BETAS AND DEBT MANAGEMENT WITHIN THE UK TAX ENVIRONMENT

Tax complexities relating to corporate tax losses, induced by debt finance, and to the differential tax treatment of equity and sterling debt, are introduced into corporate valuation. The after personal tax value of the geared firm can be less than that of the equivalent ungeared firm. Also, debt-induced tax losses can create negative betas. These fiscal effects are incorporated into degearing formulae under active and passive debt management policies.     

Employment Opportunities for Consumer Affairs Professionals

This analysis of consumer affairs professionals in business and government describes what functions they perform, where they are employed, what education and experience is required and what their salaries are. Professional educators in the consumer field have generally ignored the career field of consumer affairs professional. Colleges and universities train consumer majors to be educators, researchers, or extension workers, but little attention is paid to the education of consumer affairs professionals for business and government. This article not only attempts to give educators in the consumer field a greater awareness of this relatively new career so that they can develop educational programs more intelligently but also attempts to make business and government more aware of what is being done in this area so they may be able to utilize the talents of consumer affairs professionals.     

Money as a Potential Anchor for the Price Level: a Critique of the P* Approach

A number of recent articles have attempted to restore the use of a simple measure of the money supply as an indicator of future price levels and to re-establish a causal link from money to prices. Most notably Hallman, Porter and Small (HPS) (1989a), (1989b) originated the approach using US data and Hannah and James(1989) have applied it to the UK The approach broadens the traditional idea of a constant velocity of money by introducing the notion of V* and Q*, the long-run value of velocity and income. These are then used to define P from the traditional quantity theory of money as the long-run equilibrium price level. The analysis then proceeds to estimate a standard Error Correction Model (ECM) for price determination with the levels effect given by (P-P*)t-1. The conclusion drawn is that 'a measure of money that determines the long-run future level of prices is useful in determining the proper monetary policy for attaining price stability. We have shown, through the construction of P*, that M2 can serve as this determinant for the price level' (Hallman, Porter and Small (1982a) p. 23).
We argue in this paper that the P* approach is flawed. It is certainly more complex than traditional monetarist approaches but the fundamental questions of causality are in no way either affected or resolved. The P* analysis is a variant on more conventional cointegration analysis (Engle and Granger (1987), Johansen (1988), Hall (1989)) and we argue that the Johansen framework allows us to address the question in a formal and more complete way. When this approach is applied to the US data used by HPS, we find that while the P* relationship does indeed represent a cointegrating one, it does not have a causal link with prices but rather the causality runs from prices to money - this result conforms well to the work of Hendry and Ericsson (1990) or Hall, Henry and Wilcox (1990), which use this form of relationship to model the demand for money.     

Explaining Financial Management Behavior for Koreans Living in the United States

Using a cross‐cultural conceptualization with a targeted sample of Americans and Koreans, it was noted that Koreans exhibited more responsible financial management behavior than Americans after controlling for locus of control, financial knowledge, and income interactions. Overall, financial knowledge was positively related to responsible financial behavior. No direct effects on financial management behavior were noted for locus of control or household income. Locus of control was found to mediate the effect of financial knowledge on financial behavior for Koreans. Being Korean did moderate between financial knowledge and financial behavior.     

Common Divisors,Payout Persistence,and Return Predictability

In the finance and accounting literature, the use of a common divisor in the dependent and independent variables of ordinary least‐squares regressions is commonplace. What goes less recognized, however, is that their use induces spurious correlation between the regression variables and invalidates standard testing procedures. This paper analyses the common divisor problem by outlining analytical results concerning the expected R² and providing a simulation procedure that generates test statistics from which critical values can be drawn. To illustrate the procedure, we re‐investigate payout yield return predictability findings that have appeared in the literature and show that the results are spurious.