incidence of municipal default and implies a high risk premium

the impact of default risk on the prices of options and other derivative securities abstract this paper presents a model for valuing derivative securities when there is default risk the holder of a security is assumed to recover a proportion of its no default value in the event of a default by the counterparty both the probability of default and the size of the proportional recovery are random the paper shows how data on bonds issued by the counterparty can be used to provide information about model parameters

corporate tax incidence and inefficiency when corporate and noncorporate goods are close substitutes i introduction in 1992 the treasury department released a study of corporate tax integration stressing the potential welfare gains of reducing or eliminating the differentials between taxation of capital in the corporate and noncorporate sector while this study was not accompanied by a specific tax recommendation such proposals have been made in the past and are likely to be made in the future for example the 1984 treasury proposals for tax reform included a partial dividend deduction and corporate tax integration was considered by the carter administration until recently the standard model used to study the corporate tax was the harberger 1962 model an important deficiency in this model is its inability to consider both corporate and noncorporate production of the same good empirical applications of the harberger model assume all firms producing a particular good or collection of goods face the same tax on capital namely the average tax on capital of firms actually producing the good collection of goods in question this procedure accommodates differential taxation of capital used in the production of different goods collections of goods but it totally ignores the differential taxation of capital of corporate and noncorporate firms producing the same good collection of goods hence the harberger approach precludes analysis of within industry substitution of noncorporate for corporate production in response to the corporate income tax such within industry substitution has potentially major implications for both the excess burden and incidence of the corporate tax the first rigorous critique of the harberger model was that of ebrill and hartman 1982 who point out that in the harberger model corporate firms cannot compete with noncorporate firms in producing the same good in the presence of the corporate income tax the common finesse in empirical work using the harberger model is to assume that all firms in a sector are identical and face the average rate of taxation in the industry since some corporate firms operate in the noncorporate sector and some noncorporate firms operate in the corporate sector the difference between these average tax wedges will typically be smaller than the actual corporate tax wedge in the extreme case where both industries are equally corporate intensive the tax wedge would be zero even though a corporate tax exists and corporate firms within an industry face a tax not faced by noncorporate firms secondly this approach does not allow within industry substitution of capital between corporate and noncorporate firms in a numerical application of his model harberger 1966 classifies industries into a noncorporate sector composed of housing agriculture and oil and gas that was subject to relatively low taxes and a corporate sector composed of the remaining industries that was subject to relatively high taxes gravelle and kotlikoff 1989 show that these two aggregated sectors are characterized by a mix of corporate and noncorporate production as well as a significant change in shares over time in the so called noncorporate sector 6 percent of output in 1957 and 20 percent of output in 1982 was produced by corporate firms oil and gas although classified in the noncorporate sector by harberger was and is primarily corporate it is however subject to low tax burdens because of very generous tax breaks similarly in the so called corporate sector 24 percent of output in 1957 and 14 percent of output in 1982 was produced by noncorporate firms two recent responses to this critique of the harberger model are gravelle and kotlikoff 1989 and fullerton and henderson 1989 fullerton and henderson simply introduce two capital inputs corporate capital and noncorporate capital in the production function of each industry these capital inputs along with labor are substitutable while this approach introduces some substitutability between corporate and noncorporate capital it is an ad hoc approach and does not model the separate production in each sector that actually occurs

taxes default risk and yield spreads this paper develops a model of bond prices and yield spreads that incorporates the effect of both taxes and differences in default probabilities the tax loss consequences of default are recognized traditionally tax free municipal bond yields have been viewed as linearly related to taxable yields with a slope coefficient equal to one minus the tax rate and the intercept representing differences in default risk while our model supports the linearity assumption it implies that the slope and intercept are both functions of both the break even tax rate and the default probability ies clientele effects among both municipal and taxable bonds are demonstrated finally the implied marginal tax rates and the implied default probabilities are estimated for different categories of municipal bonds students of financial markets cannot help but be impressed by the number of new financial instruments that have been introduced successfully in recent years the fixed income market has been particularly innovative as bonds carrying a whole host of specific features have been successfully marketed bonds with small or zero coupons variable coupon rates or detachable warrants are three examples from among an expanding list of such features not surprisingly there has developed a large and expanding literature attempting to explain the rate spreads between different fixed income securities this literature has evolved much as one would expect early empirical work was in general not well founded in theory and was not based on an underlying expected return price model later empirical research has tended to be more careful in its specification of factors affecting yield spreads and as a consequence better founded in valuation

