The Pricing of Lake Lots

This article reveals aspects of lakefront property pricing especially with respect to lot frontage and depth. A clearer understanding of how these lot dimensions affect price should be of interest to those engaged in lake development, land use control, valuation, and marketing. A data set with eighty observations of vacant Lake Michigan residential properties sales is used. The unique geography of northwest Michigan provides an opportunity to tackle empirical issues associated with zoning when zoning is correlated with lot attributes, such as lot topography.     

Information Effects on the Bid-Ask Spread

An individual who chooses to serve as a market-maker is assumed to optimize his position by setting a bid-ask spread which maximizes the difference between expected revenues received from liquidity-motivated traders and expected losses to information-motivated traders. By characterizing the cost of supplying quotes, as writing a put and a call option to an information-motivated trader, it is shown that the bid-ask spread is a positive function of the price level and return variance, a negative function of measures of market activity, depth, and continuity, and negatively correlated with the degree of competition. Thus, the theory of information effects on the bid-ask spread proposed in this paper is consistent with the empirical literature.     

排放权交易的正当性思辨——基于欧美实证经验分析

构筑于科斯定理与外部性理论的排放权交易机制强调市场的规制功能。然而,环境政策是包含着多元、多层次价值序列的复合系统,经济学角度的社会成本分析不足以为其提供完全的正当性。就排放权交易机制而言,对私权的过度强化可能导致偏离公共目的,总量控制特征和不同分配模式也会使政策收益与负担不均衡地分布于群体之间。排放权的功利主义特征和内部构造中的固有矛盾,已在欧美实践过程中产生诸多不良反馈。环境公共政策包含了广泛而深刻的生态及社会价值,这些多角度的价值目标不能从经济层面得到完整表达,资源配置就无法涵盖公共属性的每一层意旨。在进行环境制度设计时,不仅需要成本效益的分析,还应纳入法学理论、法学价值和公正层面的考量,如此才能真正实现经济效用与生态、社会效用的和谐统一。     

Investment-Based Cost Accounting as a Fundamental Basis of Decision-Oriented Management Accounting

Decision making concerns over cost allocations, especially common cost allocations, have a long history. They are well canvassed in Thomas (1969 ) and Wells (1978 ). This article revisits the cost allocation debate, albeit in a new setting, and rehearses arguments relevant to long- and short-term decision contexts. Here a means is proposed to address those problems, namely to adopt the investment-based approach to cost accounting. This approach draws on ideas of Hotelling (1925 ), Preinreich (1938 ) and Schneider (1961 ), and applies the notion of net present value in another setting, namely to cost accounting theory. Research has revealed no discussion of this in the Anglo-American literature. This article shows analytically that the investment-based approach offers a general basis for decision-oriented cost accounting, as it combines investment theory with cost accounting and thereby connects long-term with short-term decisions. While reviewing primarily European literature, it also examines several Anglo-American works. The analysis reveals how for three classical decision problems—production program planning, purchase order lot sizes, and break-even price limits—two different types of costs, namely depreciation and material costs, have to be based on cash flows and net present value. The proposed investment-based approach permits an examination of the extent to which cost accounting concepts and cost information are relevant to those decisions. This theoretical concept is used to derive pertinent cost dimensions and to solve traditional problems of cost allocation. A caution is that the investment approach is limited to decision facilitating cost accounting. Whether it may be possible to couple it with agency theory and its focus on decision influencing has not been explored and is an issue for further research.     

Optimal dividend strategy with transaction costs for an upward jump model

In this paper, we consider the optimal dividend problem with transaction costs when the incomes of a company can be described by an upward jump model. Both fixed and proportional costs are considered in the problem. The value function is defined as the expected total discounted dividends up to the time of ruin. Although the same problem has already been studied in the pure diffusion model and the spectrally negative Lévy process, the optimal dividend problem in an upward jump model has two different aspects in determining the optimal dividends barrier and in the property of the value function. First, the value function is twice continuous differentiable in the diffusion case, but it is not in the jump model. Second, under the spectrally negative Lévy process, downward jumps will not cause any payment actions; however, it might trigger dividend payments when there are upward jumps. In deriving the optimal barriers, we show that the value function is bounded by a linear function. Using this property, we establish the verification theorem for the value function. By solving the quasi-variational inequalities associated with this problem, we obtain the closed-form solution to the value function and hence the optimal dividend strategy when the income sizes follow a common exponential distribution. In the presence of a fixed transaction cost, it is shown that the optimal strategy is a two-barrier policy, and the optimal barriers are only dependent on the fixed cost and not the proportional cost. A numerical example is used to illustrate how the fixed cost plays a significant role in the optimal dividend strategy and also the value function. Moreover, an increased fixed cost results in larger but less frequent dividend payments.     

