Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Thinking Finance - The Comic Book, Dimitrios V. Siskos

Dimitrios V. Siskos

Thinking financially results in the best possible outcome and establishes a secure foundation for the future as an independent man. In contrast, thinking emotionally leads to short-sighted financial decisions and usually, deep regrets. However, thinking financially is not pleasant for the people around us. This comic book presents a guy, whose dream is to become an accountant. When he finally succeeds in this, he realizes that thinking financially may be effective for his boss but it is irritating for everyone else, even for his family.

Precarious Paradise: The Financial Well-Being Of Hispanic Immigrant Day Laborers In Malibu, Luisa Blanco, Lila M. Carlsen, Daniel R. Morrison, George Carlsen, Ashley Chaparro, Erick Molina

Lila McDowell Carlsen

Liquidity Policies And Financial Fragility, Danilo Lopomo Beteto Wegner

Danilo Lopomo Beteto Wegner

The Integrity Of Financial Analysts: Evidence From Asymmetric Responses To Earnings Surprises, Rui Lu, Wenxuan Hou, Henry Oppenheimer, Ting Zhang

Ting Zhang

This paper investigates the integrity of financial analysts by examining their recommendation responses to large quarterly earnings surprises. Although there is no significant difference in recommendation changes between affiliated and unaffiliated analysts in response to positive earnings surprises, affiliated analysts are more reluctant than unaffiliated analysts to downgrade stock recommendations in response to negative earnings surprises. The evidence implies that conflicts of interest undermine the integrity of financial analysts. We further examine the effects of reputation concern and the Global Research Analyst Settlement as informal and formal mechanisms, on restoring analysts’ integrity. The results show that the positive bias in …

An Analysis Of Risk-Taking Behavior For Public Defined Benefit Pension Plans, Nancy Mohan, Ting Zhang

Ting Zhang

This paper presents the first comprehensive study on the determinants of public pension fund investment risk and reports several new important findings. Unlike private pension plans, public funds undertake more risk if they are underfunded and have lower investment returns in the previous years, consistent with the risk transfer hypothesis. Furthermore, pension funds in states facing fiscal constraints allocate more assets to equity and have higher betas. There also appears to be a herding effect in that CalPERS equity allocation or beta is mimicked by other pension funds. Finally, our results suggest that government accounting standards strongly affect pension fund …

An Analysis Of Risk-Taking Behavior For Public Defined Benefit Pension Plans, Nancy Mohan, Ting Zhang

Nancy Mohan

This paper presents the first comprehensive study on the determinants of public pension fund investment risk and reports several new important findings. Unlike private pension plans, public funds undertake more risk if they are underfunded and have lower investment returns in the previous years, consistent with the risk transfer hypothesis. Furthermore, pension funds in states facing fiscal constraints allocate more assets to equity and have higher betas. There also appears to be a herding effect in that CalPERS equity allocation or beta is mimicked by other pension funds. Finally, our results suggest that government accounting standards strongly affect pension fund …

Speculation And Price Indeterminacy In Financial Markets, Shyam Sunder

Shyam Sunder

No abstract provided.

Simple Agents Intelligent Markets, Shyam Sunder

Shyam Sunder

No abstract provided.

Simple Agents, Intelligent Markets, Shyam Sunder

Shyam Sunder

No abstract provided.

Aggression In Mixed Martial Arts: An Analysis Of The Likelihood Of Winning A Decision, Trevor Collier, Andrew Johnson, John Ruggiero

Trevor Collier

Within the last decade, mixed martial arts has become one of the most popular sports worldwide. The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is the largest and most successful organization within the industry. In the USA, however, the sport is not sanctioned in all states because some politicians view the sport as too violent. The sport consists of many fighting forms and, unlike boxing, winning a decision requires judging in multiple facets including wrestling, boxing, kickboxing, and jiu-jitsu. In this study, we estimate the likelihood of winning a decision in the UFC. Using data on individual fights, we estimate the probability of …