municipal bond pricing and the new york city fiscal crisis this paper s findings suggests that the new york city fiscal crisis by itself did not lead to a fundamental change in risk perceptions of investors resulting in higher interest rates in the municipal bond market the monthly prediction errors generated by time series tests were relatively small and none were statistically significant only the signs on the prediction errors for june july and august were consistent with a new york city effect thus if the new york city default had an impact on aggregate interest rates it was at most small and of short duration a great deal of controversy has arisen in recent years over the impact of the new york city default upon the municipal bond market during 1975 municipal borrowing costs rose to historically high levels with most issues carrying their highest interest cost during the summer of 1975 it was during this period that new york city experienced the worst of its 15 year history of financial problems while most observers argue that the problems of new york city represent a special case of fiscal mismanagement many conclude that the high market rates of interest in the municipal bond market were caused by the new york city default research by forbes and peterson 3 and gramlich 5 supports the latter contention in addition others contend that the impact of the default was not just temporary but was felt long after 1975 8 these contentions if true have significant policy implications not only do they suggest that all municipalities suffered immediate as well as long term higher interest cost due to the fiscal irresponsibility of new york city but they are important arguments for the provision of federal aid to prevent the failures of other large municipalities or corporate entities 1 the purpose of this paper is to examine whether the new york city default by itself caused risk perceptions of investors to change resulting in higher interest rates to other municipal borrowers the hypothesis is tested by applying a random coefficients model to aggregate time series interest rate data the major finding of the study is that there is little evidence consistent with the hypothesis that the new york city crisis had a fundamental or long lasting impact on municipal borrowing costs this paper is organized as follows section i describes how the new york city fiscal crisis may have raised municipal borrowing costs

miller s irrelevance mechanism a note this note attempts to clarify miller s 12 capital structure irrelevance mechanism using a geometric edgeworth box diagrams presentation such an exercise is useful because miller s proposition is founded on analytically complex equilibrium arguments that tend to mask the intuition and logic behind his result since miller s original discussion unnecessarily assumed a zero tax on equity income and since miller did not prove his clientele effects rigorously we also focus our attention on the deangelo and masulis 8 9 henceforth d m generalization of the miller model the d m framework is also important because it assumes a proportional tax code as we shall see whether the tax code is proportional or progressive is an important factor in understanding miller s proposition

determinants of the decreasing term structure of relative yield spreads for taxable and tax exempt bonds the empirical finding that the relative yield spread for taxable and tax exempt bonds decreases across the term structure is usually attributed to tax differentials and or arbitrage opportunities using monthly data it is found that the decresing term structure of relative yield spreads is determined by the decreasing forward marginal tax rate increasing default risk premium increasing tax timing option premium and expected rate of inflation

personal taxation pension wealth and portfolio composition this paper emphasizes the roles played by personal taxation and pension wealth in portfolio choice and composition a theoretical discussion of the impacts of taxation and participation in social security and private pension systems on individual wealth allocation is followed by empirical evidence based on u s cross section data both effects prove to be significant anticipated social security and private pension benefits exert a measurable influence on household portfolio allocation their omission from an asset demand model may lead to a misinterpretation of the impact of taxation on portfolio composition

marginal tax rates evidence from nontaxable corporate bonds a note this study offers an alternative method of calculating marginal personal tax rates through the pairing of nontaxable industrial development and pollution control and taxable corporate bonds this procedure is shown to produce matched bond pairs that are comparable two hundred pairs of bonds are examined from the second quarter of 1973 through the second quarter of 1983 testing of the marginal tax rate relationships indicates that the marginal personal tax rate is less than the corporate statutory tax rate the examination of the relative pricing of taxable and nontaxable bonds provides an estimate of the marginal tax rates of bondholders who are indifferent between taxable and nontaxable bonds see for example gordon and malkiel 1 trczinka 6 and skelton 4 typically these implied marginal tax rates are calculated by comparing yield indices of taxable corporate bonds and nontaxable municipal bonds a potential problem with this method pointed out by trczinka 6 is that municipal and corporate bonds may not be of the same risk requiring some adjustment in the calculation another problem with this method is that the bond yield indices are computed from a sample of outstanding bonds introducing a potential yield to maturity bias associated with discount bonds skelton 4 an alternative procedure for calculating implied marginal tax rates is employed in this paper which avoids the problems of differential risks and the potential yield to maturity bias for discount bonds implied tax rates are calculated from pairs of newly issued bonds where each pair consists of one nontaxable corporate bond a tax exempt industrial development or pollution control bond and one taxable corporate bond 1 since only newly issued bonds are used in the computations the bias associated with capital gains and losses is avoided this study is organized into the following sections section i describes the data and the collection procedure the resultant implied marginal rates are presented in section ii summarizing and concluding remarks are provided in section iii

the pricing of corporate debt a note to develop a theory of the risk structure of interest rates r c merton 2 defines the risk as the possible gains or losses to bond holders as a result of unanticipated changes in the probability of default p 449 he derives the pricing theory of a pure discount bond corporation debt along the line of blackscholes 1 comparative statics are used to develop graphs of the risk structure although his algebraic derivation is correct his graphical presentation is inadvertently wrong

dividend taxes and international portfolio choice this paper investigates how dividend taxes influence portfolio choices using the response to the distinctive treatment of a subset of foreign dividends in the jobs and growth tax relief reconciliation act jgtrra of 2003 an open economy after tax capital asset pricing model is used to derive the hypothesis that jgtrra should lead to a portfolio reallocation by us investors towards equities in tax favored countries a difference in difference analysis that compares us equity holdings in affected and unaffected countries finds a substantial portfolio reallocation towards the former this effect cannot be explained by several potential alternative hypotheses including differential changes to the preferences of american investors differential changes in investment opportunities differential time trends in investment changed tax evasion behavior or changes in stock prices associated or contemporaneous with jgtrra