Cost efficiency in Australian non-bank financial institutions: A non-parametric approach

A two-stage procedure is employed to evaluate non-bank financial institution cost efficiency. In the first stage, data envelopment analysis is used to calculate technical, allocative and cost efficiency indices using a sample of 200 Australian credit unions. The results indicate that a typical credit union's costs in 1997 were 30 per cent above what could be considered efficient on the basis of observed best practice. The major source of overall cost inefficiency would appear to be allocative inefficiency, rather than technical inefficiency. The second stage uses limited dependent variable regression techniques to relate credit union efficiency scores to financial statement information. The results indicate that commercial lending activities, expenditures on information technology and marketing and promotion, the proportion of non-interest income, and association membership are a significant influence on the level of cost efficiency. The results are found to be invariant to alternative model specifications where input prices are first assumed to be different for each credit union and then assumed to be identical across the sample.     

Deprival value and fair value: a reinterpretation and a reconciliation

Measurement is an important current issue for financial accounting standard-setters. Current values are increasingly replacing historical cost measures, but an important unresolved issue is the precise form that current value should take. In this paper two alternative measurement bases that have appeared in accounting standards. Deprivai Value (sometimes called Value to the Business) and Fair Value, are explained and compared. They are then reconciled by making the following three adjustments to their conventional definitions.

(1) In the case of Deprival Value, situations in which net realisable value exceeds replacement cost imply that there is a profitable redevelopment or redeployment opportunity, so that net realisable value is regarded as the appropriate measure of Deprivai Value.

(2) In the case of Fair Value, transactions costs (including installation and removal costs) are added to acquisition values and deducted from disposal values.

(3) In the case of Fair Value, it is assumed that net realisable value represents the ‘highest and best use’, except when it is exceeded by both replacement cost and value in use. In the latter case, ‘highest and best use’ (and therefore Fair Value) is inferred by assuming profit-maximising behaviour by the owner.

It is suggested that the resulting synthesis represents a method of current valuation which is consistent with the objective of measuring the asset in terms of the economic opportunities that are available to its current owner in the condition and location in which it is currently to be found.     

Taxes and the Fisher Effect: A Clarifying Analysis

Supply and demand functions for loanable funds are postulated for a no-inflation economy and equilibrium levels of saving, investment, and the interest rate are specified. Certainty and nondepreciating assets are assumed. An exogenous inflation rate is imposed upon this same economy and new equilibrium values for these same variables are established. The analysis is performed twice. The first time, a Modigliani-Miller [17] tax structure is assumed while the second analysis assumes a Miller-Scholes [15] tax structure. In both cases, inflation causes the nominal rate to increase by more than the inflation rate. The analysis is repeated assuming that investments live for one period and are then written off against taxable income at historical cost. In both tax structures, the level of saving and investment is a decreasing function of the inflation rate.     

How should Central Banks determine and control their bank note inventory?

This paper looks at a relatively unresearched but important area in money and banking – namely the provision of currency by the Central Bank. One of the most important functions of Central Banking is the provision of liquidity to the economy. However, in fulfilling this function, Central Banks have to be prepared for unexpected money demand shocks as well as production, transportation and cost of capital constraints. The paper develops a dynamic cost minimizing note inventory model that solves for the Central Bank’s optimal note order size and frequency. As part of the modeling exercise a value at risk model is used to solve for an inventory “cushion.”     

The Effects of Different Taxes on Risky and Risk-free Investment and on the Cost of Capital

This paper analyzes the major factors which determine the effects of taxation on the value of risky assets and on the cost of capital, and shows how the magnitudes and even the signs of these effects depend on the values assumed for a few key parameters in the model. Using plausible values for these parameters, it is shown that the results obtained are frequently counter-intuitive.     

