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Conference Paper
Insurance companies as financial intermediaries: risk and return
Conference Paper
Regulation of debt and equity
Conference Paper
Tax reform and capital formation
Journal Article
Are the distinctions between debt and equity disappearing? An overview
uring the 1980s, the proportion of business assets financed by debt exceeded that of any other period since World War II. The characteristics of financial securities also changed, as junk bonds, variants of preferred stock, warrants, and other forms of mezzanine financing became more common in credit markets and in private loan contracts. Furthermore, the potential risks and returns offered by all securities have been altered as otherwise familiar financial instruments increasingly contain novel options. ; These innovations have challenged the traditional financial and legal distinctions ...
Journal Article
The influence of housing and durables on personal saving
The rate of national saving declined sharply in the 1980s. Some of the explanations for this puzzling performance have considered the influence of capital gains, a reduction in the need for precautionary saving, a decline in the need for retirement saving, the effect of slower income growth, and a host of other factors. ; This article explores the relationship between personal saving and the treatment of owner-occupied housing and consumer durable goods in the national income and product accounts. It examhaes the potential consequences of understating the returns on owner-occupied houses and ...
Journal Article
The determinants of business investment: has capital spending been surprisingly low?
Many are worried that since 1980 capital investment by businesses has been lower than expected. Unusual circumstances, such as changes in savings patterns or in business leverage, a credit crunch, or widespread adoption of a shorter-term outlook, have been suggested as culprits. To see whether investment spending has indeed departed from its traditional determinants, this article compares capital spending during the 1980s and early 1990s with projections of spending derived from historical relationships between investment and various measures of economic activity. ; The results show that ...