Over the past 10 years, Alabama's public retirement system has seen its liabilities overtake its assets by more than $15 billion. This means the system has only 66 cents for every dollar owed to current and future retirees. Worse still, the shortfall has been growing by $4 million each day that...

Ten states and the District of Columbia prohibit the operation of payday loan stores, and thirty-one other states have imposed regulatory restraints on the controversial industry, ranging, for example, from caps on fees and loan amounts to the number of rollovers and renewals a borrower may...

Many public pension funds face serious funding shortfalls. In fact, more than half of the states currently have public pension funds with funded ratios that are less than 80 percent, a level many prefer. In this paper we examine factors important in explaining the funded ratios of state and...

We examine how changes in dividend policy in 2008 as the financial crisis was unfolding influenced firm risk-adjusted returns in the following years. Our sample consists of NYSE- and NASDAQ-traded firms that paid dividends in 2007. We divide these firms into four groups based on their dividend...

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) annually publishes a list of the fifty “best” private companies that are funded by venture capitalists. Given the important role venture capitalists play in fostering the growth and development of relatively young firms, it is important to examine the returns to...

We investigate geographic distribution of payday lenders and banks that operate throughout the United States. We examine the relation between the number of payday lender stores and various demographic and economic characteristics

We examine how changes in dividend policy in 2008 as the financial crisis was unfolding influenced firm risk-adjusted returns in the following years. Our sample consists of NYSE- and NASDAQ-traded firms that paid dividends in 2007. We divide these firms into four groups based on their dividend...