Search results

This paper examines whether target returns act as specific goals that impact risk-taking when individuals make investment decisions.

Using an experimental setting, the authors assign either a low or a high target return to participants and ask them to make independent investment decisions as the risk-free rate fluctuates around their target return and, for some of them, becomes negative.

Building on cumulative prospect theory, the authors find that the prevailing reference point of participants is the target return, regardless of the level of the risk-free rate. This result still holds even when the risk-free rate is negative, suggesting that (1) the target return drives risk-taking more than does a zero-threshold and (2) negative rates are limited as a tool to stimulate appetites for risk. In a follow-up study, the authors show that these conclusions remain valid when the target return is endogenously determined.

The authors' original approach, which pioneers the use of target returns in both the positive and negative interest rate contexts, provides insightful results about the “reach for yield” among regular people.

Sees the objective of teaching financial management to be to help managers and potential managers to make sensible investment and financing decisions. Acknowledges that financial theory teaches that investment and financing decisions should be based on cash flow and risk. Provides information on payback period; return on capital employed, earnings per share effect, working capital, profit planning, standard costing, financial statement planning and ratio analysis. Seeks to combine the practical rules of thumb of the traditionalists with the ideas of the financial theorists to form a balanced approach to practical financial management for MBA students, financial managers and undergraduates.

The aim of this paper is to consider the appropriate benchmark risk free rate sui for pricing of property investments in the UK and, in doing so, investigate the financial characteristics and performance of the UK gilt yields. European investors have been significant players in the UK commercial property market during the last decade and in order to be competitive in bidding situations with UK‐based investors, require to be aware of the pricing criteria adopted.

This paper analyses the stability, yield distribution and volatility of both conventional gilts and index‐linked gilts with different maturities over the period 1980‐2010. It considers the changing structure of the UK commercial property market and reports on a questionnaire survey of the UK property investment community, which focused on the rationale behind the selection of the appropriate risk free rate of return.

The analysis suggests that ten‐year index‐linked gilts have been the most stable, but that if conventional gilts are preferred, then five‐year nominal appear to be more stable than ten‐year nominal; ten‐year real yields are smoother and relatively less volatile. In the authors' survey of the UK property investment fund managers and their advisors, the majority, but by no means all of the respondents, used the ten‐year nominal gilt yield as their risk free rate of return. However, questions were raised as to whether it was appropriate to use spot or average gilt yields, particularly when rates in 2009/2010 had fallen to such low level.

The findings provide a better understanding of how the different maturities of gilts behave. Insight is given on the criteria adopted by investors when selecting the risk free rate.

I survey applications of Markov switching models to the asset pricing and portfolio choice literatures. In particular, I discuss the potential that Markov switching models have to fit financial time series and at the same time provide powerful tools to test hypotheses formulated in the light of financial theories, and to generate positive economic value, as measured by risk-adjusted performances, in dynamic asset allocation applications. The chapter also reviews the role of Markov switching dynamics in modern asset pricing models in which the no-arbitrage principle is used to characterize the properties of the fundamental pricing measure in the presence of regimes.

Real estate investment has been generally accepted as a value-adding proposition for a portfolio investor. Such an impression is not only shared by investment professionals and financial advisors but also appears to be supported by an overwhelming amount of research in the academic literature. The benefits of adding real estate as an asset class to a well-diversified portfolio are usually attributed to the respectable risk-return profile of real estate investment together with the relatively low correlation between its returns and the returns of other financial assets. By using the regime-switching technique on an extensive historical dataset, we attempt to look for the statistical evidence for such a claim. Unfortunately, the empirical support for the claim is neither strong nor universal. We find that any statistically significant improvement in risk-adjusted return is very much limited to the bullish environment of the real estate market. In general, the diversification benefit is not found to be statistically significant unless investors are relatively risk averse. We also document a regime-switching behavior of real estate returns similar to those found in other financial assets. There are two distinct states of the real estate market. The low-return (high-return) state is characterized by its high (low) volatility and its high (low) correlations with the stock market returns. We find this kind of dynamic risk characteristics to play a crucial role in dictating the diversification benefit from real estate investment.

Lally (2007) concludes that regulators must estimate the risk‐free rate as the yield‐tomaturity on Government debt with a term‐tomaturity equal to the regulatory period, to ensure that the present value of expected cash flows equals the investment base. The analytics behind this conclusion assume that forward rates are an unbiased estimate of future spot rates, an assumption which is inconsistent with empirical evidence. This has an important economic implication. With the typical case being that the yield curve is upward‐sloping, adopting a short‐term risk‐free rate would result in equityholders being systematically undercompensated for the actual risk involved in a long‐lived project. If we adopt an alternative assumption that current rates are an unbiased estimate of future rates, the regulated rate of return is a function of the entire forward curve of interest rates and the accounting depreciation schedule. For long‐lived assets, benchmarking against the yield‐to‐maturity on long‐dated Government securities results in a far closer approximation of the appropriate return than the use of short‐term rates.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Managerial finance has become a modern professional discipline with a coherent theory and a growing body of statistical research in support of the theory. Finance faculty in leading business schools around the world are now actively engaged in making the modern theory accessible to executive participants in post‐experience educational programmes. What makes the modern theory of finance exciting is the simplicity and the authority with which issues of concern to management today can be resolved. One of the areas of interest where answers to old questions are being found is in the estimation of discount rates or required rates of return for capital projects.

This paper examines the implications of standard barter models of market equilibrium for financial security returns in New Zealand. The key question addressed is: does the ‘equity premium puzzle’ of Mehra and Prescott (1985) found in the U.S. also hold in ?ew Zealand? To examine the existence of the equity premium puzzle, quarterly financial security returns and consumption data are examined from 1965 to 1997 to calibrate parameters in the Consumption Based Asset Pricing Model. Unlike much of the existing international evidence, this paper corrects for durable goods consumption following the assumptions of the model that all consumption be consumed in a given period. Numerical analyses indicate that the class of models examined are unable to generate equity premia consistent with historical estimates of the equity premium in New Zealand. Due to small sample variability however, while this discrepancy is material in size, the result is not statistically significant.