資本成本公司財務和投資理論外文翻譯（可編輯）

1、資本成本，公司財務和投資理論外文翻譯 外文翻譯the cost of capital, corporation finance and the theory of investmientmaterial source: american economics review,vol.48,no.3jun,1958,261-297author: franco modigliani and merton h. miller what is the cost of capital to a firm in a world in which funds are used to acquire assets

2、 whose yields are uncertain; and in which capital can be obtained by many different media, ranging from pure debt instruments, representing money fixed claims, to pure equity issues, giving holders only the right to a prorata share in the uncertain venturethis question has vexed at least three class

3、es of economists: 1 the corporation finance specialist concerned with the techniques of financing firms so as to ensure their survival and growth; 2 the managerial economist concerned with capital budgeting; and 3 the economic theorist concerned with explaining investment behavior at both the micro

4、and macro levels. in much of his formal analysis, the economic theorist at least has tended to sidestep the essence of this cost of capital problem by proceeding as though physical assets like bonds could be regarded as yielding known, sure streams. given this assumption, the theorist has concluded

5、that the cost of capital to the owners of a firm is simply the rate of interest on bonds; and has derived the familiar proposition that the firm, acting rationally, will tend to push investment to the point where the marginal yield on physical assets is equal to the market rate of interest. this pro

6、position can be shown to follow from either of two criteria of rational decision making which are equivalent under certainty, namely 1 the imization of profits and 2 the imization of market value. according to the first criterion, a physical asset is worth acquiring if it will increase the net profi

7、t of the owners of the firm. but net profit will increase only if the expected rate of return, or yield, of the asset exceeds the rate of interest. according to the second criterion, an asset is worth acquiring if it increases the value of the owners equity, i.e., if it adds more to the market value

8、 of the firm than the costs of acquisition. but what the asset adds is given by capitalizing the stream it generates at the market rate of interest, and this capitalized value will exceed its cost if and only if the yield of the asset exceeds the rate of interest. note that, under either formulation

9、, the cost of capital is equal to the rate of interest on bonds, regardless of whether the funds are acquired through debt instruments or through new issues of common stock. indeed, in a world of sure returns, the distinction between debt and equity funds reduces largely to one of terminology. it mu

10、st be acknowledged that some attempt is usually made in this type of analysis to allow for the existence of uncertainty. this attempt typically takes the form of superimposing on the results of the certainty analysis the notion of a risk discount to be subtracted from the expected yield or a risk pr

11、emium to be added to the market rate of interest. investment decisions are then supposed to be based on a comparison of this risk adjusted or certainty equivalent yield with the market rate of interest. no satisfactory explanation has yet been provided, however, as to what determines the size of the

12、 risk discount and how it varies in response to changes in other variables. considered as a convenient approximation, the model of the firm constructed via this certainty or certainty equivalent approach has admittedly been useful in dealing with some of the grosser aspects of the processes of capit

13、al accumulation and economic fluctuations. such a model underlies, for example, the familiar keynesian aggregate investment function in which aggregate investment is written as a function of the rate of interest the same riskless rate of interest which appears later in the system in the liquidity pr

14、eference equation. yet few would maintain that this approximation is adequate. at the macroeconomic level there are ample grounds for doubting that the rate of interest has as large and as direct an influence on the rate of investment as this analysis would lead us to believe. at the microeconomic l

15、evel the certainty model has little descriptive value and provides no real guidance to the finance specialist or managerial economist whose main problems cannot be treated in a framework which deals so cavalierly with uncertainty and ignores all forms of financing other than debt issues. only recent

16、ly have economists begun to face up seriously to the problem of the cost of capital cum risk. in the process they have found their interests and endeavors merging with those of the finance specialist and the managerial economist who have lived with the problem longer and more intimately. in this joi

17、nt search to establish the principles which govern rational investment and financial policy in a world of uncertainty two main lines of attack can be discerned. these lines represent, in effect, attempts to extrapolate to the world of uncertainty each of the two criteriaprofit imization and market v

18、alue imization which were seen to have equivalent implications in the special case of certainty. with the recognition of uncertainty this equivalence vanishes. in fact, the profit imization criterion is no longer even well defined. under uncertainty there corresponds to each decision of the firm not

