Journal of Financial Economics
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Опубликовано на портале: 03-10-2003
Robert C. Merton
Journal of Financial Economics.
1980.
Vol. 8.
No. 4.
P. 323-361.
The expected market return is a number frequently required for the solution of many
investment and corporate finance problems, but by comparison with other financial
variables, there has been little research on estimating this expected return. Current
practice for estimating the expected market return adds the historical average realized
excess market returns to the current observed interest rate. While this model explicitly
reflects the dependence of the market return on the interest rate, it fails to account
for the effect of changes in the level of market risk. Three models of equilibrium
expected market returns which reflect this dependence are analyzed in this paper.
Estimation procedures which incorporate the prior restriction that equilibrium expected
excess returns on the market must be positive are derived and applied to return data
for the period 1926–1978. The principal conclusions from this exploratory investigation
are: (1) in estimating models of the expected market return, the non-negativity restriction
of the expected excess return should be explicity included as part of the specification:
(2) estimators which use realized returns should be adjusted for heteroscedasticity.



Опубликовано на портале: 06-10-2004
H. De Angelo, Ronald W. Masulis
Journal of Financial Economics.
1980.
Vol. 8.
No. 1.
P. 3-29.
In this paper, a model of corporate leverage choice is formulated in which corporate
and differential personal taxes exist and supply side adjustments by firms enter
into the determination of equilibrium relative prices of debt and equity. The presence
of corporate tax shield substitutes for debt such as accounting depreciation, depletion
allowances, and investment tax credits is shown to imply a market equilibrium in
which each firm has a unique interior optimum leverage decision (with or without
leverage-related costs). The optimal leverage model yields a number of interesting
predictions regarding cross-sectional and time-series properties of firms' capital
structures. Extant evidence bearing on these predictions is examined.


