This essay seeks to rehabilitate the capital asset pricing model by splitting beta, the basic unit of systematic risk, into subatomic (or “baryonic”) components. By analogy to quantum chromodynamics and other aspects of the Standard Model of particle physics, this essay bifurcates beta on...

The greatest vectors of biodiversity loss today are climate change, habitat destruction, invasive species, pollution, population, and overkill. Climate change, habitat destruction, and alien invasive species should figure more prominently than overkill and the marketing of products derived from...

Agricultural controversies in affluent, comfortably fed countries increasingly emphasize the esthetic or expressive elements of food. Consumer advocates can indulge in litigation over foie gras, for instance, or coffee production certification. This expressive turn elevates the ornamental...

Many things can be measured and expressed numerically. Nature speaks in the language of mathematics. Mathematical analysis of law is often associated with the application of established empirical techniques to ever-growing bodies of legal data. Other distinct applications of mathematics to law...

The conventional capital asset pricing model (CAPM) has come under severe attack for its failure to reflect investor behavior. This paper describes financial decision-making under uncertainty in formal mathematical terms as a generalized higher-moment capital asset pricing model. It develops...

Civil monetary penalties play a vital role in federal law. The Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act of 1990, Pub. L. No. 101-410, prescribes rules for the regular adjustment of federal civil monetary penalties in response to inflation. Three statutory defects have undermined the...

This book explains how investor behavior, from mental accounting to the combustible interplay of hope and fear, affects financial economics. The transformation of portfolio theory begins with the identification of anomalies. Gaps in perception and behavioral departures from rationality spur...

This book rehabilitates beta as a definition of systemic risk by using particle physics to evaluate discrete components of financial risk. Much of the frustration with beta stems from the failure to disaggregate its discrete components; conventional beta is often treated as if it were "atomic"...

This survey of portfolio theory, from its modern origins through more sophisticated, “postmodern” incarnations, evaluates portfolio risk according to the first four moments of any statistical distribution: mean, variance, skewness, and excess kurtosis. In pursuit of financial models that...