Is Economic Growth Good for Investors?
Jay R. Ritter
This article begins by reporting a long-run negative correlation between per capita GDP growth and stock returns for developed and developing economies alike, and then offers an explanation that focuses heavily on corporate governance and payout policies.

Blinded by Growth
Javier Estrada
Fast-growing countries and their companies often produce low returns for investors, and slow-growing ones sometimes produce high returns. Investors often overpay for growth prospects, which helps explain why value investing beats growth investing over the long term.

Valuation With Market Multiples:  How to Avoid Pitfalls When Identifying and Using Comparable Companies
Robert W. Holthausen and Mark E. Zmijewski
Commonly used market multiples such as EBIT and EBITDA can mislead analysts because of the failure of analysts to find comparable companies whose values respond similarly to changes in critical value drivers.

Excess Cash and Shareholder Payout Strategies
Niso Abuaf
Senior Management’s main job is to allocate capital efficiently, and efficient allocation of capital means distributing it when it can’t be reinvested to earn the cost of capital. This paper provides a framework for executives when thinking about the competing uses of cash.

Toward Real-Time Financial Reporting:  How to Reduce Investors’ Information Gap and the Cost of Capital
Mark Schneider
The CEO of a German company argues that investor uncertainty raises the cost of capital and reduces the value of many public companies. He proposes more timely provision of information about actual performance in lieu of more extensive financial guidance.

Pitfalls in Levering and Unlevering Beta and Cost of Capital Estimates in DCF Valuations
Robert W. Holthausen and Mark E. Zmijewski
The authors offer alternatives to popular formulas for estimating the effect of leverage on cost of capital, as well as discussing the effects of subordinated debt, preferred equity and employee stock options.

Corporate Governance and Cost of Capital:  The Case of Australian Companies
Peter Kien Pham, Jo-Ann Suchard and Jason Zein
A sample of large Australian companies over a 10-year period, shows that stronger internal corporate governance mechanisms reduce the cost of capital, thereby possibly substituting for a comparatively ineffective Australian market for corporate control.

An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Understanding the Cost of Venture Capital
V. Ravi Anshuman, John Martin and Sheridan Titman
The authors argue the cost of venture capital is even higher than it may appear because of information asymmetry between entrepreneurs and VCs and because of the ability of VCs to demand and receive preferential treatment in the event things go wrong.

Assessing Project Risk
Antonio E. Bernardo, Bhagwan Chowdhry and Amit Goyal
The authors argue that companies often overstate project risk when using the CAPM because the betas of comparable firms include growth options. By deleveraging betas for growth options as well as debt, managers can determine more realistic hurdle rates.

The Terminal Value and Inflation Controversy
Daniel Kiechle and Niklas Lampenius
In revisiting a debate about the Gordon growth model, the authors find that the competing models are actually just different versions of the same constant growth model, but with quite different assumptions about how inflation affects sustainable capital reinvestment.