government debt and private leverage an extension of the miller theorem abstract 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 tax free government debt reduces the equilibrium quantity of corporate equity the effects of inflation rate and tax rate changes are also considered

corporate financial policy with personal and institutional investors abstract in this paper we present a simple general equilibrium model of the portfolio behavior of households and institutions paying particular attention to the influence of differences in tax rates and attitudes toward risk under the plausible assumptions that households are more risk averse than institutions and possess a greater relative tax preference for equity versus debt we are able to characterize the equilibria which may result when debt is subject to bankruptcy risk

term structure effects on default risk premia and the relationship of default risky tax exempt yields to risk free taxable yields a note abstract the behavior of the default risk premium on bonds has caught the attention of many researchers some researchers have analyzed how default risk premia may vary with maturity it has been suggested that default risk premia are independent of maturity however recent research by rodriguez 1988 shows this to not hold for nonpar taxable bonds this research shows that the shape of the underlying term structure affects default risk premia for even par bonds in a systematic way furthermore the maturity dependent variation in equilibrium tax rates has a strong impact upon default risk premia behavior where equilibrium tax rates are derived from comparisons of taxable and tax exempt bonds the inclusion of the shape of the underlying term structure also has very important implications for the relation between taxexempt yields and taxable yields the slope and intercept terms of the relation between taxexempt and taxable yields are clearly dependent upon maturity a fact which has not been recognized before

was the tax exempt bond market inefficient or were future expected tax rates negative this paper shows that the sharp narrowing with maturity of the spread between taxable and tax exempt yields leaves room for tax arbitrage at times tax exempt forward rates have exceeded taxable forward rates at such times only expectations of higher taxes on treasury than on municipal bonds would eliminate profit opportunities the authors develop the idea of forward tax rates and compute forward tax rates for 1955 through 1984 they also outline tax arbitrage mechanisms involving private forward sale of long municipal bonds or the use of the municipal bond futures contract and show the potential profits the municipal yield curve has been upward sloping for the entire postwar period even at times when taxable yield curves were humped or downward sloping thus the spread in yields between taxable and tax free bonds narrows dramatically with increasing maturity this paper focuses on the term structure of the spread in yields between taxable and tax exempt bonds we show that the sharp narrowing of the spread with maturity leaves room for some apparently unexploited tax arbitrage at times the narrowing has been so dramatic that taxexempt forward rates have exceeded taxable forward rates in other words only expectations of negative future tax rates on treasury interest or the expectations of a reversal in the relative taxability of treasury and municipal bonds would eliminate profit opportunities this situation makes little sense if the markets are well arbitraged three theories of the relationship between the yields on taxable and taxexempt bonds have attracted attention 2 miller 8 asserts that the corporate tax rate determines the yield spread between taxable and tax exempt debt in the

taxes firm financial policy and the cost of capital an empirical analysis abstract this paper develops a theoretical model of firm behavior consistent with the maximization of shareholder utility and derives empirically testable implications of different theories of equity finance using data on firm earnings and previous investment and financial behavior we assess whether firms treat new share issues as a more expensive source of finance than retentions and whether such behavior varies across firms according to the composition of their shareholders our results support the hypothesis that firms perceive a higher cost of capital when issuing new shares and that the cost of capital varies significantly across firms having different estimated tax clienteles as theory would predict

market segmentation and the term structure of municipal yields an issue of considerable controversy in recent years is whether segmentation exists in the municipal bond market the presence of market segmentation suggests that securities can be subdivided into distinct groups according to some characteristic and there exists a lack of substitution between these groups on the part of borrowers and or investors 1 4 8 hendershott and kidwell 4 for example found evidence that market segmentation affected yields between regionally and nationally marketed municipal bond issues others contend that the municipal bond market is relatively efficient and no permanent segmentation effects can exist 2 9 most recently campbell 2 examined possible segmentation resulting from the large acquisitions of municipal securities by commercial banks and found that bank demand for municipal securities had no significant influence on the yield spreads between municipal bonds which differed in default risk term to maturity and tax treatment this is consistent with the argument that the combination of progressive personal income tax rates and fixed corporate income tax rates induces corporations to issue an amount of debt such that the marginal investor in taxable and tax exempt securities pays taxes at the full corporate rate 9 if segmentation does not exist two peculiar features of the term structure of municipal yields cannot be fully explained for one municipal yields have almost always increased monotonically with maturity this is true both for market averages of similarly rated municipal securities and for reoffering yields on individual serial

the changing role of commercial banks in the municipal securities market the tax treatment of commercial banks as investors in municipal securities changed dramatically with the loss of interest expense deductibility for municipal carrying costs under the tax reform act of 1986 competing theories of relative yield determination suggest that the lost deductions and recent reductions in corporate and personal tax rates should have different effects on the ratio of municipal to taxable yields this study examines the empirical implications of these tax changes using time series for the period 1966 1992 results suggest that the yield ratio varied inversely with relative bank purchases of municipals through mid year 1986 after 1986 however increased bank municipal purchases no longer directly lowered relative municipal yields the yield ratio also varied inversely with changes in personal tax rates throughout the sample period and increased after 1986 when banks lost 100 percent of their interest deduction for municipal carrying costs changes in corporate tax rates apparently play little role in shaping relative yields copyright 1995 by ohio state university press