Measuring Technical Efficiency In Sports, Trevor Collier, Andrew Johnson, John Ruggiero

Trevor Collier

Standard economic production theory is the basis for measuring technical efficiency in sports. Using programming or regression models, efficiency is defined as the distance of a given team observation from the technology. In this article, the authors show that the standard measures of efficiency using deterministic models are biased downward due to serial correlation with respect to the efficiency measure. In particular, if the number of observed wins for a given team is affected by the team’s inefficiency, it is necessarily true that another team is able to produce outside of the technology. As a result, the observed frontier is …

The Impact Of Institutional Arrangements On Educational Efficiency, Trevor Collier

Trevor Collier

Per-pupil expenditures on education in the United States have grown immensely in recent decades, yet student achievement has been stagnant. An abundance of research has sought to solve this enigma, much of it centered on the incentive structure facing administrators. Some recent papers use TIMSS data to analyze the relationship between institutional arrangements—that typically do not vary within a single country—and student achievement. Similarly, we utilize TIMSS 1999 to determine if there is an indirect relationship between institutional arrangements and student achievement, via a relationship with school efficiency. Our results show that the specified link between institutional arrangements and student …

Teacher Qualifications And Student Achievement: A Panel Data Of Analysis, Trevor Collier

Trevor Collier

Recent academic research suggests that teacher quality plays an important role in student achievement: however, empirical research on the efficacy of policies requiring teachers to obtain certain degrees is inconclusive, particularly in elementary education. This paper models a panel data production function with fixed effects using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K) to asses the relationship between different undergraduate and graduate majors and elementary student test scores. Specifcally, we aim to discern if there is a difference in teacher efficacy within the different education related majors (e.g. early childhood education and elementary education) and between education and non-education related majors.

Estimation Of Multi-Output Production Functions In Commercial Fisheries, Trevor Collier, Andrew Mamula, John Ruggiero

Trevor Collier

Measuring the productivity of vessels in a multi-species fishery can be problematic. Typical regression techniques are not capable of handling multiple outputs while Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) tends to ignore the stochastic nature of production. Applied economists have devoted considerable time to this problem and have developed several methods of dealing with the issue of multiple output technologies in commercial fisheries. Our paper contributes to this literature by providing another method for estimating production functions of vessels operating in multi-species fisheries. We utilize a two-stage model – with data from the West Coast Limited Entry Groundfish Trawl Fishery – using …

Tobin, James, Tony Caporale

Tony Caporale

James Tobin was born in Champaign, Illinois, in 1918. He received his bachelor's degree in 1939 and his master's degree in 1940, both from Harvard. Following naval service during the years 1942-6, he returned to his graduate studies and received his PhD from Harvard in 1947. In 1950, he joined the economics department at Yale University, and he has largely remained at Yale and has been identified with this institution throughout his career. He twice directed the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, first from 1955 to 1961, and then from 1964 to 1965. He also served for two years, …

The Relationship Between Output Variability And Growth: Evidence From Post War U.K. Data, Tony Caporale, Barbara Mckiernan

Tony Caporale

The paper investigates the relationship between output variability and economic growth using a GARCH-M model with industrial production in post-war Great Britain. The data reveals a positive relationship between variability and growth rates.

Price Discontinuities In The Market For Rins, Charles F. Mason, Neil A. Wilmot

Charles F Mason

No abstract provided.

Loyalty Cards And The Problem Of Captcha.Pdf, David M. Cook

Dr. David M Cook

The Ghana National Economic Forum In May 2014, Another Implementation Curse?, George E. Ekeha

George E Ekeha

More than one year after the above consensus was developed and read to the whole world, which was subsequently followed by the full report, many are of the view that little efforts have been done to implement the consensus. In this article, I decided to choose just about five of the Senchi Consensus that in my opinion can change the country very much and place her on the international radar for reckoning when implemented with the seriousness that they deserve. It is my strongest belief that many Ghanaians and other development partners are aware of many issues raised in this …

Is It Time To Reconsider The Semivariance Again? A Note, Ladd Kochman

Ladd Kochman

Building on the assumption that stock returns are less-than-symmetric, the semivariances (SV) are computed for 14 domestic and foreign stock indices as well as their respective arithmetic means (AM) and standard deviations (SD) and hypotheses that the correlation between SVs and AMs will be both positive and greater than the correlation between SDs and AMs.

