GMO is a well known mutual fund company that serves wealthy clients. The minimum investment for a mutual fund account is 10 million dollars. GMO’s web site is a font of useful and entertaining information. Should the Vanguard investor who can’t afford to invest with GMO be envious of the...

Each month, GMO publishes on the web its predictions of the real rate of return for various asset styles over the next seven years. Its web library retains its quarterly predictions, dating back to the end of the second quarter of 2000. This inquiry explores whether they predict the performance...

GMO offers a mutual fund which is free to change its composition of assets in accordance with expected risks and returns. It is called the GMO Benchmark Free Allocation Fund III, ticker: GBMFX. This study asks whether one could obtain the same performance by adjusting one’s holdings of...

Do enhanced index funds beat traditional ones? The major companies that offer the new enhanced index international mutual funds are Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA), RAFI, and WisdomTree. A major provider of traditional international index funds is DFA. We compare various enhanced international...

In the spring of 2000, two books predicted a substantial fall in the S&P500 Index. Robert Shiller's <I>Irrational Exuberance</I> found that, historically, a high price earnings ratio, with real earnings averaged over 10 years, accurately predicts a low real rate of return from investing in the S&P500...</i>

This paper is a short, non-technical exposition of the political economy of protection. It asks how do political forces operate to generate protection, and what determines the magnitude and form that protection takes.

Is John Bogle right that Vanguardís index and managed funds are comparable and by his example that investors should hold both? Each Vanguard managed fund produces the same return as the tracking basket of Vanguardís indexed funds plus a differential, a. If a, is positive the managed fund is...

Robert Crandall in the March 19, 1999 Wall Street Journal wrote, "On Wednesday the House passed one of the most blatantly protectionist pieces of legislation since the 1930s. Reacting to the anguished cries from the steel industry and its rapidly declining unionized workforce, the House voted to...