The plausibility of risk estimates and implied costs to international equity investments

We reconsider the costs to international equity investments implied by standard portfolio theory (Cooper and Kaplanis, 1994; Sercu and Vanpée, 2008). Estimated costs are mostly driven by risk estimates, not by asset holdings. For OECD markets, risks are fairly stable and relatively easy to estimate, but for emerging markets this is not the case. Many required expected returns implied by unconditional risk estimates defy credibility, both a priori and empirically. More sophisticated volatility estimates based on a dynamic risk model a la Bekaert and Harvey (1997) lead to implicit costs that are far more credible, but the results remain fragile.     

The effect of the tax reform act of 1986 on the location of assets in financial services firms

This paper examines the effects of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 on the international location decisions of U.S. financial services firms. The Act included rule changes that made it substantially more difficult for U.S. firms to defer U.S. taxes on overseas financial services income held in low-tax jurisdictions. We use information from the tax returns of U.S. corporations to examine how local taxes affect the allocation of financial assets held abroad by financial services firms. We find that, before the Act, the location of reported assets in financial subsidiaries was responsive to differences in host country tax rates across jurisdictions. However, after the Act, differences in host country tax rates no longer explain the distribution of assets held in financial services subsidiaries abroad. Our results suggest that the tightening of the anti-deferral provisions applicable to financial services companies has been successful in diminishing the effect of host country income taxes on asset location decisions.     

THE OPERATING BETA OF A U.S. MULTI-ACTIVITY FIRM: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION

Various researchers have decomposed the firm's beta (or systematic risk) into components that are reflective of the firm's corporate characteristics, for example, leverage position, product mix, etc. In this paper, the theoretical beta decompositions of Hamada (1969 and 1972) and Rubinstein (1973) are sub- jected to empirical examination for a sample of diversified (or multi-activity) firms. The results of the analysis evidence highly significant empirical support for the Hamada- Rubinstein model and for the viability of operationalizing that model with available accounting and market data.