The Measurement of Harmonisation and the Comparability of Financial Statement Items: Within-Country and Between-Country Effects

This paper reports on an analysis of accounting policy choices made by European companies with an international shareholding. The accounting policies analysed in depth in this paper comprise the treatment of goodwill and accounting for deferred taxation. In the paper, the van der Tas comparability index is developed by separating the index into two components relating to the within-country (intra-national) effects of domestic standardisation and the between-country (inter-national) effects of harmonisation. It is shown in this paper that the value of the index may be interpreted as the probability that two companies selected at random will report financial information that is comparable, and that the lowest level of comparability exists when the accounting methods are assumed to be distributed equiprobably over the companies, the outcome of a random selection of accounting policies. The paper also considers the problems of non-disclosure, and a comprehensive ‘disclosure-adjusted’ comparability index is proposed.     

Intangible Asset Valuation Model Using Panel Data

In this paper, we design a valuation model for intangible assets using panel data, and empirically investigate the model validity. The approach using panel data is an evaluation method that uses unobserved firm-specific effects based on panel analysis. Our model first estimates production function using panel analysis, and then develops cost function using a duality approach. Next, we discount added value and costs resulting from intangible assets using fixed effects. Empirical analysis using the model compares the estimated parameter values in the nonlinear profit function consisting of production function and cost function with those in the production function alone, which becomes linear after logarithmic conversion, and finds that the two are generally similar. Additionally, the market value of equity is more closely associated with both the book value of equity and the value of intangible assets than with the book value of equity alone. These results support the validity of the model for evaluating intangible assets. This model is easy to apply in practice and is based on a simple idea. Further discussion of this model is warranted given the increasing importance attached to the value of intangible assets.     

Accrual Accounting,Informational Sufficiency,and Equity Valuation

This paper studies accrual accounting and equity valuation in the context of a firm that makes repeated and overlapping investments in productive capacity. The analysis identifies a particular accrual accounting (depreciation) rule that is termed replacement cost accounting because the book value of existing capacity assets is set equal to the value that such assets would have if a competitive market were to exist for used assets. It is shown that replacement cost accounting aggregates past investment decisions of the firm without a loss of value‐relevant information. The intrinsic value of the firm can then be expressed as a function of current accounting data and certain parameters of the firm’s operating environment. Further, it is shown that replacement cost accounting is essentially the only accounting rule with this informational sufficiency property.     

What Cost of Capital Should You Use? The Market Has an Answer

The most widely used means of estimating a company's cost of equity capital is the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). But as a growing number of academics and practitioners have suggested, use of the CAPM produces estimates that often fail to reflect the risks of the companies as perceived by current and potential investors. The authors' work, together with other research, also suggests that the cost of equity produced by the CAPM is often too high. To the extent this is so, companies are discounting investment projects at rates of return that may be leading them to pass up value‐adding opportunities. The authors advocate the use of a simple and practical alternative to the CAPM that does not use either an assumed market risk premium or a beta. It uses instead an equity premium that is implied by the current market price of a company's stock and, as such, is implicitly derived from investors' assessments of the firm's risk that are reflected in that price. More specifically, the alternative approach solves for the internal rate of return that equates the present value of expected future cash flows to the current market price. In support of this approach, studies have shown that such market‐implied measures are better predictors than CAPM‐based estimates of future stock returns, both at the individual‐firm and aggregate market levels.     

Odd‐lot Costs and Taxation Influences on Stock Dividend Ex‐dates

Abstract:   Past research has revealed significant abnormal ex‐date returns for stock dividends even though the ex‐date is known in advance and the distribution contains no new information. Various researchers have suggested that the higher transaction cost of selling odd‐lot share parcels compared to round‐lot share parcels is a key driver in the abnormal returns. However, no study to date has directly compared the ex‐date price reaction of stock dividends distributed when odd‐lot transaction costs were charged to those issued when odd‐lot costs were not evident. As odd‐lot trade costs were eliminated from the New Zealand Stock Exchange on 1 October, 1991, the New Zealand market provides a unique opportunity to directly test the role, if any, that odd‐lot transactions costs have in explaining stock dividend ex‐date returns. We find that prior to October 1991 stock dividend ex‐dates exhibit significantly positive returns, however, we do not find any significant ex‐date return once the higher odd‐lot transaction costs were removed. The New Zealand market also enables us to examine an imputation tax based argument of the ex‐date price reaction and we find evidence that imputation tax credits have a value greater than zero.     

