The church and the unbeliever: recent Roman Catholic theology with special reference to Vatican II

This thesis is an attempt to state and document recent changes in attitude of the Roman Catholic Church to those who are not Roman Catholics, Pre-Vatican II Catholicism used "Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus" in an exclusive manner, deifying that those not in communion with the Pope could be in Comnunion with Christ. It will be shown that the exact nature of this exclusivism needs careful study and statement. The middle section of the thesis provides detailed study of the Vatican II documents related to the problem of the Church and the Unbeliever. For the first time official Catholicism admits the ecclesial reality of other comunions and allows that there are many possible ways of approach to God. The final section gives evidence of the implementation of the Vatican II decrees but notes that Official Catholicism is Invariably cautious in its advance. The contrast with pre-Vatican II literature with its presumptions of membership and a clearly-defined Church is remarkable testimony to the working-out of Pope John XXIII's "aggiornamento" in the life of the Churc

Expectations of Returns and Expected Returns

We analyze time series of investor expectations of future stock market returns from six data sources between 1963 and 2011. The six measures of expectations are highly positively correlated with each other, as well as with past stock returns and with the level of the stock market. However, investor expectations are strongly negatively correlated with model-based expected returns. The evidence is not consistent with rational expectations representative investor models of returns.Economic

Inexperienced Investors and Bubbles

We use mutual fund manager data from the technology bubble to examine the hypothesis that inexperienced investors play a role in the formation of asset price bubbles. Using age as a proxy for managers' investment experience, we find that around the peak of the technology bubble, mutual funds run by younger managers are more heavily invested in technology stocks, relative to their style benchmarks, than their older colleagues. Furthermore, young managers, but not old managers, exhibit trend-chasing behavior in their technology stock investments. As a result, young managers increase their technology holdings during the run-up, and decrease them during the downturn. Both results are in line with the behavior of inexperienced investors in experimental asset markets. The economic significance of young managers' actions is amplified by large inflows into their funds prior to the peak in technology stock prices.

Characteristic Timing

We use differences between the attributes of stock issuers and repurchasers to forecast characteristic-related stock returns. For example, we show that large firms underperform following years when issuing firms are large relative to repurchasing firms. Our approach is useful for forecasting returns to portfolios based on book-to-market (HML), size (SMB), price, distress, payout policy, profitability, and industry. We consider interpretations of these results based on both time-varying risk premia and mispricing. Our results are primarily consistent with the view that firms issue and repurchase shares to exploit time-varying characteristic mispricing.

Bond Supply and Excess Bond Returns

We examine empirically how the maturity structure of government debt affects bond yields and excess returns. Our analysis is based on a theoretical model of preferred habitat in which clienteles with strong preferences for specific maturities trade with arbitrageurs. Consistent with the model, we find that (i) the supply of long- relative to short-term bonds is positively related to the term spread, (ii) supply predicts positively long-term bonds' excess returns even after controlling for the term spread and the Cochrane-Piazzesi factor, (iii) the effects of supply are stronger for longer maturities, and (iv) following periods when arbitrageurs have lost money, both supply and the term spread are stronger predictors of excess returns.

The Maturity of Debt Issues and Predictable Variation in Bond Returns

The maturity of new debt issues predicts excess bond returns. When the share of long-term debt issues in total debt issues is high, future excess bond returns are low. This predictive power comes in two parts. First, inflation, the real short-term rate, and the term spread predict excess bond returns. Second, these same variables explain the long-term share, and together account for much of its own ability to predict excess bond returns. The results are consistent with survey evidence that firms use debt market conditions in an effort to determine the lowest-cost maturity at which to borrow

Do firms borrow at the lowest-cost maturity? The long-term share in debt issues and predictable variation in bond returns

We document that firms tend to borrow at the lowest-cost maturity. In aggregate time series data, the share of long-term debt issues in total debt issues is negatively related to subsequent excess bond returns, meaning that firms substitute toward long-term debt when the cost of long-term debt is low relative to the cost of short-term debt. The longterm share is also contemporaneously negatively related to the components of the longterm interest rate that predict higher excess bond returns, including inflation, the real short-term rate, and the term spread. The results suggest that firms use predictable variation in excess bond returns in an effort to reduce the cost of capital

Issuer Quality and Corporate Bond Returns

We show that the credit quality of corporate debt issuers deteriorates during credit booms, and that this deterioration forecasts low excess returns to corporate bondholders. The key insight is that changes in the pricing of credit risk disproportionately affect the financing costs faced by low quality firms, so the debt issuance of low quality firms is particularly useful for forecasting bond returns. We show that a significant decline in issuer quality is a more reliable signal of credit market overheating than rapid aggregate credit growth. We use these findings to investigate the forces driving time-variation in expected corporate bond returns

The Evolution of Corporate Ownership After IPO: The Impact of Investor Protection

Recent research documents that ownership concentration is higher in countries with weak investor protection. However, drawing on panel data on corporate ownership in 34 countries between 1995 and 2006, we show this pattern does not hold for newly public firms, which tend to have concentrated ownership regardless of the level of investor protection. We show that firms in countries with strong investor protection are more likely to experience decreases in ownership concentration after listing, that these decreases appear in response to growth opportunities, and that they are associated with new share issuance. We consider the implications of these findings for financing choices and patterns in firm growth and analyze alternative explanations for the diffusion of ownership that could distort our interpretations. We conclude that ownership concentration falls as firms age following their IPO in countries with strong investor protection because firms in these countries raise capital and grow, diluting blockholders in the process.