TAX-LOSS SELLING,INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS,AND THE JANUARY EFFECT: A NOTE

In this note we test the hypothesis that trading by tax-motivated individual investors is responsible for the January effect. We examine the ownership structure of a large sample of firms over a four-year period and find that the small firms that usually exhibit high January returns have low institutional ownership. After controlling for firm size, we still find that institutional ownership is significantly related to January abnormal returns. These results suggest that one reason the January effect may concentrate in small firms is because these firms are held by tax-motivated individual investors.     

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DURATION AND ECONOMIC DEPRECIATION: A NOTE

This note derives an expression for duration in terms of the economic depreciation of a capital budgeting project or financial instrument. By showing how the decline in the value of an asset or liability influences duration, additional insight into the characteristics of this measure is obtained. The new formula shows that duration equals a standard value, which is adjusted for depreciation or appreciation.     

AUDITOR INDEPENDENCE,AUDIT QUALIFICATIONS AND THE PROVISION OF NON-AUDIT SERVICES: A NOTE

This paper presents the results of a study designed to investigate the question of whether there is the potential for an appearance of auditor independence impairment when higher levels of non-audit services are provided to audit clients. This question was investigated by analysing the audit reports for a sample of publicly listed companies over the period 1980 to 1989. The results of the analysis indicate that the auditors of companies not receiving an audit qualification of any type over the period derived a significantly higher proportion of their remuneration from non-audit services fees than the auditors of companies receiving at least one audit qualification. This result is driven by the non-Top 100 companies in the research sample. These findings could suggest that auditors are less likely to qualify a given company's financial statements when higher levels of non-audit services fees are derived. This could convey the view that the independence of the auditors of these companies may have been compromised.     

FORWARD RISK PREMIA AND THE MATURITY OF CONTRACTS: A NOTE

This paper examines the behavior of the risk premium component of currency forward rates. Analyzing forward rates of one, two and three-month maturity, we find that the power of forward rate as a predictor of future spot rate decreases with the length of contract maturity. Further, we find that the proportion of the variance of the forward premium which is due to the variation of the risk premium is larger than the proportion due to the expected spot rate change for all currencies except for the Canadian dollar. This proportion also increases with the length of maturity.     

THE COST OF RETAINED EARNINGS: A FURTHER NOTE, AN ILLUSTRATION AND A COMPUTER PROGRAM

This paper presents the personal and corporate tax adjusted version of the cost of retained earnings, with particular reference to the problem of computing the effective rate of tax on a unit of pre tax profit when one allows for the delayed incidence of part of the tax impost. The argument is illustrated numerically and supported by a computer program which enables the user to consider and work out the effect of changing one or more variables. A term which appeared in a previous article (Lister 1981) is corrected.     

A NOTE ON TAXATION AND THE LEASING DISCOUNT RATES

It is demonstrated that the discount rate for taxes in the traditional formula for the after-tax cost of debt is misspecified for the UK situation. Several new formulae are derived for the after-tax costs for specific periods, including the accounting period and the tax lag. Iterative solution methods are not required.     

ON THE "UNANIMITY" LITERATURE AND THE SECURITY MARKET LINE CRITERION: A NOTE

This paper challenges recent results showing that under uncertainty firms can use the security market line criterion to evaluate investments in monopolised product markets. The paper looks at the simplest certainty case and shows mathematically and graphically that no unanirriously supported investment criterion can be derived to evaluate projects with monopoly power. Hence, they cannot possibly be derived on the more complicated uncertainty case, even given the restrictive assumptions necessary to derive the SML. Unanimity breaks down with monopoly power.     

JOINT PRODUCT DECISIONS, THE FIXED PROPORTIONS CASE: A NOTE

The purpose of this note is to draw attention to a misleading conclusion in the literature, that in determining the optimal rate of joint production and the optimal quantities of joint products to be finished and sold, the joint costs are implicitly shared in proportion to the respective marginal revenues. This conclusion applies only to a special case which is not typical of most joint production processes.