19、 a unique profit outcome, but a plurality of mutually exclusive outcomes which can at best be described by a subjective probability distribution. the profit outcome, in short, has become a random variable and as such its imization no longer has an operational meaning. nor can this difficulty general

20、ly be disposed of by using the mathematical expectation of profits as the variable to be imized. for decisions which affect the expected value will also tend to affect the dispersion and other characteristics of the distribution of outcomes. in particular, the use of debt rather than equity funds to

21、 finance a given venture may well increase the expected return to the owners, but only at the cost of increased dispersion of the outcomes. under these conditions the profit outcomes of alternative investment and financing decisions can be compared and ranked only in terms of a subjective utility fu

22、nction of the owners which weighs the expected yield against other characteristics of the distribution. accordingly, the extrapolation of the profit imization criterion of the certainty model has tended to evolve into utility imization, sometimes explicitly, more frequently in a qualitative and heur

23、istic form. the utility approach undoubtedly represents an advance over the certainty or certainty equivalent approach. it does at least permit us to explore within limitssome of the implications of different financing arrangements, and it does give some meaning to the cost of different types of fun

24、ds. however, because the cost of capital has become an essentially subjective concept, the utility approach has serious drawbacks for normative as well as analytical purposes. how, for example, is management to ascertain the risk preferences of its stockholders and to compromise among their tastes?

25、and how can the economist build a meaningful investment function in the face of the fact that any given investment opportunity might or might not be worth exploiting depending on precisely who happen to be the owners of the firm at the moment? fortunately, these questions do not have to be answered;

26、 for the alternative approach, based on market value imization, can provide the basis for an operational definition of the cost of capital and a workable theory of investment. under this approach any investment project and its concomitant financing plan must pass only the following test: will the pr

27、oject, as financed, raise the market value of the firms shares? if so, it is worth undertaking; if not, its return is less than the marginal cost of capital to the firm. note that such a test is entirely independent of the tastes of the current owners, since market prices will reflect not only their

28、 preferences but those of all potential owners as well. if any current stockholder disagrees with management and the market over the valuation of the project, he is free to sell out and reinvest elsewhere, but will still benefit from the capital appreciation resulting from man agements decision. the

29、 potential advantages of the marketvalue approach have long been appreciated; yet analytical results have been meager. what appears to be keeping this line of development from achieving its promise is largely the lack of an adequate theory of the effect of financial structure on market valuations, a

30、nd of how these effects can be inferred from objective market data. our procedure will be to develop in section i the basic theory itself and to give some brief account of its empirical relevance. in section ii, we show how the theory can be used to answer the cost of capital question and how it per

31、mits us to develop a theory of investment of the firm under conditions of uncertainty. throughout these sections the approach is essentially a partial equilibrium one focusing on the firm and industry. accordingly, the prices of certain income streams will be treated as constant and given from outsi

32、de the model, just as in the standard marshallian analysis of the firm and industry the prices of all inputs and of all other products are taken as given. we have chosen to focus at this level rather than on the economy as a whole because it is at the level of the firm and the industry that the inte

33、rests of the various specialists concerned with the cost-of-capital problem come most closely together. although the emphasis has thus been placed on partial equilibrium analysis, the results obtained also provide the essential building blocks for a general equilibrium model which shows how those pr

34、ices which are here taken as given, are themselves determined with the development of proposition iii the main objectives we out- lined in our introductory discussion have been reached. we have in our propositions i and ii at least the foundations of a theory of the valuation of firms and shares in

35、a world of uncertainty. we have shown, moreover, how this theory can lead to an operational definition of the cost of capital and how that concept can be used in turn as a basis for rational investment decision making within the firm. needless to say, however, much remains to be done before the cost

36、 of capital can be put away on the shelf among the solved problems. our approach has been that of static, partial equilibrium analysis. it has assumed among other things a state of atomistic competition in the capital markets and an ease of access to those markets which only a relatively small thoug

37、h important group of firms even come close to possessing. these and other drastic simplifications have been necessary in order to come to grips with the problem at all. having served their purpose they can now be relaxed in the direction of greater realism and relevance, a task in which we hope othe