Time Diversification: Tool, Fallacy Or Both?, Ladd Kochman, Randy Goodwin

Ladd Kochman

It seems fair to conclude that time diversification is more nearly a fallacy than a tool. Total periodic returns based on random annual outcomes expose the practice of diversifying with time not only as unproductive but as extremely risky as well. Yet, as the contrived distribution of alternating returns of 30% and -10% demonstrated, it is impossible to completely reject the idea that risk can actually decrease over time.

Portfolio Evaluation, Downside Risk And An Anomaly, Ladd Kochman

Ladd Kochman

Owing to the developments in portfolio theory in the 1960s, the evaluation of portfolio performance has evolved from a return-only mentality to a process that makes risk no less important than return. Earliest efforts to combine the two dimensions into a single (or composite) measure belong to Treynor (1965) and Sharpe (1966), who suggested dividing a portfolio's return in excess of the risk-free rate by the portfolio's bets and standard deviation, respectively. When Fama (1972) recommended that portfolios pay premiums that capture both market and diversification risk, he was implicitly asking whether Jensen's (1968) use of beta sufficiently measures the …

Securities Market Efficiency And The Reigning Super Bowl Champions, Ladd Kochman

Ladd Kochman

The vulnerability of stock prices has long intrigued investors and researchers. Beating the market has an inescapable appeal. The overwhelming evidence that regular above average returns are denied to all but those with inside information has not slowed efforts to find market errors or tap into profitable trends. One reason for hope is that past studies have never truly resolved how long securities must be held before a particular trading strategy can be measured. Pankoff has proposed that the market for bets on National Football League games can serve as a proxy for the securities market. Examining recent studies using …

The Why And How Of Mutual Fund Standard Deviations, Ladd Kochman, Randy Goodwin

Ladd Kochman

To the interested observer, mutual fund standard deviations raise two tantalizing questions: Are standard deviations relevant when funds, by definition, eliminate the unsystematic component of total risk? and How can two respected giants in the investments field like Fidelity and Morningstar use the same returns, intervals and measurement period for the same fund and end up with glaringly different standard deviations? To answer the question of relevance, we recall Evans and Archer's (1968) argument that as much as 90 percent of a portfolio's unsystematic risk can be diversified away with 12 to 18 stocks. Since that diversifiable risk is a …

Technology, Cost, Structure And Failure Of Banking Regulation, Shyam Sunder

Shyam Sunder

No abstract provided.

Parity And Non-Parity Determinants Of Exchange Rates In Latin American Economies, Catherine S.F. Ho, Mohamed Ariff

Mohamed Ariff

This paper reports how non-parity fundamental factors together with parity factors are correlated with exchange rate movements. Seven Latin American countries were included in this study using a selection criterion that for a pair of countries to be included, the pair must have more than 50 per cent of trade with the group chosen. The econometric methods applied are appropriate to this topic and include pooled time series regression and seemingly unrelated regression. The findings show that there is support for short and long-run effects on exchange rates from inflation and interest rates. We entered non-parity factors suggested in recent …

Investment Horizons And Inedeterminancy In Financial Markets, Shyam Sunder

Shyam Sunder

No abstract provided.

Experiments With Minimally Intelligent Agents And Minimal Institutions: Structure And Behavior, Shyam Sunder

Shyam Sunder

No abstract provided.

Laboratory Experiments In Economics: Coming Of Age, Shyam Sunder

Shyam Sunder

No abstract provided.

Trade-Off Of Short-Term Trading: Liquidity Vs. Efficiency, Shyam Sunder

Shyam Sunder

No abstract provided.