Abstract: German dividends typically carry a tax credit which makes the dividend worth 42.86% more to a taxable German shareholder than to a tax-exempt or foreign shareholder. As a result of the credit, the ex-dividend-day share price drop exceeds the amount of the dividend. I document that the ex-day drop reflects approximately one-half of the tax credit, and show that futures and option prices embed approximately one-half of the tax credit. The existence of the tax credit creates possibilities for cross-border tax arbitrage and also has implications for market integration, market efficiency, tax policy, and tax-efficient foreign investment. In particular, it is tax-efficient for foreign investors to hold DAX index futures rather than investing directly in the DAX cash index.
Abstract: Most firms do not make explicit use of real option techniques in evaluating investments. Nevertheless, real option considerations can be a significant component of value, and firms which approximately take them into account should outperform firms which do not. This paper asks whether the use of seemingly arbitrary investment criteria, such as hurdle rates and profitability indexes, can proxy for the use of more sophisticated real options calculation. We find that for a variety of parameters, particular hurdle rate and profitability index rules can provide close-to-optimal investment decisions. This suggests that firms using seemingly arbitrary "rules of thumb" may be trying to approximate optimal decisions.
Last modified: Wed Dec 21 17:09:02 Central Standard Time 2005