IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rba/rbardp/rdp9107.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Cost of Equity Capital in Australia: What Can We Learn from International Equity Returns?

Author

Listed:
  • Anthony J. Richards

    (Reserve Bank of Australia)

Abstract

This paper reviews some evidence on the cost of equity capital in Australia and overseas. Two conventional approaches yield conflicting results. A third approach, based on the International Asset Pricing Model, starts from the premise that Australian equities are part of a world market, and hence must be priced in a manner that reflects their risk in an international context. There is evidence that Australian stockmarket returns show more risk than would be justified by the relatively low debt/equity ratios of Australian companies. Furthermore, real earnings in Australia appear to have been relatively risky when measured against the benchmark of world earnings. If there is more risk in the Australian economy, it is possible that the cost of equity is higher in Australia than overseas.

Suggested Citation

  • Anthony J. Richards, 1991. "The Cost of Equity Capital in Australia: What Can We Learn from International Equity Returns?," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp9107, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    • Handle: RePEc:rba:rbardp:rdp9107
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/rdp/1991/pdf/rdp9107.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. I.J. Macfarlane & W.J. Tease, 1989. "Capital Flows and Exchange Rate Determination," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp8908, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    2. French, Kenneth R. & Poterba, James M., 1991. "Were Japanese stock prices too high?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 337-363, October.
    3. Shiller, Robert J, 1981. "Do Stock Prices Move Too Much to be Justified by Subsequent Changes in Dividends?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 421-436, June.
    4. Ando, Albert & Auerbach, Alan J., 1990. "The cost of capital in Japan: Recent evidence and further results," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 323-350, December.
    5. Carmichael, Jeffrey, 1978. "The Supply Price of Capital: Its Measurement and Role in Econometric Research," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(30), pages 91-102, June.
    6. French, Kenneth R & Poterba, James M, 1991. "Investor Diversification and International Equity Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(2), pages 222-226, May.
    7. Mehra, Rajnish & Prescott, Edward C., 1985. "The equity premium: A puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 145-161, March.
    8. Hamada, Robert S, 1969. "Portfolio Analysis, Market Equilibrium and Corporation Finance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 24(1), pages 13-31, March.
    9. Cosset, Jean-Claude, 1984. "On the presence of risk premiums in foreign exchange markets," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1-2), pages 139-154, February.
    10. Michele Bullock & Mark Rider, 1991. "The Cross-country Relationship between Interest Rates and Inflation over Three Decades," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp9104, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    11. Miller, Merton H, 1977. "Debt and Taxes," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(2), pages 261-275, May.
    12. Solnik, Bruno, 1983. "International Arbitrage Pricing Theory," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 38(2), pages 449-457, May.
    13. Robert N. McCauley & Steven A. Zimmer, 1989. "Explaining international differences in the cost of capital," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 14(Sum), pages 7-28.
    14. Jeremy Smith & David W.R. Gruen, 1989. "A Random Walk Around the $A: Expectations, Risk, Interest Rates and Consequences for External Imbalance," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp8906, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    15. Hodder, James E., 1991. "Is the cost of capital lower in japan?," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 86-100, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Adrian Blundell‐Wignall & Marianne Gizycki, 1994. "Credit Supply and Demand and Business Investment," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 27(1), pages 101-113, January.
    2. Adrian Blundell-Wignall & Marianne Gizycki, 1992. "Credit Supply and Demand and the Australian Economy," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp9208, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    3. Nigel Dews & John Hawkins & Tracey Horton, 1992. "Measuring the Cost of Capital in Australia," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp9205, Reserve Bank of Australia.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bernard Dumas, 1993. "Partial- Vs. General-Equilibrium Models of the International Capital Market," NBER Working Papers 4446, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Bialkowski, Jedrzej & Gottschalk, Katrin & Wisniewski, Tomasz Piotr, 2008. "Stock market volatility around national elections," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(9), pages 1941-1953, September.
    3. J. Bradford De Long & Richard Grossman, 1992. "Excess Volatility on the London Stock Market, 1870-1990," J. Bradford De Long's Working Papers _133, University of California at Berkeley, Economics Department.
    4. Keunbae Ahn, 2021. "Predictable Fluctuations in the Cross-Section and Time-Series of Asset Prices," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 1-2021, January-A.
    5. Sami Alpanda, 2012. "Taxation, collateral use of land, and Japanese asset prices," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 43(2), pages 819-850, October.
    6. Alpanda, Sami, 2007. "The Boom-Bust Cycle in Japanese Asset Prices," MPRA Paper 5895, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Michael Dempsey, 2015. "Stock Markets, Investments and Corporate Behavior:A Conceptual Framework of Understanding," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number p1007, September.
    8. Itzhak Venezia, 2018. "Lecture Notes in Behavioral Finance," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number 10751, September.
    9. Christiane Goodfellow & Dirk Schiereck & Steffen Wippler, 2013. "Are behavioural finance equity funds a superior investment? A note on fund performance and market efficiency," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 14(2), pages 111-119, April.
    10. Axel Börsch‐Supan & Alexander Ludwig & Joachim Winter, 2006. "Ageing, Pension Reform and Capital Flows: A Multi‐Country Simulation Model," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 73(292), pages 625-658, November.
    11. Ravi Bansal, 2007. "Long-run risks and financial markets," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 89(Jul), pages 283-300.
    12. Jacobs, Heiko & Müller, Sebastian & Weber, Martin, 2014. "How should individual investors diversify? An empirical evaluation of alternative asset allocation policies," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 19(C), pages 62-85.
    13. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    14. Jeffrey A. Frankel., 1992. "The Evolving Japanese Financial System, and the Cost of Capital," Center for International and Development Economics Research (CIDER) Working Papers C92-002, University of California at Berkeley.
    15. Eugene N. White, 2004. "Bubbles and Busts: The 1990s in the Mirror of the 1920s," FRU Working Papers 2004/09, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. Finance Research Unit.
    16. Bai, Ye & Green, Christopher J., 2020. "Country and industry factors in tests of Capital Asset Pricing Models for partially integrated emerging markets," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 180-194.
    17. Chabakauri, Georgy, 2010. "Asset pricing with heterogeneous investors and portfolio constraints," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 43142, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    18. Gordon, Stephen & St-Amour, Pascal, 1997. "Asset Prices with Contingent Preferences," Cahiers de recherche 9712, Université Laval - Département d'économique, revised 08 Jun 1998.
    19. Giammario Impullitti, 2007. "International Schumpeterian Competition and Optimal R&D subsidies," Economics Working Papers ECO2007/55, European University Institute.
    20. Barberis, Nicholas & Greenwood, Robin & Jin, Lawrence & Shleifer, Andrei, 2015. "X-CAPM: An extrapolative capital asset pricing model," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 1-24.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rba:rbardp:rdp9107. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Paula Drew (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rbagvau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.