IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/glofin/v19y2009i3p219-234.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The practice of estimating the term structure of discount rates

Author

Listed:
  • Freeman, Mark C.

Abstract

It is extremely difficult, in practice, to precisely estimate the term structure of discount rates for capital budgeting purposes. In this paper I argue that, with only minor adjustments to current standard practice, a corporate treasurer can determine a multi-period cost of capital that is both theoretically robust and likely to be sufficiently accurate for most practical purposes. For this to be the case, corporations should have a preference for using real, rather than nominal, discounted cash flow techniques.

Suggested Citation

  • Freeman, Mark C., 2009. "The practice of estimating the term structure of discount rates," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 219-234.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:glofin:v:19:y:2009:i:3:p:219-234
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1044-0283(08)00051-3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martin D. D. Evans, 1998. "Real Rates, Expected Inflation, and Inflation Risk Premia," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(1), pages 187-218, February.
    2. John C. Cox & Jonathan E. Ingersoll Jr. & Stephen A. Ross, 2005. "A Theory Of The Term Structure Of Interest Rates," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Sudipto Bhattacharya & George M Constantinides (ed.), Theory Of Valuation, chapter 5, pages 129-164, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    3. Bogue, Marcus C & Roll, Richard, 1974. "Capital Budgeting of Risky Projects with "Imperfect" Markets for Physical Capital," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 29(2), pages 601-613, May.
    4. Glen C. Arnold & Panos D. Hatzopoulos, 2000. "The Theory‐Practice Gap in Capital Budgeting: Evidence from the United Kingdom," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(5‐6), pages 603-626, June.
    5. Newell, Richard G. & Pizer, William A., 2003. "Discounting the distant future: how much do uncertain rates increase valuations?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 52-71, July.
    6. Constantinides, George M., 1980. "Admissible uncertainty in the intertemporal asset pricing model," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 71-86, March.
    7. Chan, K C, et al, 1992. "An Empirical Comparison of Alternative Models of the Short-Term Interest Rate," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(3), pages 1209-1227, July.
    8. Vasicek, Oldrich, 1977. "An equilibrium characterization of the term structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 177-188, November.
    9. Phoebe Koundouri & Theologos Pantelidis & Ben Groom & Ekaterini Panopoulou, 2007. "Discounting the distant future: How much does model selection affect the certainty equivalent rate?," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(3), pages 641-656.
    10. Edwin J. Elton & Martin J. Gruber & Deepak Agrawal & Christopher Mann, 2001. "Explaining the Rate Spread on Corporate Bonds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(1), pages 247-277, February.
    11. M. J. Brennan, 1997. "The Term Structure of Discount Rates," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 26(1), Spring.
    12. Glen C. Arnold & Panos D. Hatzopoulos, 2000. "The Theory-Practice Gap in Capital Budgeting: Evidence from the United Kingdom," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(5&6), pages 603-626.
    13. Cox, John C & Ingersoll, Jonathan E, Jr & Ross, Stephen A, 1981. "A Re-examination of Traditional Hypotheses about the Term Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 36(4), pages 769-799, September.
    14. Van Horne, James C., 1971. "A Note on Biases in Capital Budgeting Introduced by Inflation," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 6(1), pages 653-658, January.
    15. Andrew Ang & Jun Liu, 2004. "How to Discount Cashflows with Time-Varying Expected Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 59(6), pages 2745-2783, December.
    16. Graham, John R. & Harvey, Campbell R., 2001. "The theory and practice of corporate finance: evidence from the field," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2-3), pages 187-243, May.
    17. Campbell, John Y, 1993. "Intertemporal Asset Pricing without Consumption Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(3), pages 487-512, June.
    18. Mark Rubinstein, 1976. "The Valuation of Uncertain Income Streams and the Pricing of Options," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 7(2), pages 407-425, Autumn.
    19. Vasicek, Oldrich Alfonso, 1977. "Abstract: An Equilibrium Characterization of the Term Structure," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(4), pages 627-627, November.
    20. Nowman, K B, 1997. "Gaussian Estimation of Single-Factor Continuous Time Models of the Term Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(4), pages 1695-1706, September.
    21. Fama, Eugene F., 1977. "Risk-adjusted discount rates and capital budgeting under uncertainty," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 3-24, August.
    22. Nelson, Charles R, 1976. "Inflation and Capital Budgeting," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 31(3), pages 923-931, June.
    23. Weitzman, Martin L., 1998. "Why the Far-Distant Future Should Be Discounted at Its Lowest Possible Rate," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 201-208, November.
    24. Merton, Robert C, 1969. "Lifetime Portfolio Selection under Uncertainty: The Continuous-Time Case," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 51(3), pages 247-257, August.
    25. Jow-Ran Chang & Mao-Wei Hung, 2002. "Intertemporal hedge for inflation risk," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(4), pages 241-243.
    26. Taylor, John B., 1993. "Discretion versus policy rules in practice," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 195-214, December.
    27. Constantinides, George M, 1982. "Intertemporal Asset Pricing with Heterogeneous Consumers and without Demand Aggregation," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(2), pages 253-267, April.
    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. Ali Naef Mohammad, 2016. "Valuation Tools for Determining the Value of Assets: A Literature Review," International Journal of Academic Research in Accounting, Finance and Management Sciences, Human Resource Management Academic Research Society, International Journal of Academic Research in Accounting, Finance and Management Sciences, vol. 6(4), pages 63-72, October.
    2. Freeman, Mark C., 2009. "Yes, we should discount the far-distant future at its lowest possible rate: a resolution of the Weitzman-Gollier puzzle," Economics Discussion Papers 2009-42, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).

