James A. Miles

The Weighted Average Cost of Capital, Perfect Capital Markets, and Project Life: A Clarification

For financial management to make wealth maximizing capital budgeting decisions, a model that will determine correctly the market value of a projects levered cash flows is required. A capital budgeting model should account not only for the effects of the investment decision, but also for the effects of the financing decision and the interactions between the two decisions. In perfect capital markets all the effects of the financing decision pertain to the tax shield created by debt financing. Thus, as originally shown by Modigliani and Miller [8], the value of a projects levered cash flow stream equals the market value the stream would have if it were unlevered plus the market value of the stream of tax savings on interest payments associated with the debt employed to finance the project. While this result is completely general with respect to the specific processes utilized by the market to value the two components, MM specified the value of the unlevered component as the present value of the unlevered cash flows discounted at the appropriate risk adjusted unlevered cost of capital and they specified the value of the tax savings component as the present value of the tax shield on interest discounted at the cost of debt. Accordingly, the value of a projects levered cash flows is specified as the sum of these two present values, one representing the effects of the investment decision and the other capturing the effects of the financing decision. The MM valuation model has been extended to normative capital budgeting analysis by Myers [9] in terms of the adjusted present value (APV) model.

Restructuring through spinoffs*1: The stock market evidence

Abstract We investigate the value created through spinoffs over the 1965–1988 period by measuring the stock returns of spinoffs, their parent firms, and parent-spinoff combinations for periods of up to three years following the spinoffs. We find significantly positive abnormal returns for spinoffs, their parents, and the spinoff-parent combinations. Both the spinoffs and parents experience an unusually high incidence of takeovers and the abnormal performance is limited to firms involved in takeover activity. These findings suggest that spinoffs provide a low-cost method of transferring control of corporate assets to bidders who will create greater value.

Bank CEO Pay-Performance Relations and the Effects of Deregulation

The authors test the deregulation hypothesis that posits that bank CEO compensation became more sensitive to performance as bank management became less regulated. They observe a significant increase in pay-performance sensitivities from their 1976-81 regulation subsample to their 1982-88 deregulation subsample. These increases in pay sensitivities after deregulation are observed for salary and bonus, stock options, and common stock holdings. The authors observe increases in the pay-performance relation associated with high-capitalization-ratio banks, consistent with providing incentives for wealth creation while even larger increases in pay-performance sensitivity for lower capitalization-ratio banks suggest an Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation moral hazard problem. Copyright 1995 by University of Chicago Press.

Value Creation from Equity Carve-Outs

Using a large sample of equity carve-out events during the 1980s and 1990s, we find that rivals of carve-out parent firms display negative announcement-period returns. This finding distinguishes the divestiture gains hypothesis from the asymmetric information hypothesis. Additional tests provide further support for the divestiture gains hypothesis. Operating performance improvements for both parents and their carved-out subsidiaries are evident.

Economic order quantities and inflation

This paper addresses the inventory control problem of determining economic order quantities during inflation. A simple average annual cost model is constructed for which a closed-form solution is found. The solutions thus generated arc then compared with the optimal solutions to a ‘theoretically correct’ model whose objective is to minimize the discounted sum of all future costs. An exhaustive sensitivity analysis shows the simple closed-form solution to compare favourably with the minimum discounted cost solution over a wide range of problem parameters.

Executive compensation and the horizon problem: a synthesis of the economics of age and decision management

Relates previous research on the importance of age in decision‐making to Fama and Jensen’s (1983) ideas on decision management, develops hypotheses on the age of managers and the use of stock‐based compensation in companies with long time horizons (i.e. growth companies) and tests them on 1979‐1987 data for a sample of US firms. Explains the methodology used and presents the results, which show that these firms tend to have younger subordinate executives (but not younger CEOs) and to use less stock‐based compensation the younger these executives are. Suggests this is because younger executives effectively extend the time horizon of older CEOs, thus reducing the need to do this through the compensation package.

A fisherian analysis of individual retirement accounts

ConclusionsThis paper has employed a Fisherian analysis of intertemporal choice to evaluate the use of IRAs. The analysis shows that with perfect capital markets assumptions, the presence of IRAs will generate no other effect on savings than would a simple tax rabate. Further, it shows that if the tax revenue loss due to IRAs is not accompanied by an expenditure reduction, but is financed with taxes or borrowing, rational households will still employ IRAs, but their effect on intertemporal choice will be nil. The analysis also shows that IRAs do act as a savings incentive to the extent that there are market imperfections, specifically to the degree that transactions costs are important. However, empirical evidence from the literature does not lend firm support to this possibility. The conclusion is that a market imperfection is not a firm basis on which to construct savings incentives.Finally, one can note that the same analysis applies to any tax-based savings incentive that is designed to operate by lowering the tax on interest income. The reason for this finding is that the provision of tax sheltered interest income, along with the deductibility of interest on borrowing, creates general tax arbitrage opportunities for households and that tax arbitrage opportunities do not, in general, generate greater savings in an intertemporal choice model. It follows that significant restriction or elimination of the deductibility of interest on borrowing is a prerequisite for IRAs and other tax based savings incentives to produce their intended effect.

Analyzing leases with the after-tax cost of debt

Abstract A generalized expression of the net advantage of leasing (NAL) is used to assess the implications of discounting incremental cash flows at the firms before-tax cost of debt and the firms after-tax cost of debt, respectively. If no personal tax biases are assumed, then the before-tax cost of debt should be used to compute NAL. If the before-tax cost of debt is the correct discount rate, then any change in the firms borrowing level brought about by the decision to lease rather than purchase will alter the computed NAL by the amount of the present value of the tax savings on interest payments. Thus using the before-tax cost of debt is consistent with basic MM valuation theory. Using the after-tax cost of debt, in contrast, implies that any associated change in the firms borrowing level is irrelevant for purposes of computing NAL. Sufficient conditions are specified for the after-tax cost of the debt to be the correct discount rate for lease versus purchase analysis. Finally, lease analysis in a MM world is compared to lease analysis in a Miller tax world. For the special case of a 100% leverage ratio, the specification of NAL is the same in both worlds. Use of the after-tax cost of debt is correct in a Miller world and is a good approximation in an MM world provided the cash flows are predominantly debt financed.