profiles of internet buyers in 20 countries evidence for region specific strategies the prospect of an emerging global internet consumer entices many internationalizing organizations as it would enable standardization of internet strategies on a worldwide basis a sample of advanced internet users from 20 countries shows differences in beliefs attitudes perceptions and internet buying behavior depending on user experience and home country or region there were important differences after controlling for social cultural and macro economic variables implications for a regional approach to global e commerce strategies are discussed

auction failures and the market for auction rate securities abstract the market for auction rate securities ars made headlines during the second week of february 2008 when auctions at which the bonds interest rates reset experienced a wave of failures contrary to headlines that attribute the failures to a frozen market or investors irrationality we find that 1 even at their height less than 50 of ars experienced auction failures 2 the likelihood of auction failure was directly related to the level of the bonds maximum auction rates 3 the implied market clearing yields of bonds with failed auctions were significantly above their maximum auction rates and 4 ars yields were generally higher than yields of various cash equivalent investment alternatives we infer that investors priced the possibility of auctions failures into ars yields and rationally declined to bid for bonds for which required market yields exceeded their maximum auction rates

taxes investment and q this paper attempts to provide a unified analysis of the effects of taxation on the equilibrium value of marginal q under alternative financial policies it is shown that the q approach does not avoid all the specification problems associated with analyses based on the cost of capital the theoretically and empirically crucial relationship between average and marginal q is also examined and it is shown that under uk and us tax rules the possibility of winding up precludes persistent undervaluation in equilibrium there have now been a considerable number of empirical studies of investment behaviour based on some variant of tobin s q defined as the ratio of the firm s market value to the value of its capital stock see for instance jenkinson 1981 oulton 1981 poterba and summers 1981 summers 1981 and von furstenberg 1977 the q approach is seen as having the empirical advantage compared in particular with the more traditional approach based on the cost of capital of allowing expectations to be brought directly into the study of investment behaviour by relying on asset prices to digest all relevant expectations and reflect them in observable data an immediate difficulty however is that whilst the incentive to invest is related to the effect on shareholder wealth at the margin and hence to marginal q only the value of average q is directly observable the consequent difficulty of implementation is not however considered here see bailey and scarth 1980 and hayashi 1982 for discussion of conditions under which marginal q can be inferred from average q rather this paper is concerned with the prior question of how personal and corporate taxation affects the equilibrium value of marginal q for there has as yet been no systematic analysis of the effects of taxation on the equilibrium value of marginal q comparable with the analysis of the relationship between taxation and the cost of capital in king 1974 thus auerbach 1979a b bradford 1981 and edwards and keen 1984 have all considered how taxes affect q when the marginal source of funds is either retained profit or the sale of new equity and the distinction between these two cases has also been recognized in the empirical work of poterba and summers 1983 but the important case in which debt is the marginal source has been ignored the effects on marginal q of the constraints that typically need to be imposed in modelling financial policy have also been neglected this paper attempts to fill these gaps in the literature by providing a general analysis of the relationships between taxation financial policy investment and q the paper also examines the implications of the special tax provisions that may apply in the event in the firm s ceasing operations winding up this bears upon one of the unresolved issues associated with the new view of equity finance auerbach 1983 namely the suggestion that if dividends are taxed more heavily than capital gains

municipal debt and marginal tax rates is there a tax premium in asset prices we study the marginal tax rate incorporated into short term municipal rates using municipal swap market data using an affine model we identify the marginal tax rate and the credit liquidity spread in 1 week tax exempt rates as well as their associated risk premia the marginal tax rate averages 38 0 and is related to stock bond and commodity returns the tax risk premium is negative consistent with the strong countercyclical nature of after tax fixed income cash flows these results demonstrate that tax risk is a systematic asset pricing factor and help resolve the muni bond puzzle

the default rate experience on high yield corporate debt recent 1978 83 net returns on high yield low rated debt have been impressive averaging 490 to 580 basis points above the long term government bond index but low rated junk bonds pose a risk of default not present in the higher rated segment of the bond market the authors divided the par value of defaulting debt by total low rated straight debt outstanding to arrive at an estimate of the default rate for high yield bonds excluding johns manville which had the only defaulting debt rated investment grade just prior to the default date for the 1974 84 period this averaged 1 52 per cent or 152 basis points annually year to year variations in the rate were substantial furthermore default experience differed across various industry segments railroads and reits were particularly vulnerable to default in the past although they are unlikely to represent a large portion of future defaults retailer electronic computer airline and oil and gas defaults have become more common in recent years losses from default are actually lower than the default rate alone implies defaulted bonds traded on average at 41 per cent of par shortly after default after accounting for the bonds retained value and the loss of interest the average reduction in return to the investor who had purchased the bonds at par would have been in the range of 96 to 100 basis points annually