    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. Lim, Terence & Lo, Andrew W. & Merton, Robert C. & Scholes, Myron S., 2006. "The Derivatives Sourcebook," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(5–6), pages 365-572, April.
    2. Radu Tunaru, 2015. "Model Risk in Financial Markets:From Financial Engineering to Risk Management," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number 9524, January.
    3. J. Doyne Farmer & John Geanakoplos & Matteo G. Richiardi & Miquel Montero & Josep Perelló & Jaume Masoliver, 2024. "Discounting the Distant Future: What Do Historical Bond Prices Imply about the Long-Term Discount Rate?," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-25, February.
    4. Christian Gollier & Phoebe Koundouri & Theologos Pantelidis, 2008. "Declining discount rates: Economic justifications and implications for long-run policy [‘Regime switches in interest rates’]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 23(56), pages 758-795.
    5. Peter Aling & Shakill Hassan, 2012. "No-Arbitrage One-Factor Models Of The South African Term Structure Of Interest Rates," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 80(3), pages 301-318, September.
    6. Huse, Cristian, 2011. "Term structure modelling with observable state variables," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(12), pages 3240-3252.
    7. Nowman, K. Ben & Sorwar, Ghulam, 2005. "Derivative prices from interest rate models: results for Canada, Hong Kong, and United States," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 428-438.
    8. Bjork, Tomas, 2009. "Arbitrage Theory in Continuous Time," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 3, number 9780199574742.
    9. Mahdavi, Mahnaz, 2008. "A comparison of international short-term rates under no arbitrage condition," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 303-318.
    10. Yu, Jun, 2014. "Econometric Analysis Of Continuous Time Models: A Survey Of Peter Phillips’S Work And Some New Results," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 30(4), pages 737-774, August.
    11. Munk, Claus & Sorensen, Carsten, 2004. "Optimal consumption and investment strategies with stochastic interest rates," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(8), pages 1987-2013, August.
    12. Andreas Reschreiter, 2011. "Real and nominal UK interest rates, ERM membership, and inflation targeting," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 40(3), pages 559-579, May.
    13. Kozicki, Sharon & Tinsley, P. A., 2001. "Shifting endpoints in the term structure of interest rates," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 613-652, June.
    14. Freeman, Mark C. & Groom, Ben, 2016. "How certain are we about the certainty-equivalent long term social discount rate?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 152-168.
    15. Freeman, Mark C. & Groom, Ben & Panopoulou, Ekaterini & Pantelidis, Theologos, 2015. "Declining discount rates and the Fisher Effect: Inflated past, discounted future?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 32-49.
    16. Christiansen, Charlotte, 2008. "Level-ARCH short rate models with regime switching: Bivariate modeling of US and European short rates," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 925-948, December.
    17. Suresh M. Sundaresan, 2000. "Continuous‐Time Methods in Finance: A Review and an Assessment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1569-1622, August.
    18. Dijkstra, Theo K. & Yao, Yong, 2002. "Moment generating function approach to pricing interest rate and foreign exchange rate claims," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 163-178, October.
    19. Wang, Xiaohu & Phillips, Peter C.B. & Yu, Jun, 2011. "Bias in estimating multivariate and univariate diffusions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 161(2), pages 228-245, April.
    20. Czellar, Veronika & Karolyi, G. Andrew & Ronchetti, Elvezio, 2007. "Indirect robust estimation of the short-term interest rate process," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 546-563, September.

    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:eee:glofin:v:19:y:2009:i:3:p:219-234. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620162 .

    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.