Using Forecasts of Earnings to Simultaneously Estimate Growth and the Rate of Return on Equity Investment

We develop a method for simultaneously estimating the cost of equity capital and the growth in residual earnings that are implied by current stock prices, current book value of equity, and short-term forecasts of accounting earnings. We demonstrate the use of our method by calculating the expected equity risk premium. Our estimate is higher than estimates in extant studies that are based on the same earnings forecast data. The main difference between our study and these papers is that while they provide arguments supporting an assumed rate of growth beyond the forecast horizon, we estimate this rate.     

PROJECT HOLDING-PERIOD RATE OF RETURN AND THE MIRR

In this paper we examine the relationship between the Modified Internal Rate of Return (MIRR) and a project's expected holding-period rate of return assuming that cash flows are reinvested at the cost of capital. When cash flows are uncertain, the MIRR overstates the expected holding-period rate of return. The relationship between the MIRR and a project's expected holding-period rate of return is shown to be a simple function of conventional project statistics like the coefficient of variation of the present value of random cash flows, the profitability index, the cost of capital, and the project's life.     

Risk Management—the Revealing Hand

Many believe that the recent emphasis on enterprise risk management function is misguided, especially after the failure of sophisticated quantitative risk models during the global financial crisis. One concern is that top‐down risk management will inhibit innovation and entrepreneurial activities. The authors disagree and argue that risk management should function as a “revealing hand” that identifies, assesses, and mitigates risks in a cost‐efficient way. In so doing, risk management can add value by allowing companies to take on riskier projects and strategies. But to avoid problems encountered in the past, particularly during the recent crisis, risk managers must overcome deep‐seated individual and organizational biases that prevent managers and employees from thinking clearly and analytically about their risk exposures. In this paper, the authors draw lessons from seven case studies about the ways that a corporate risk management function can foster highly interactive dialogues to identify and prioritize risks, help to allocate resources to mitigate such risks, and bring clarity to the value trade‐offs and moral dilemmas that often must be addressed in decisions to manage risks. Developing an effective risk management system requires, first, an agreement about a company's objectives, values, and priorities; second, a clear formulation and communication of the firm's “risk appetite”; and, third, continuous monitoring of a firm's risk‐taking behavior against its declared risk limits. Quantitative risk models should not be the sole—or even the most important—basis for decision‐making. They cannot replace management judgment and are best used to trigger in‐depth discussions among managers and employees about the most important risks faced by the firm and the best ways to respond to them.     

The diversification cost of large,concentrated equity stakes. How big is it? Is it justified?

While the hypothesis that ownership concentration can affect the value of a company has seen a lot of empirical study, little light has been shed on a complementary problem, that these concentrated owners have a cost of their position due to an undiversified portfolio. Using a unique data set of the actual diversification of all Norwegian equity owners, we show that the largest owners of a corporation in fact have very undiversified equity portfolios, and that such owners have significant costs to their concentrated portfolios. At the level of risk of a benchmark portfolio, if they were to move from their present portfolio composition in risky assets to a well diversified portfolio, their returns would have increased by about 13 percentage points in annual terms. We ask whether this cost can be explained by estimated benefits of ownership concentration (private benefits), and show that extant estimates of private benefits are too low to offset our cost estimates.     

The Cost of Debt

We use exogenous variation in tax benefit functions to estimate firm‐specific cost of debt functions that are conditional on company characteristics such as collateral, size, and book‐to‐market. By integrating the area between the benefit and cost functions, we estimate that the equilibrium net benefit of debt is 3.5% of asset value, resulting from an estimated gross benefit (cost) of debt equal to 10.4% (6.9%) of asset value. We find that the cost of being overlevered is asymmetrically higher than the cost of being underlevered and that expected default costs constitute only half of the total ex ante costs of debt.