资本成本公司财务和投资理论外文翻译（可编辑）

1、资本成本，公司财务和投资理论外文翻译 外文翻译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.译文资本成本,公司财务和投资理论 资料来源: 美国经济评论作者:弗兰克?莫迪格利尼和莫顿?米勒 对于一个企业来说什么是资本成本?资金用于收购资产的收益是不确定的,资本可以通过许多不同的渠道获取,可以发行债券、要求代表固定资金、发行普通股;只在不确定性风险下给予持有者同比例增长的权利。这个问题至少困扰了三种类型的经济学家:(1)财务运营专家关注公司的财务技能以此来确保企业能够生存和发展;(2)管理经济学家关心的是资本预算;(3)经济理论学家关心的是在微观和宏观领域解释投资行为。 在大部分正式的分析中,经济

39、理论学家至少倾向于规避资本成本问题的实质,通过诸如有息证券等实物资本的收入可以看作是已知的收益、确定性的收入。考虑到这些假设,理论学家可以得出企业的所有者的资本成本仅仅是债券的利息率;还得出这样简单的命题:理性的企业,倾向于把投资投向实物资本的边际收益等同于市场利率的地方。这个命题可以显示出:遵从了在不确定性条件下以下两条等同的理性决策制定者的准则:(1)利润最大化;(2)市场价值的最大化。 根据第一条标准,一项实物资产如果能够增加企业所有者的净收益的话是值得投资的;但净利润只有在预期收益率、产量、资产超过利率的情况下才能增加;根据第二条标准资产只有在增加了所有者权益时才是可取的,如果它增加的

40、企业市场价值多于付出的成本。但是资产的增加是通过假设资本化产生的市场利息率,资本化的价值超过他的成本仅当资产的收益超过利息率的时候。注意:在任何一种陈述中,资本成本等于债券的利息率,不管资本是从发行债券还是发行普通股的行为中获得。事实上,在一个确定的回报世界中,在专业术语中债务和普通股收益之间的差别大大减小了。 一定要承认的是有些学者在分析模型时允许不确定性的存在。这种试图典型的是他在不确定性的分析概念中添加了确定性的结果,在预期收益中减去了“风险折扣”。投资决策被认为是基于“风险调整”或是和市场利息率“确定性等价”的比较。到目前为止没有令人满意的解释出现。 考虑一个适当的近似:通过确定性或者

41、与确定性等同建立的公司模型?在处理资本积累和经济波动的过程中是非常有用的。例如,以这个模型为基础,熟悉的凯恩斯聚焦投资功能,投资被写成是由市场利息率起作用的?同样的无风险利率出现在之后的流动性偏好方程里面。但很少有人将坚持这种近似是适当的。在宏观经济层面,有充足的理由怀疑利息率更大更直接的影响投资利率的分析使我们开始相信。在微观经济水平,确定性模型缺少描述性的价值,没有为财务专家和管理经济学家提供真正的指导,这些财务专家和管理经济学的主要问题是不能在一个处理不确定性如此巧妙和忽略除发行债务以外的资本形式框架中被正确对待。 最近,有经济学家开始面对资本成本及风险的严重问题。在这个过程中,他们发现自己的兴趣和努力和对这个问题容忍了更长时间和更精通的其他财务专家和管理经济学家紧密相连在一起。在这个建立合理的投资管理和财务政策原理的混合研究中两条主要路线的不同点才能得到辨别。实际上,这些线代表试图推测不确定性世界里的两条标准?利润最大化和市场价值最大化,在确定的特殊情况中,可以看做有相等的影响。随着不确定性认知这种想法就消失了。事实上,利润最大化的标准不再被精确地解释。在不确定条件下,公司的每