Imports in Keynesian Models*

This paper examines two main problems relating to the introduction of imports in the simple Keynesian model. First, imports need to be made a function of the aggregate demand components rather than income. Second, unless one assumes that intermediate imports are zero the solution of the simple Keynesian model will provide miltipliers which Overstate the exogenous demand change for domestic product.     

Tax Reform and Ex-Dividend Day Behavior

This paper investigates the effect of a major Canadian tax reform on the ex-dividend day behavior of companies on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The results are inconsistent with the hypothesis that price changes on ex-dividend days reflect the relative taxation of dividends and capital gains for the “representative” investor, but are consistent with the hypothesis that ex-dividend day price behavior reflects short-term trading activities.     

Good News for Value Stocks: Further Evidence on Market Efficiency

This article examines the hypothesis that the superior return to so-called value stocks is the result of expectational errors made by investors. We study stock price reactions around earnings announcements for value and glamour stocks over a 5-year period after portfolio formation. The announcement returns suggest that a significant portion of the return difference between value and glamour stocks is attributable to earnings surprises that are systematically more positive for value stocks. The evidence is inconsistent with a risk-based explanation for the return differential.     

Simple Technical Trading Rules and the Stochastic Properties of Stock Returns

This paper tests two of the simplest and most popular trading rules—moving average and trading range break—by utilizing the Dow Jones Index from 1897 to 1986. Standard statistical analysis is extended through the use of bootstrap techniques. Overall, our results provide strong support for the technical strategies. The returns obtained from these strategies are not consistent with four popular null models: the random walk, the AR(1), the GARCH-M, and the Exponential GARCH. Buy signals consistently generate higher returns than sell signals, and further, the returns following buy signals are less volatile than returns following sell signals, and further, the returns following buy signals are less volatile than returns following sell signals. Moreover, returns following sell signals are negative, which is not easily explained by any of the currently existing equilibrium models.     

Debt,Agency Costs,and Industry Equilibrium

We show that risk characteristics of projects' cash flows are endogenously determined by the investment decisions of all firms in an industry. As a result, in reasonable settings, financial structures which create incentives to expropriate debtholders by increasing risk are shown not to reduce value in an industry equilibrium. Without taxes, capital structure is irrelevant for individual firms despite its effect on the equityholders' incentives, but the maximum total amount of debt in the industry is determinate. Allowing for a corporate tax advantage of debt, capital structure becomes relevant but firms are indifferent between distinct alternative debt levels.     

Contrarian Investment,Extrapolation, and Risk

For many years, scholars and investment professionals have argued that value strategies outperform the market. These value strategies call for buying stocks that have low prices relative to earnings, dividends, book assets, or other measures of fundamental value. While there is some agreement that value strategies produce higher returns, the interpretation of why they do so is more controversial. This article provides evidence that value strategies yield higher returns because these strategies exploit the suboptimal behavior of the typical investor and not because these strategies are fundamentally riskier.     

Vendor Financing

This paper shows that, even in the presence of a perfectly competitive banking industry, it is optimal for firms with market power to engage in vendor financing if credit customers have lower reservation prices than cash customers or if adverse selection makes it infeasible to write credit contracts that separate customers according to their credit risk. We analyze how the advantage of vendor financing depends on the relative size of the cash and credit markets, the heterogeneity of credit customers, and the number of firms in the industry.