38、rs interested in this area will wish to share.譯文資本成本,公司財務和投資理論 資料來源: 美國經(jīng)濟評論作者:弗蘭克?莫迪格利尼和莫頓?米勒 對于一個企業(yè)來說什么是資本成本?資金用于收購資產(chǎn)的收益是不確定的,資本可以通過許多不同的渠道獲取,可以發(fā)行債券、要求代表固定資金、發(fā)行普通股;只在不確定性風險下給予持有者同比例增長的權利。這個問題至少困擾了三種類型的經(jīng)濟學家:(1)財務運營專家關注公司的財務技能以此來確保企業(yè)能夠生存和發(fā)展;(2)管理經(jīng)濟學家關心的是資本預算;(3)經(jīng)濟理論學家關心的是在微觀和宏觀領域解釋投資行為。 在大部分正式的分析中,經(jīng)濟

39、理論學家至少傾向于規(guī)避資本成本問題的實質,通過諸如有息證券等實物資本的收入可以看作是已知的收益、確定性的收入?？紤]到這些假設,理論學家可以得出企業(yè)的所有者的資本成本僅僅是債券的利息率;還得出這樣簡單的命題:理性的企業(yè),傾向于把投資投向實物資本的邊際收益等同于市場利率的地方。這個命題可以顯示出:遵從了在不確定性條件下以下兩條等同的理性決策制定者的準則:(1)利潤最大化;(2)市場價值的最大化。 根據(jù)第一條標準,一項實物資產(chǎn)如果能夠增加企業(yè)所有者的凈收益的話是值得投資的;但凈利潤只有在預期收益率、產(chǎn)量、資產(chǎn)超過利率的情況下才能增加;根據(jù)第二條標準資產(chǎn)只有在增加了所有者權益時才是可取的,如果它增加的

40、企業(yè)市場價值多于付出的成本。但是資產(chǎn)的增加是通過假設資本化產(chǎn)生的市場利息率,資本化的價值超過他的成本僅當資產(chǎn)的收益超過利息率的時候。注意:在任何一種陳述中,資本成本等于債券的利息率,不管資本是從發(fā)行債券還是發(fā)行普通股的行為中獲得。事實上,在一個確定的回報世界中,在專業(yè)術語中債務和普通股收益之間的差別大大減小了。 一定要承認的是有些學者在分析模型時允許不確定性的存在。這種試圖典型的是他在不確定性的分析概念中添加了確定性的結果,在預期收益中減去了“風險折扣”。投資決策被認為是基于“風險調整”或是和市場利息率“確定性等價”的比較。到目前為止沒有令人滿意的解釋出現(xiàn)。 考慮一個適當?shù)慕?通過確定性或者

41、與確定性等同建立的公司模型?在處理資本積累和經(jīng)濟波動的過程中是非常有用的。例如,以這個模型為基礎,熟悉的凱恩斯聚焦投資功能,投資被寫成是由市場利息率起作用的?同樣的無風險利率出現(xiàn)在之后的流動性偏好方程里面。但很少有人將堅持這種近似是適當?shù)?。在宏觀經(jīng)濟層面,有充足的理由懷疑利息率更大更直接的影響投資利率的分析使我們開始相信。在微觀經(jīng)濟水平,確定性模型缺少描述性的價值,沒有為財務專家和管理經(jīng)濟學家提供真正的指導,這些財務專家和管理經(jīng)濟學的主要問題是不能在一個處理不確定性如此巧妙和忽略除發(fā)行債務以外的資本形式框架中被正確對待。 最近,有經(jīng)濟學家開始面對資本成本及風險的嚴重問題。在這個過程中,他們發(fā)現(xiàn)自己的興趣和努力和對這個問題容忍了更長時間和更精通的其他財務專家和管理經(jīng)濟學家緊密相連在一起。在這個建立合理的投資管理和財務政策原理的混合研究中兩條主要路線的不同點才能得到辨別。實際上,這些線代表試圖推測不確定性世界里的兩條標準?利潤最大化和市場價值最大化,在確定的特殊情況中,可以看做有相等的影響。隨著不確定性認知這種想法就消失了。事實上,利潤最大化的標準不再被精確地解釋。在不確定條件下,公司的每