equilibrium in economies with financial markets uniqueness of expectations and indeterminacy abstract we consider two period pure exchange economies with uncertainty and complete or incomplete asset markets assets are nominal if the number of agents and of period zero commodities is large enough there is a dense residual set of economies parametrized by utility functions such that for each pair of distinct financial equilibria spot zero equilibrium prices are different agents observing first period equilibrium prices can formulate exact forecasts on future equilibrium prices notwithstanding the real indeterminacy of the set of financial equilibria if the asset market is complete the result is true for an open and dense set of economies journal of economic literatureclassification numbers d52 d80

dealer intermediation and price behavior in the aftermarket for new bond issues municipal bonds trade in decentralized broker dealer markets and are underpriced when issued but unlike equities the average price rises slowly over several days newly issued municipal bonds have high levels of price dispersion and the average price rises because the mix of trade sizes changes over time while large trades occur close to the reoffering price small trades occur between the reoffering price to as much as 5 above the reoffering price using a mixed distribution model we quantify the losses uninformed traders or issuers give up to broker dealers

the tax rate induced bond substitution hypothesis and the traditional textbook treatment of the relationship between tax free and taxable bond yields abstractthis empirical study posits and tests the tax rate induced bond substitution hypothesis wherein the propensity for bond buyers to substitute tax exempt municipal bonds for taxable bonds

the resiliency of the high yield bond market the ltv default this paper investigates the resiliency of the new issue high yield bond market by examining the changes in implied default rates of such bonds before and after the largest high yield bond default i e the ltv bankruptcy specifically the paper compares implied default probabilities of high yield bonds during the post ltv period calculated from actual new issue yields with instrumental default probabilities calculated on the assumption that the default had not occurred a comparison of these probabilities reveals that the market s perception of default on the hjgh risk segment of the bond market increased significantly after the ltv bankruptcy however the effect was transitory lasting only six months thus the market was resilient to a major default in recent years high yield debt has become a significant segment of the corporate bond market the main source of the growth has come from new issues of high yield corporate bonds rather than an increase in fallen angels 1 the driving force behind this new breed of high yield debt growth has been its use as a means to tap the capital markets to finance increasingly common leveraged buyouts hostile takeovers and major corporate restructurings the market acceptance of high yield bonds was further enhanced by empirical evidence that net returns on a diversified portfolio of low grade bonds exceeded those on highgrade bonds while the volatility of their monthly returns was no greater 2 the frenzied pace of growth in the high yield debt market however has been accompanied by increasing concerns from various quarters 3 critics have char

are stocks desirable in tax deferred accounts abstract existing literature suggests that in order to maximize the tax benefit of retirement accounts investors should follow a pecking order location rule of placing highly taxed assets e g bonds in a tax deferred account and lightly taxed assets e g stocks in a taxable account empirical evidence however documents that a large number of investors violate this rule in this paper we show that such violations can be optimal for risk averse investors who face portfolio constraints in particular while the strategy of placing bonds in the tax deferred account maximizes the expected level of tax benefit it may lead to volatile benefits under different realizations of stock returns by holding a similar portfolio in both accounts investors can achieve a more balanced growth in the two accounts minimize the likelihood of violating the constraints in the future and hence smooth the volatility of the tax benefit for some risk averse investors this smoothing motive can lead to the observed violation of the pecking order location rule our model predicts that such violations are more likely when future tax benefits are more volatile which can occur for example when i the tax rate differential across assets increases over time due either to tax law changes or to tax bracket changes for investors ii asset returns are more volatile and iii investors anticipate large future liquidity needs

are individual investors tax savvy evidence from retail and discount brokerage accounts using brokerage account data we analyze the tax awareness of individual investors we find strong evidence that taxes matter investors prefer to locate bonds and mutual funds in retirement accounts and in december harvest stock losses in their taxable accounts however investors also trade actively in their taxable accounts realize gains more frequently than losses and locate a material portion of their bonds in taxable accounts though taxes leave clear footprints in the data we analyze many investors could improve their after tax performance by fully capitalizing on the tax avoidance strategies available to equities while optimally locating their assets

real indeterminacy with financial assets abstract it is shown that in a two period general equilibrium securities model where assets pay in money the generic dimension of the set of equilibrium allocations in the incomplete market situation is s 1 where s is the number of assets hence the degree or real indeterminacy is independent of the number of assets this result requires beyond fewer assets than states that the number of traders be larger than the number of securities and that the asset return matrix be in general position the generic dimension for arbitrary returns matrix is also obtained it is argued in addition that the presence of real or mixed assets does not by itself lower the degree of indeterminacy

taxation and the portfolio structure of spanish households using a sample of 5962 spanish households from the survey of household finances eff undertaken by the bank of spain this article describes the structure of their portfolio and estimates both a probit model and a tobit model to test how taxation affects respectively the decision to invest in each asset and the relative importance of each asset within the household portfolio the influence of taxation is measured using the average marginal personal income tax rate of the household the estimations performed show that the marginal tax rate is significant and displays the sign expected to explain both the holding of tax favourable assets and their weight in the household portfolio

