Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Social Practice Of Human Rights, Joel Pruce

Joel Pruce

The Social Practice of Human Rights bridges the conventional scholar-practitioner divide by focusing on the space in between. In capturing this cutting edge research program, the volume proposes a perspective that motivates critical self-reflection of the strategies that drive communities dedicated to the advocacy and implementation of human rights. The social practice of human rights takes place not in front of a judge, but in the streets and alleys, in the backrooms and out-of-the-way places where change occurs. Contributors to this volume investigate the contexts and efforts of activists and professionals devoted to promoting human rights norms. This research takes …

Ex-Ante Evaluation Of Public-Private Partnerships: Macroeconomic Analysis, Junxiao Liu, Peter Love, Brad Carey, Jim Smith, Michael Regan

Michael Regan

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are currently a popular approach for governments to procure social and economic infrastructure. The macroeconomic environment plays a critical role and influences the factors that can lead to the successful delivery of a PPP project. Despite the importance of the macroeconomic environment, limited attention has been paid to ex-ante (that is, before the event, or forecast) evaluation. A review of the normative literature was undertaken, aiming to derive key performance indicators (KPIs) of PPP success. The KPIs were validated by using a vector error correction model. It is suggested that the developed KPIs can be used to …

Market Efficiency And The Arena Football League: A Note, Ladd Kochman, Randy Goodwin

Ladd Kochman

With final scores like 99-68 and 80-74, can the market for wagers on Arena Football League games operate with the same efficiency generally associated with the more established betting markets? The question extends the argument by Pankoff (1968) that football point spreads are analogous to security prices and that profitable betting rules would create doubt about the efficiency of any competitive marketplace. Pankoff reasoned that bettors were no less numerous, knowledgeable or profit-maximizing than investors and that superior returns should be just as elusive to the former as they are to the latter. However, arena football's short point spread history …

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.

Football Market Efficiency And The Gambler's Fallacy, Ladd Kochman, Ken Gilliam

Ladd Kochman

No abstract provided.

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.

A Runs Test Of Football-Betting Market Efficiency, Ladd Kochman, Ken Gilliam

Ladd Kochman

No abstract provided.

The Gambler's Fallacy: A Test Of Football-Betting Market Efficiency, Ladd Kochman, Ravija Badarinathi

Ladd Kochman

Imaginary wagers placed on college football teams during the 2006-2010 seasons that were expected to beat the point spread following two games in which they lost both on the field and against the spread produced a wins-to-bets ratio that was statistically nonrandom but not profitable. However, when that rule was limited to the major conference schools, a significantly profitable W/B ratio emerged that challenges the efficiency of a competitive market.

Mutual Fund Performance In A Nonsymmetrical World: A Case For The Upside Deviation, Ladd Kochman, Ravija Badarinathi

Ladd Kochman

A mathematical case is made for the upside deviation. When a portfolio's UD is divided by the market's UD, the resulting ratio facilitates another test of positive or negative skewness. However, a grater contribution of the prospective measure is that were DDp/DDm monitors a portfolio's control of downside deviations, UDp/UDm reflects the leverage from upside deviations.

Dogs No Longer Man's Best Friend: A Test Of Football Market Efficiency, Ladd Kochman

Ladd Kochman

The outcomes of wagers on underdogs in the National Football League for the 2003-2007 seasons indicated that what had been anomalous behavior no longer existed. The failure of underdogs to beat the spread in profitable or nonrandom fashion supports the argument that competitive markets are efficient and undermines the proposition that behavioral finance can illuminate exploitable betting patterns.

