Daniel E. Page

Pitfalls in using market prices to assess the financial condition of depository institutions

In this article we examine the information that stock prices provide about the financial condition of federally insured thrift institutions. In order to assess their financial condition from the different perspectives of stockholders and the federal insurer, we calculate the value of the put option of federal deposit insurance available to thrift institutions. Our results demonstrate that the two perspectives often provide, particularly for unhealthy institutions, quite different views of the financial condition of individual institutions.

Abnormal returns of thrift versus non-thrift IPOs

This paper examines the issue of underpricing for converting thrift institutions. Evidence has found this underpricing to be pervasive in the mutual-to-stock thrift conversion process. The issue is of importance given the debate over whether any windfall gains should accrue to depositors, managers, or taxpayers. An event study is conducted to determine if there is a significant difference between the initial returns of thrift and non-thrift IPOs. Our overall results indicate that a significant difference does exist.

Thrift Conversions and Windfall Profits: An Empirical Examination

The thrift industry has been studied extensively in recent years due to the enormous costs to resolve failed thrifts during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Almost all of the studies have focused on the causes of these failures. Yet an important but relatively neglected development that merits further study is the conversion of mutual institutions to the stock form of ownership. Such conversions raise questions regarding the appropriate price for the shares in initial offerings, particularly in view of reports that windfall profits have been realized by the initial investors in numerous cases and who should receive the shares. The purpose of this article is to examine mutual thrifts that converted to stock ownership form during 1992 and 1993 to determine whether excess returns were indeed realized and, if so, to identify the determinants of those excess returns. The empirical results indicate the initial investors do indeed benefit from significantly positive abnormal returns during the first few days of trading after conversion. Additional empirical results indicate that both the pro-forma price-to-book ratio and the dollar amount of shares management intends to purchase are significant factors in explaining the variation in the abnormal returns.

The effect of takeover defenses on the dividend decision

Many firms have sought protection from hostile takeovers by passing defensive amendments to their corporate charter and/or lobbying their state legislatures for statutory protection. Agency theory would suggest that any such takeover defenses alter the principal-agent relationship. A consequence of such a change may be a change in corporate decision making. The objective of this research is to test the effect that passage of antitakeover amendments has on a firms dividend policy. We use six alternate measures of dividend activity: total dividends paid, dividends per share and dividends relative to earnings, cash flow, market value, and book value. Our results indicate that firms that adopt antitakeover amendments, when compared to an industry control sample, tend to have a slower rate of growth in dividend payout as measured by the proxy variables. These results suggest that entrenchment is not a likely outcome of such amendments.

Rate Level Indexed Mortgages: An Evaluation

In this paper, a new and superior alternative mortgage design is presented and evaluated. The mortgage design is motivated by a desire to reduce the exposure of both borrowers and lenders to risks that result from high and variable interest rates, while at the same time providing a mechanism by which changes in the real value of payments and rates of amortization can be controlled. In addition to a theoretical discussion of the merits of this design a simulation of the mortgages performance is provided that uses market data from the period 1965 to 1983. Copyright American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.

Utility sector mutual funds: sources of performance and dividend policy implications

We examine the sources of performance for a sample of mutual funds that invest primarily in utility companies. Given recent deregulation developments in the utility industry and the sub‐market performance of utility stocks in the 1990s, we hypothesize that utility funds may be considering alternatives to traditional high‐yielding electric utility stocks. Although there is anecdotal evidence that utility funds may be tilting their focus away from electric utility stocks, we find that utility mutual funds as a group are no more or less heavily invested in utility stocks today than they have been over the past 10 years.