a tax induced clientele for index linked corporate bonds this paper analyzes the circumstances under which tax considerations favor or disfavor the use of index linked corporate bonds using a model similar to miller s investors choices of assets depend on their tax preferences for interest income versus capital gains and their preferences for the timing of returns it is concluded that the absence of indexlinked bonds in the u s cannot be attributed solely to tax reasons however following the 1986 tax reform act the tax code is expected to disfavor the use of index linked bonds the absence of index linked i l bonds in the u s is puzzling index linked bonds are common in countries that have experienced persistently high and or volatile rates of inflation both the periodic interest payments and the principal of an i l bond are linked to a price index this design provides protection against inflation induced changes in the nominal interest rate and prevents erosion of the bond s real value during inflationary periods anticipated or unanticipated the theoretical literature on i l bonds has focused primarily on the risk reduction aspect see for example sarnat 9 fischer 3 and siegel and warner 11 the recurrent theme of these studies is that the introduction of i l bonds reduces inflationary risks to both debtors and creditors these studies argue that in a portfolio context i l bonds provide investors protection against a risk that cannot be fully hedged otherwise fischer 4 conjectured that a possible reason for the absence of i l bonds in the u s may be the tax treatment of the returns on these bonds 2 from a tax point of view i l bonds differ from nominal bonds bonds hereafter in two respects first the returns on i l bonds consist of a combination of interest income and capital gains whereas the returns on nominal bonds consist in a steady state of interest income only second while the compensation for the inflation induced erosion in the real value of the principal of a nominal bond is part of the periodic interest payments and hence is taxed every period the corresponding compensation on an i l bond is realized and taxed only when the bond is sold thus holding i l bonds allows a tax deferment that is not possible when nominal bonds are held

taxation portfolio choice and debt equity ratios a general equilibrium model this paper explores the portfolio behavior of investors differing with respect to both tax rates and risk aversion emphasizing the role of constraints on individual and firm behavior in ensuring the existence of and characterizing portfolio equilibrium under certain conditions on the securities available in the market which also are necessary for shareholders to be unanimous in supporting firm value maximization investors will be segmented by tax rate into two groups one specialized in equity and the other in debt though the relative wealths of the two groups determine the aggregate debt equity ratio each firm will be indifferent to its financial policy

corporation tax finance and the cost of capital this paper examines the influence of corporate tax exhaustion on the firm s financial and investment decisions a dynamic programming model is used to establish effective marginal tax rates in the presence of a tax system that permits the carry forward of losses to future periods the paper demonstrates that internal optimal financial structures may result which do not require the imposition of external constraints the cost of capital is highly sensitive to the current taxable earnings of the firm and the implications of this for such tax transfer activities as leasing are discussed

modelling companies debt and dividend decisions with company accounts data reliable empirical models of company financial decisions have proved hard to construct using aggregate data this paper uses company specific data drawn from the published accounts of a large sample of uk companies to estimate a model of debt and dividend decisions an attempt is made to assess the relative importance of costs of funds the tax system the balance sheet and profitability of the company and of statutory controls in determining these key financial decisions diversity of behaviour is analysed by allowing for unobserved company specific effects and by examining subsets of the full sample

the critical implicit tax rate and capital structure in a miller world firms are indifferent between debt and equity when the tax rate that isimplicitly used to price a bond is equal to the statutory corporate tax rate in this paper we derive the implicit tax rate that makes a firm marginally indifferent between debt and equity when debt related tax savings are uncertain we analyze the functional relationship between this critical tax rate and the amount of debt issued by a firm and discuss the implications for a firm s optimal capital structure

the personal tax advantages of equity abstract we value a firm that pays its cash flows to equity through share repurchases in a dynamic environment where personal taxes are paid on capital gains upon realization the cost of capital is reduced by approximately 0 8 through the use of repurchases relative to dividends we use the empirical distribution of pre tax free cash flows in fama and french 1999 to evaluate the tradeoffs between the costs of financial distress the personal tax advantages of equity and the corporate tax advantage to debt the optimal capital structure is interior with a 3 bankruptcy cost

mm past present future one of the most productive days in my life was the day in 1956 when it was agreed that merton miller then a shy and retiring young man would you believe it would sit in my graduate course in money and macroeconomics at carnegie institute of technology it was an exciting course with excellent students it took a broad view of the subject one issue that was covered was the cost of capital as a determinant of the rate of investment i had been intrigued by the subject ever since attending a national bureau conference on business finance at which i gave a fairly conventional paper modigliani and ziman 1952 but mostly i listened to a paper by david durand 1952 in which the possibility that financial structure would not affect the market valuation or the cost of capital was suggested only to be rejected as not relevant to the actual capital markets in preparing my lecture dealing with the cost of capital i was able to provide for a world of no taxes a sort of proof of proposition i based on arbitrage i reported the result to my class the next day adding that i didn t really believe my result and there probably was something wrong but miller was instantly captured by the result because he said he knew of a recent paper allen 1954 which provided empirical support for the result even though it lacked a convincing rationale we thus formed

investment choice and asset allocation of italian households the discrete continuous approach financial and monetary policies are considered to be effective depending on the reaction of financial markets which are increasingly populated by households in this article from intertemporal settings i derive a financial almost ideal fai demand system and i estimate it by highlighting the determinants of both limited participation to financial markets and asset substitutability complementarity in the allocating stage finally the wealth elasticities provide some further insights on the low diffusion of the newer and more complex financial instruments across italian households