Revisiting The Streaking Teams Phenomenom: A Note, Ladd Kochman, Randy Goodwin

Ladd Kochman

In an effort to learn if systematic misperceptions by market participants can undermine efficient prices and create regular profit opportunities, Camerer (1989) and Brown and Sauer (1993) investigated whether participants in the basketball-betting market overbet streaking (or "hot") teams. The purpose of this note is determine whether streaking teams - both hot and cold-in college football alter point spreads to an exploitable degree. The pointwise outcomes of college football teams following 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, 6-, 7-, 8-, and 9-game streaks during the 1996-2000 seasons. Streaks in the aggregate produced only breakeven results when used to predict the outcomes of …

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 …

Football Betting And The Neglected-Firm Effect: A Note, Ladd Kochman, David Waples

Ladd Kochman

To the extent that betting is analogous to investing, it seems fair to think that the football-betting market could provide a legitimate test of the neglected-firm effect. In the context of football-betting, neglect as a predictor variable appears to possess no special qualities. Even as the basis for a contrarian rule (that is, betting on teams that are least-neglected), the condition of being overlooked generated a W/B ratio (52.30 percent) that was unable to hurdle the 52.38-percent breakeven rate. Clearly, from a neglected-teams perspective, the football-betting market is efficient. A broader conclusion might be that the neglected-firm effect has little …

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 …

Do Mutual Funds Understate Their Volatility?, Ladd Kochman, Ravija Badarinathi, Randy Goodwin

Ladd Kochman

It is probably fair to say that the standard deviation, as a measure of total risk, fell out of favor when researchers discovered that diversification makes only systematic risk relevant to investors. Since even small portfolios of 12 to 18 stocks can eliminate as much as 90 percent of a portfolio's unsystematic risk (Evans and Archer, 1968), it is reasonable to think that average and institutional investors alike attach little importance to their holdings' standard deviation. Why then should it matter if mutual funds understate their standard deviations? After all, even grossly understated standard deviations can still overstate the risk …

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 …

Market Efficiency And The Women's Nba, Ladd Kochman, Randy Goodwin

Ladd Kochman

The availability of point spreads for the past three WNBA seasons offers researchers an early opportunity to test the efficiency of the market for wagers on WNBA games. While the more mature betting markets for football, baseball and men's basketball have generally denied regular profits to participants, the unique and emerging nature of the WNBA would seem to warrant another look at the vulnerability of betting lines. By examining the efficiency of WNBA point spreads, this study is, to a large extent, testing the hypothesis that markets in the emerging stage lack the participation that ensures efficient pricing and thus …

Mutual Fund Performance, Ladd Kochman, Ravija Badarinathi

Ladd Kochman

No abstract provided.

Diferencias Territoriales En El Retorno A La Educación En Chile: Evidencia Para Las Regiones Del Biobío Y Metropolitana, Genaro Candia, Andres Acuña

Andrés A. Acuña

Banks And Trust In Adam Smith, Maria Paganelli

Maria Pia Paganelli

One can see banking as a mediating institution based on trust. In a small pre-commercial society, trust is personal and credit markets quite limited and based on personal knowledge. In larger commercial societies, credit markets tend to expand, but this is not possible if they are based only on personal trust. This is because of the difficulties of getting to know every customer in a large and impersonal society. Institutional trust needs to supplement personal trust. One trusts a bank and/ or the banking system more than the individual teller in the bank, and the bank trusts credit scoring and …

Whose Money Is It Anyway? Ingroups And Distributive Behavior, David Chavanne, Kevin Mccabe, Maria Paganelli

Maria Pia Paganelli

Price theory is often used to explain reactions to rebates and subsidies that are meant to encourage charitable giving. This paper describes the results of a laboratory experiment that tests standard price theory alongside an alternative perspective based on research on the perceptions and behavior of ingroups. Using a modified dictator game, we find that rebates that decrease the price of giving only increase amounts given when they are exogenously funded by the experimenters. When rebates are funded by members of one’s group, the decreased price of giving does not lead to increased amounts given. The result suggests that the …

The Adam Smith Problem In Reverse: Self-Interest In Adam Smith’S Wealth Of Nations And Theory Of Moral Sentiments, Maria Paganelli

Maria Pia Paganelli

In identifying the tensions between the two treatises that Adam Smith (1723-90) published during his lifetime' - The Theory of Moral Sentiments' (1759) and 'The Wealth of Nations(1776) - 'it can be seen that the first is more favorable to self-interest. The author presents the effects of self-interest under ideal conditions, examines some of the abuses of self-interest, and describes how Smith deals with abuses of self-interest. Smith's first, lesser known treatise paints a picture of self-interest that more closely resembles that portrayed in modern economics: both the individual and society are better off when individuals pursue self-interest. In fact, …

