Foreign Safe Asset Demand for US Treasurys and the Dollar

We present theory showing that the spot dollar exchange rate reflects the value of all future convenience yields that foreign investors assign to US Treasuries. The convenience yield also creates wedge, the Treasury-based dollar basis, between the yield on foreign bonds and the currency-hedged yield on US Treasury bonds. We use the Treasury basis to measure the foreign convenience yield and show that an increase in the basis coincides with an appreciation of the dollar, consistent with the theory. The variation in the Treasury basis accounts for 25 percent of the quarterly variation in the dollar between 1988 and 2017.

Nanisivik Mine — A Profitability Comparison of Actual Mining to the Expectations of the Feasibility Study

The Nanisivik mine offers a unique opportunity to examine the economics of a mining scenario from its original feasibility study through to closure. In the early 1970s, the Strathcona Sound project (exploration around the Nanisivik mine) had advanced to the point where a significant mineralized body had been defined and a feasibility study was initiated. The study supported development of the Nanisivik mine, with government investment in regional infrastructure, and the mine was constructed and operated for 26 years. Many elements of the feasibility study were difficult to estimate because the project was unique in its high Arctic setting. As a result, many differences were found when comparing the actual mining data to the feasibility study. The majority of these differences were the result of an actual mine life of 26 years instead of the planned 12.5 years. Most of the mining costs were higher than estimated and production occurred at a much higher extraction rate than planned. On a constant dollar basis, the metal prices were, on average, below the feasibility estimates. For the most part, these differences balanced out, with the actual mining being only slightly more profitable than anticipated in the feasibility study.

Differential Pricing of Components of Bank Loan Fair Values

This paper examines the capital market pricing implications of nondiscretionary, discretionary, and noise components of loan fair values for a sample of commercial banks. We use a model to partition loan fair values into discretionary and nondiscretionary components using proxies for discretion and nondiscretion. The residual from the model captures the noise component. We hypothesize that the nondiscretionary component is priced on a dollar-for-dollar basis and the residual (noise) component is not priced. The pricing coefficient on the discretionary component is predicted to be positive (negative) depending on whether the motivation for discretion is signaling (opportunism). We find evidence consistent with the hypotheses, implying that the relevance and reliability of loan fair values differs across the three components.

Substitutability of Leases and Debt in Corporate Capital Structures

Finance theory suggests that leases and debt are substitutes. Surprisingly, however, prior empirical research using financial statement data has been unable to verify this trade-off between the two forms of financing. This study re-examines the issue of substitutability by comparing changes in lease and debt financing over a six-year horizon for a large sample of U.S. firms. The empirical results strongly support the theoretical contention that leases and debt are substitutes and is thus consistent with evidence from surveys of lending officers. There is some evidence, however, that firms do not view leases as displacing nonleasing debt on a dollar-for-dollar basis.