on the consequences of legal constraints and taxation for corporate choice in this article the author analyzes the effect taxation and legal constraints have on the definition of the firm s cost of capital and optimal financial policy under uncertainty the assumes firms are competitive and considers only input choices spanned by the return vectors of existing securities under very specific tax conditions these assumptions still guarantee a unique definition of the tax adjusted cost of capital but it is shown that under more general tax structures there is a split among potential shareholders accounted for by the ownership of the corporation

recent developments in the theory of corporate finance the field of corporate finance is a vast one in order to keep this paper manageable i shall focus on two well known puzzles of corporate finance the first has been described by black 1976 as the dividend puzzle and the second by myers 1984 as the capital structure puzzle underlying these two puzzles are similar considerations both originate in the application of competitive equilibrium analysis to corporate financial behaviour in two classic papers by modigliani and miller modigliani and miller 1958 miller and modigliani 1961 modigliani and miller showed that if firms and investors enjoy the same financial opportunities then under conditions of perfectly competitive capital markets no asymmetries of information between different agents and no variations in the tax treatment of different forms of finance corporate financial policy is irrelevant the value of a firm is determined entirely by its real decisions and is completely unaffected by the ratio of debt to equity finance in its capital structure or by the amount of dividends it pays out for a given investment plan the stark contrast between modigliani and miller s theoretical analysis and empirical observations of the importance attached to capital structure and dividend decisions by both firms and investors is part of the capital structure and dividend puzzles but it is not all for it remains true that nearly thirty years after the original modigliani miller paper was first published despite enormous efforts on the part of many researchers a proper understanding of what determines companies borrowing and dividend decisions is still elusive

taxes financial decisions and organizational form evidence from publicly traded partnerships abstract publicly traded partnerships ptps also known as master limited partnerships are similar to u s corporations yet they are not subject to corporate taxes given their mixture of corporate and partnership characteristics ptps provide an experiment for studying taxation and firm financial decisions this paper compares the financial structure and dividend policies of ptps and corporations in the oil and gas exploration industry the results are consistent with hypotheses about taxes and financial decisions controlling for other factors ptps pay more dividends and borrow less than similar corporations

default risk cannot explain the muni puzzle evidence from municipal bonds that are secured by u s treasury obligations fama 1977 and miller 1977 predict that one minus the corporate tax rate will equate after tax yields from comparable taxable and tax exempt bonds empirical evidence shows that long term tax exempt yields are higher than theory predicts two popular explanations for this empirical puzzle are that relative to taxable bonds municipal bonds bear more default risk and include costly call options i study u s government secured municipal bond yields which are effectively default free and nonmalleable these municipal yields display the same tendency to be too high i conclude that differential default risk and call options do not explain the municipal bond puzzle article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

how much do taxes discourage incorporation the double taxation of corporate income should discourage firms from incorporating we investigate the extent to which the aggregate allocation of assets and taxable income in the united states between corporate and noncorporate firms responds to the size of this tax distortion during the period 1959 1986 in theory profitable firms should shift out of the corporate sector when the tax distortion is large and conversely for firms with tax losses our empirical results provide strong support for these forecasts and imply that the resulting excess burden equals 16 percent of business tax revenue one of the most basic distortions created by the double taxation of corporate income in the united states is the disincentive to incorporate even in most countries with integrated or partially integrated tax systems there are differential taxes across organizational forms however obvious this distortion may be most articles investigating the distortions created by the corporate tax have taken as exogenous a firm s choice whether or not to incorporate assuming for example that some industries are inherently corporate while others are inherently noncorporate a variety of nontax factors described below can certainly influence a firm s choice of organizational form causing some to favor incorporating and others not but are these nontax factors so dominant that taxes do not in practice influence a firm s choice of organizational form as gravelle and kotlikoff 1989 1993 emphasize tax induced changes in firms choices of organizational form in principle can create large excess burdens the size of these excess burdens in practice depends on the extent to which firms respond to these tax incentives in this article we calculate how the tax distortion discouraging firms from incorporating has varied over time then estimate the extent to which the allocation of assets and taxable income between corporate and noncorporate

stockholder tax rates and firm attributes abstract this paper develops a rigorous theoretical model to assess when investor clienteles may be empirically identified using ex dividend day data and what firm attributes these clienteles should respond to it then presents empirical results for the period 1963 1977 suggesting that 1 tax based investor clienteles do exist and are reasonably stable over time and 2 these clienteles are strongly influenced by the dividend price ratio but insignificantly by direct measures of risk and other firm characteristics

tax subsidized underpricing the market for build america bonds build america bonds babs were issued by municipalities for 20 months as a part of the 2009 fiscal package unlike traditional tax exempt municipals babs are taxable to the holder but the treasury rebates 35 of the coupon to the issuer the stated purpose was to provide municipalities access to a more liquid market including foreign tax exempt and tax deferred investors we find babs do not exhibit greater liquidity than traditional municipals babs are more underpriced initially particularly for interdealer trades babs also show a substitution from underwriter fees toward more underpricing suggesting that the underpricing is a strategic response to the tax subsidy

