Using a theoretical extension of the Friedman and Savage (1948) utility function developed in Bhattacharyya (2003), we predict that for financial assets with negative expected returns, expected return will be a declining and convex function of skewness. Using a sample of U.S. state lottery...

Most universities solicit feedback from students at the end of a course in order to assess student perceptions of the course. This feedback is used for various objectives, including for evaluating teaching by academic administrators. One would therefore expect faculty to rationally take this...

We survey managers from 16 European countries to examine cross-country determinants of payout policy. We find that European managers' views on dividend policy are driven largely by factors similar to that of their U.S. peers. They strongly agree with Lintner's findings that dividends are...

The accounting and mutual fund scandals of the last few years have led to increased scrutiny over the information provided by financial services to investors. These scandals have cast doubt on the supposedly honest and impartial reporting of facts by the financial industry. This paper looks at...

Finance textbooks recommend the use of Net Present Value (NPV) as the evaluation tool for Capital Budgeting. Yet surveys of managers have consistently shown that managers prefer Internal rate of Return (IRR) to NPV. This article rigorously establishes the validity of the interpretation of IRR as...

I propose that the utility function of an economic agent will be concave for wealth below the current wealth and will be convex for wealth above the current wealth. This utility function allows the agent to display simultaneous risk averse and risk seeking behaviour. The cubic utility function...