In this volume we are publishing the proceedings of the Economic and Social Research Council/Centre for Economic Policy Research conference ‘Recent Developments in Corporate Finance, Investment and Taxation’ held in Wadham College, Oxford and the Institute of Economics and Statistics, Oxford on 2–6 September 1985.

We would like to express our appreciation to the authors and discussants whose contributions are published here for their participation in the conference and readiness to help in the preparation of this volume. We also wish to thank the other participants in the conference, whose names are listed below, for their contributions to the discussion which made the conference one of great value.

We would like to thank the Economic and Social Research Council for providing financial support for the conference. We are also grateful to Drexel Burnham Lambert Ltd for making a financial contribution to the conference. The quality of this manuscript, and the speed with which it was published, owe much to the efforts of the technical editor, Michael Keen of the University of Essex. Finally we would like to thank Monica Allen and Wendy Thompson of the CEPR and Elaine Le Fevre and Rachel Swain of the London Business School for their major contributions to the organisation of the conference.