pricing home mortgages and bank collateral a rational expectations approach the efficiency of the housing finance system is of interest to homeowners financial intermediaries and policy makers we study the design of optimal mortgage contracts for risk averse economic agents with access to symmetric information on the payoffs of a risky home our non linear framework helps demonstrate the pareto efficiency of a risk free loan over its risky counterpart it also allows us to evaluate the unique equilibrium interest rate loan amount and home price in contrast to the capital structure theorems finally we conduct numerical simulations in lieu of comparative statics to shed some light on the complex causal relationship between mortgage pricing parameters and the underlying collateral i e home value

tax distortions and bond issue pricing abstract original issue premium oip bonds are the norm in the us tax exempt market but very rare in the taxable market a tax subsidy helps explain this disparity unlike bonds issued at par or discount the price of oip bonds can fall and yet remain above par providing secondary market buyers with more tax exempt coupon and less taxable market discount gain the subsidy for oip bonds explains additional previously undocumented empirical facts in a calibration exercise the subsidy s expected cost to the u s treasury is estimated at 1 7 billion per year

dividend taxation and household dividend portfolio decisions evidence from the u s jobs and growth tax relief reconciliation act of 2003 abstractthis study examines the dividend clientele hypothesis by focusing on the preferential tax treatment of qualified dividends provided by the 2003 jobs and growth tax relief reconciliation act jgtrra in the united states using the public use tax file data the author finds that the ratios of dividends to long term capital gains before the 2003 tax act significantly declined with household tax rate differentials between dividends and long term capital gains but such a negative tax effect on the ratios disappears afterwards this seemingly tax inefficient composition of dividends and long term capital gains after the tax act arises from households ability to reduce their tax burdens on stocks by exploiting the new preferential tax treatments on qualified dividends under jgtrra that is households in the upper tax bracket hold significantly greater shares of qualified dividends relative to ordinary dividends after the tax act

taxation and household portfolio composition us evidence from the 1980s and 1990s abstract this paper explores the relationship between household marginal income tax rates the set of financial assets that households own and the portfolio shares accounted for by each of these assets it analyzes data from the 1983 1989 1992 1995 and 1998 surveys of consumer finances and develops a new algorithm for imputing federal marginal tax rates to households in these surveys the empirical findings suggest that marginal tax rates have important effects on asset allocation decisions the probability that a household owns tax advantaged assets such as tax exempt bonds or assets held in tax deferred accounts is positively related to its tax rate on ordinary income in addition the portfolio share invested in corporate stock which is taxed less heavily than interest bearing assets is increasing in the household s ordinary income tax rate holdings of heavily taxed assets such as interest bearing accounts decline as a share of wealth as a household s marginal tax rate increases

pricing black scholes options with correlated credit risk abstract this paper presents an improved method of pricing vulnerable black scholes options under assumptions which are appropriate in many business situations an analytic pricing formula is derived which allows not only for correlation between the option s underlying asset and the credit risk of the counterparty but also for the option writer to have other liabilities further the proportion of nominal claims paid out in default is endogenous to the model and is based on the terminal value of the assets of the counterparty and the amount of other equally ranking claims numerical examples compare the results of this model with those of other pricing formulas based on alternative assumptions and illustrate how the model can be calibrated using market data

a simple model of the taxable and tax exempt yield curves i examine the anomalous behavior of the taxable and tax exempt yield curves long municipal yields appear too high relative to the equivalent after tax yield that can be earned in treasury or corporate bonds i discuss existing explanations of the problem and propose a simple model that relates the yields of taxable bonds to the yield curve for par tax exempts the ratio of the tax exempt yield to the taxable yield increases with maturity in the model so it is consistent with observed phenomena such as inverted yield curves for taxables and contemporaneous rising yield curves for tax exempts statistical and descriptive comparisons between the yields predicted by the model and observed yields on par bonds that the model has some promise in explaining the apparent anomalies in the behaviors of the two yield curves article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

tax exempt investors and the asset allocation puzzle abstract investors frequently hold equity in pensions and other tax exempt savings plans despite the prediction of the standard model that they hold only bonds we provide a new explanation for this empirical puzzle based on differences between tax exempt and taxable assets in the tax treatment of capital losses we show how limits on refundability of losses on taxable equities leads to diversity of investors preferences for corporate leverage on the basis of tax rates in the simplest equilibrium of the model tax exempt savers hold risky highly levered equities while low bracket taxable savers hold bonds and high bracket taxpayers hold relatively safe unlevered equities we discuss the implications of tax exempts for risk taking and agency costs within the firm

the term structure of interest rates in real and monetary economies abstract this paper modifies standard asset pricing models by introducing capital a variable labor supply and money a surprising but very positive result is that in a real production economy the interest rate is close to a random walk this result is found to be true even if there is no persistence in the driving process of the model in this paper we generalize the standard cash in advance constraint by using a shopping time technology this generalization makes it possible to match observed variability for the velocity of money this type of monetary model however is not successful in matching observed behavior of bond prices