Recently published evidence of limited learning among American college students confirms the damage done when students, faculty, and institutions pursue interests that conflict with the educational process. The ‘disengagement compact' in which faculty tacitly trade lenient workloads and...

Value Line's timeliness rankings for common stocks are the topic of much debate and research in finance journals. The interest stems from Value Line's purported ability to select stocks that outperform the market, and such stock-selection success is considered anomalous to the market efficiency...

Grade inflation is a long-standing problem whose seriousness is demonstrated by a wide variety of studies of grade distributions. A few institutions have changed the information on their transcripts in an effort to account for it. Proposals to index grades have been largely unsuccessful for a...

The prices of ETNs often significantly exceed their indicative values. Since ETNs share many features in common with zero-coupon bonds, this empirical finding is unexpected. (Adopting the language of Wright, Diavatopoulos, and Felton (2010), we refer to this as the negative WDFD puzzle.) Using a...

This study examines the information content of Standard & Poor's common stock ranking changes. Since prior studies find Standard & Poor's common stock rankings provide investors with a measure of risk, a ranking change may signify a change in risk. Common stock ranking changes made by Standard &...

This paper examines stock price reactions to changes in Standard & Poor's common stock rankings. Using internal memoranda obtained directly from Standard & Poor's, an event study methodology, and a sample of 191 upgrades and 582 downgrades, we find that the majority of stock price reactions...

We analyze the correlation between the political orientation of investors and their financial risk tolerance. Assessing financial risk tolerance is a very important aspect to developing an appropriate long-term investing strategy. Our study is based on a sample of 129 undergraduates at Central...

This study examines the information content of Standard & Poor's common stock ranking changes. Since prior studies find Standard & Poor's common stock rankings provide investors with a measure of risk, a ranking change may signify a change in risk. Common stock ranking changes made by Standard &...

This is a review of the book entitled "Navigate the Noise: Investing in the New Age of Media and Hype" by Richard Bernstein, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. in 2001. Mr. Bernstein is First Vice President and Chief Quantitative Strategist at Merrill Lynch

This paper examines whether commercial success in the popular recorded-music industry, as measured by gold-record output, conforms to an empirical concentration. We find that Lotka's Law overestimates the number of artists with one gold record and underestimates the number of...