Murray Z. Frank

Testing the Pecking Order Theory of Capital Structure

The pecking order theory of corporate leverage is tested against the static tradeoff theory of corporate leverage, using a broad cross-section of US firms over the period 1980-1998. A derivation of the conditional target adjustment framework is provided as a better empirical test of mean reversion. None of the predictions of the pecking order theory hold in the data. As predicted by the static tradeoff theory, robust evidence of mean reversion in leverage is found. This is true both unconditionally and conditionally on financial factors. Leverage is more persistent at lower levels than at higher levels. When debt matures, it is not replaced dollar for dollar by new debt and so leverage declines. Large firms increase their debt in order to support the payment of dividends. By contrast, small firms reduce their debt while they pay dividends.

Trade-Off and Pecking Order Theories of Debt

Taxes, bankruptcy costs, transactions costs, adverse selection, and agency conflicts have all been advocated as major explanations for the corporate use of debt financing. These ideas have often been synthesized into the trade-off theory and the pecking order theory of leverage. This chapter reviews these theories and the related evidence and identifies a number of important empirical stylized facts. To understand the evidence, it is important to recognize the differences among private firms, small public firms, and large public firms. Private firms use retained earnings and bank debt heavily; small public firms make active use of equity financing; and large public firms primarily use retained earnings and corporate bonds. The available evidence can be interpreted in several ways. Direct transaction costs and indirect bankruptcy costs appear to play important roles in a firm’s choice of debt. The relative importance of the other factors remains open to debate. No currently available model appears capable of simultaneously accounting for all of the stylized facts.

What Actually Happened to the Inventories of American Companies Between 1981 and 2000

This paper examines the inventories of publicly traded American manufacturing companies between 1981 and 2000. The median of inventory holding periods were reduced from 96 days to 81 days. The average rate of inventory reduction is about 2% per year. The greatest reduction was found for work-in-process inventory, which declined by about 6% per year. Finished-goods inventories did not decline. Firms with abnormally high inventories have abnormally poor long-term stock returns. Firms with slightly lower than average inventories have good stock returns, but firms with the lowest inventories have only ordinary returns.

Measuring the Strangeness of Gold and Silver Rates of Return

The predictability of rates of return on gold and silver are examined. Econometric tests do not reject the martingale hypothesis for either asset. This failure to reject is shown to be misleading. Correlation dimension estimates indicate a structure not captured by ARCH. The correlation dimension is between 6 and 7 while the Kolmogorov entropy is about 0·2 for both assets. The evidence is consistent with a nonlinear deterministic data generating process underlying the rates of return. The evidence is certainly not sufficient to rule out the possibility of some degree of randomness being present.

An Intertemporal Model of Industrial Exit

A finite horizon model of industrial exit is developed. After an initial lag, most exits are by young firms. The duration of the lag is positively related to sunk entry costs, but not due to the fallacy of sunk costs. The conception of entry differs from previous research; as a result, not all entrants are identical; and firm size affects the rate of learning. On average, larger new firms last longer. Entrepreneurs in declining firms act more lazily as the firm declines. A number of empirical observations about declining firms are organized by the model.

The Effect of Market Conditions on Capital Structure Adjustment

The empirical implications of the trade-off theory, the market timing theory, and Welchs (2003) theory of capital structure are examined using aggregate US data for 1952 to 2000. There is a long-run leverage ratio to which the system reverts. Deviations from that ratio help to predict debt adjustments, but not equity adjustments. A high market-to-book ratio is associated with subsequent debt reduction, but there is no effect in the equity market.

Some evidence concerning macroeconomic chaos

Abstract An empirical assessment of a linear-stochastic perspective for Canadian macroeconomic time series is presented. The methods used are based on the mathematics of ‘chaos’. Present evidence suggests that low-order deterministic chaos does not provide a satisfactory characterization of the data. The absence of significant nonlinear structure for the investment and unemployment series is of particular note in light of past findings with American data. The degree to which the use of a time trend can impose a pseudo-structure on the data is illustrated.

U.S. Retail and Wholesale Inventory Performance from 1981 to 2004

This paper examines the inventories of publicly traded U.S. retail and wholesale companies between 1981 and 2004. First, we document that inventory holdings have been reduced. The median of wholesale inventory holding periods was reduced from 73 days to 49 days. Retail inventory did not start to decline until about 1995. Second, we document that firms with abnormally high inventories have abnormally poor long-term stock returns. Third, we illustrate these effects for the cases of Wal-Mart, 7-Eleven (Japan), and some related firms.

State Dependent Pricing with a Queue

Existing studies of pricing when customers queue, assume that the firm cannot adjust the price to the state of demand. In most applications this assumption is false. We adapt the classic model of Naor (1969) to allow the firm to adjust the price to the state of demand. When customers are homogeneous the firms pricing rule maximizes social welfare. When customers are unobservably heterogenous, the firms pricing rule does not maximize social welfare. We find that the firm may not always attract customers even when it is technically and economically feasible to do so. This is interpreted as an option effect. The effects of changes to the basic parameters, on the queue length are presented.

Using Market Prices to Predict Election Results: The 1993 UBC Election Stock Market

Economists believe that markets are exceptionally efficient aggregators of information. This research tests this theory by asking whether markets can successfully predict uncertain outcomes. Specifically, the UBC Election Stock Market (UBC-ESM) was created to see if market prices could be accurate predictors of the outcome of the 1993 Canadian federal election. This paper presents the results of this experiment in which over 250 traders from across Canada and the United States participated, investing over