FG VWL, insbesondere Makroökonomik
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- Asset pricing (1)
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Institute
The overall research goal of this doctoral thesis is to better understand the determinants of sustainable purchase behaviour. By approaching several context-specific subgoals in a series of four quantitative empirical studies, major research gaps in the field of sustainable consumption are addressed. The first article examines the market potential for social banking in Germany. By means of an experimental survey using adaptive conjoint analysis, a sample of 2896 German social banking customers and a population-representative sample of 641 German conventional banking customers are compiled. Logistic regression modelling reveals that social banking customers differ significantly from their conventional counterparts regarding several consumer characteristics. The results further indicate a large untapped market potential ranging between 10 and 26% of the German population in 2011. The second article investigates the phenomenon of the attitude-behaviour gap in the context of sustainable clothing. Based on survey data of 1085 female German consumers, a structural equation model is estimated to assess how large the possible gap between a positive attitude towards sustainable clothing and the corresponding purchase behaviour is. Apart from a considerable attitude-behaviour gap, the article indicates that a positive attitude, self-transcendence values, as well as an affinity to online and catalogue shopping, significantly enhance sustainable clothing purchases. Self-enhancement values and, remarkably, a preference for durability constitute purchase barriers. The third article studies the influence of product lifetime labelling by the example of electrical appliances. Using choice-based conjoint analysis, experimental survey data is collected from a population-representative sample of 499 German consumers. Hierarchical Bayes utility modelling suggests a decreasing positive effect of the label on purchase decisions and a deterioration of the purchase influence of existing brands. Structural equation modelling indicates, for instance, that the preference for a long product lifetime is fostered by a respective positive attitude and subjective norm. However, the attitude only exerts a significant influence if it is driven by personal rather than environmental gains. The fourth article sheds light on the effects of favourable and unfavourable environmental product information. The analysis draws on data gained from a survey-based experiment conducted among a population-representative sample of 524 German consumers. Using a two-level structural equation model, the results document that the negative effect caused by unfavourable product carbon footprint information on consumers’ willingness to pay is significantly stronger than the positive effect caused by respective favourable information. Furthermore, consumers tend to not substantially differentiate between different high-range degrees of positive or negative environmental information.
Tax effects on asset prices
(2018)
In this dissertation I treat questions of asset pricing under the presence of taxes. I present four published articles. The first three articles are concerned with topics of company valuation when debt is risky. The first article analyzes the applicable discount rate for the valuation of tax savings in a simple setting without taxes on cancelled debt. The article concludes that the discount rate of tax savings is the same as the one for interest payments. Other than frequently assumed, this discount rate is not necessarily the same as the discount rate for debt as a whole. With the prioritization of interest or principal payments in case of losses on debt payments, the discount rates on interest payments and of tax savings are regularly different from the one for the overall debt issue. Only a pro rata distribution of losses on principal and interest payments generally leads to equal discount rates for interest payments, principal payments, and, therefore, also for debt payments as a whole. The second article continues to look at the valuation of tax savings. It differentiates the case with and the one without the taxation of cancelled debt. For both cases, the article derives equations for the value of tax savings as well as for risk-adjusted discount rates and WACC-like equations. A major finding is that the previous corporate finance literature on this topic usually makes the implicit assumption that cancelled debt is taxed. In this case valuation equations have a simple form since they are independent from the distribution of losses between interest and principal payments. Without the taxation of cancelled debt, the distribution of losses on interest and principal payments becomes important for the valuation procedures and a differentiation between cases such as interest prioritization, principal prioritization and pro rata loss distribution is necessary. The third article uses the findings of the first two articles and constructs equations for a de- and re-levering procedure using the expected return equations from the mean-variance CAPM. It extends the regularly used procedure that uses the assumption of risk-free debt to simple settings with risky debt. The forth article looks at two economies, which differ only with respect to taxation - one features taxes on capital gains and one does not. The analysis leads to several extensions on prior findings on the question of the conditions under which asset prices are the same in both economies. The article provides sufficient conditions for unchanged prices for the case of a zero risk-free rate, which entails that all agents consume exactly the same in each state. Without a zero risk-free rate, prices are the same in both economies with exponential utility and normal returns and with linear marginal utility.