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AbstractFinancial leverage as reported by a consolidated financial statement may differ substantially from leverage for the parent company. To assess the financial risk for the parent (not the consolidated entity), employing consolidated data is hazardous; the problem is magnified by the fact that virtually all firms report only consolidated data. Consolidated leverage almost always equals or exceeds parent leverage for a wholly owned subsidiary, and many firms reporting only consolidated data have betas significantly greater than otherwise comparable firms that report both consolidated and parent company information.

ABSTRACTThe article presents a simple method for establishing the optimal cut‐off point on a credit‐scoring index under a variety of conditions. A procedure for choosing an index from several candidates is also proposed, and the use of credit information in such an index is discussed.

Analysis shows that John Maynard Keynes likely interpreted the concept "long run" as reflecting the dimension of calendar time, rather than operational time. More importantly, Keynes was not the advocate of wasteful spending as usually believed. He actually placed strong restrictions on this prescription; it was not an unconditional invitation to raid the public larder. Journalists, politicians, and many economists have overstated his ardor for wasteful spending.

AbstractUsing a large panel of industrial Compustat firms from 1971 to 1988, we find long‐term external financing to be positively related to the period's capital expenditures on growth opportunities, but negatively related to beginning‐of‐the‐period financial slack, broadly defined. These findings support the view that firms tend to match long‐term sources of financing with long‐lived assets, and short‐term debt with short‐lived assets. Our results also reinforce the belief that firms prefer internal to external financing. We find no evidence that firms favor financing capital expenditures with short‐term debt, either permanently or temporarily.

AbstractRegression studies have suggested that reducing estate‐tax rates would lead to a net reduction in total charitable donations distributed at death. Not only is this notion counterintuitive, our empirical analysis yields the contrary conclusion: overall donations would increase. In rationalizing this donation‐decline outcome, investigators have pointed to the tax deductibility of donations in assessing estate‐tax liability. These efforts, we show, are dubious. The view that donations will decline is also shown to be inconsistent with axioms of generally accepted economic theory. Two distinct sets of indifference curves that imply these two antithetical views are suggested, their observable predictions derived and compared to the relevant evidence, showing that the increasing‐donation hypothesis is confirmed, offering overall a clear challenge to the decline‐in‐donation position. Our empirical results suggest that most estate‐tax payers possess indifference curves consistent with those that embody the increasing‐donation hypothesis.