The Power Of The Brics In World Trade And Growth, Analysing The Macroeconomic Impacts Within And Across The Bloc, Ahmed Khalid

Ahmed Khalid

Extract: The BRICS is a composition of five emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The five countries together represent about 42 per cent of the world's population, over 24 per cent of all land, and about 20 per cent of the world's total GDP, contributing a combined nominal GDP of more than US$14.9 trillion. Over the past decade trade between the BRICS and other regions such as North America, the EU and Japan has surpassed the US$2 trillion mark. Trade within the BRICS countries is growing at an average of 28 per cent per annum, reaching more …

It's Not Yen, Euro Or Koala Bloc: Greenback Is Still Dominant In East Asia, Gulasekaran Rajaguru, Ahmed Khalid, Frank Barbera

Ahmed Khalid

Given the nature of East Asia’s economic structure, interregional exchange rate stability is an essential requirement for regional economic integration. One way to achieve exchange rate stability is for the region to adopt an anchor currency. However, the choice of a potential anchor is an important question for policy planners. This paper examines the role of 5 major currencies as candidates for an anchor currency in the East Asian region. In particular, the paper examines the dynamic linkages between a selected sample of East Asian currencies with each potential anchor currency, the Australian dollar, Japanese yen, euro, US dollar and …

It's Not Yen, Euro Or Koala Bloc: Greenback Is Still Dominant In East Asia, Gulasekaran Rajaguru, Ahmed Khalid, Frank Barbera

Gulasekaran Rajaguru

Given the nature of East Asia’s economic structure, interregional exchange rate stability is an essential requirement for regional economic integration. One way to achieve exchange rate stability is for the region to adopt an anchor currency. However, the choice of a potential anchor is an important question for policy planners. This paper examines the role of 5 major currencies as candidates for an anchor currency in the East Asian region. In particular, the paper examines the dynamic linkages between a selected sample of East Asian currencies with each potential anchor currency, the Australian dollar, Japanese yen, euro, US dollar and …

Superstar Cities, Inequality And Housing Policy, S Y Phang

PHANG Sock Yong

Income and wealth inequality have been constantly debated, especially in recent years. Most studies, such as the recent work by Thomas Piketty, compare inequality across countries and over time. National inequality measures, however, mask considerable variations across cities within the same country. A country’s biggest and most economically dynamic cities also tend to have the largest inequality gaps. These cities – what Joseph Gyourko calls “Superstar Cities” – are also distinguished by their high housing prices. Migration in and out of cities limits the extent to which Superstar Cities can use local redistributive policies (including housing policies) to reduce inequality. …

A Review Of Alternative Economic Base Study Methods For Community Economic Development, Jordan Yin

Jordan S. Yin

No abstract provided.

The Community Option In Urban Policy, Jordan Yin, J. Pitt, P Clavel

Jordan S. Yin

No abstract provided.

An Economic Development Strategy For Charlevoix County - A Feasibility Study, Michelle Miller-Adams

Michelle Miller-Adams

Staff of the Upjohn Institute will work with the Charlevoix Community Foundation to study the feasibility of a collaborative economic development strategy for the region. Through stakeholder interviews and a community convening, Institute staff will examine the networks currently in place among leaders in the county's three communities, present to stakeholders the findings of this network analysis along with regional data, and facilitate a community conversation about possible collaborative strategies designed to address the challenges facing Charlevoix County.

Analysis Of Washington High Tech Tax Credit, Kevin Hollenbeck, Timothy Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

The State of Washington has a credit provision in its Business & Operations tax intended to incentivize research and development expenditures in high tech industries. The indirect goal of the incentive is to generate employment in the state. Upjohn Institute staff members analyzed administrative data from the state to estimate the employment and earnings generating effect of the R & D credit. The administrative data included tax return information merged with quarterly earnings and employment records. Potential endogeneity of the credits and employment were controlled through instrumental variables.