Educational Insights: A Hybrid Course in Risk Management and Insurance

Universities and colleges continue to face constraints related to classroom space and faculty time, thus increasing the need to consider options such as hybrid courses that can leverage available resources. This article discusses the benefits of a hybrid course, as well as its design and implementation at a large, public university. In addition, for universities that use the introduction to risk and insurance course as a significant course for attracting majors, we identify the benefits for students from the use of hybrid courses, such as the variety of materials and activities utilized, as well as the flexibility in scheduling. This information may be useful in marketing the course so that it will be immediately attractive to students.     

Corporate Political Contributions and Stock Returns

We develop a new and comprehensive database of firm‐level contributions to U.S. political campaigns from 1979 to 2004. We construct variables that measure the extent of firm support for candidates. We find that these measures are positively and significantly correlated with the cross‐section of future returns. The effect is strongest for firms that support a greater number of candidates that hold office in the same state that the firm is based. In addition, there are stronger effects for firms whose contributions are slanted toward House candidates and Democrats.     

The Political Economy of Financial Regulation: Evidence from U.S. State Usury Laws in the 19th Century

Financial regulation was as hotly debated a political issue in the 19th century as it is today. We study the political economy of state usury laws in 19th century America. Exploiting the wide variation in regulation, enforcement, and economic conditions across states and time, we find that usury laws when binding reduce credit and economic activity, especially for smaller firms. We examine the motives of regulation and find that usury laws coincide with other economic and political policies favoring wealthy political incumbents, particularly when they have more voting power. The evidence suggests financial regulation is driven by private interests capturing rents from others rather than public interests protecting the underserved.     

Perfectly competitive bilateral exchange without discounting

In a random-matching economy of traders who maximize cumulative consumption (overtaking criterion), the stationary, Markov, Bayesian-perfect equilibrium is studied. At such equilibrium, two results hold: (1) perfect substitutability between current and future consumption implies a no-surplus condition; and (2) by the no-surplus condition, there is a nominal price at which all trades must occur. These results strengthen the seminal results of Ostroy (1973) regarding monetary bilateral exchange in two ways: the incentive compatibility of the equilibrium trading pattern is established and a less roundabout trading pattern enhances welfare by enabling consumption to occur more frequently.     

Inter-market competition for NYSE-listed securities under decimals

Blume and Goldstein (J Finance 52:221–244, 1997) suggest that quote competition between trading venues may diminish following tick size reductions. We test this suggestion by studying the competitive landscape in the NYSE-listed stocks before and after decimalization. We find that NBBO (National Best Bid and Offer) participation by non-NYSE venues declines following decimalization consistent with the prediction. At the same time, the importance of quote competitiveness in attracting order flow increases. In addition, although not as active in determining and maintaining the best quotes under decimals, non-NYSE venues become more active in price discovery. Finally, decimalization leads to lower trading costs and to smaller differences in trading costs across trading venues.     

Irreversible investment and discounting: an arbitrage pricing approach

This paper presents a unified approach to valuing investment projects under uncertainty, based on stochastic discount factors, by linking optimal stopping theory to the no-arbitrage principle in asset pricing. An investment threshold for the case where the discount factor and the project’s cash-flow both follow a geometric Brownian motion is derived. Comparative statics of the investment trigger are obtained adding to and clarifying on the uncertainty–investment debate. Finally, two different ways to obtain discount factors are illustrated: spanning assets and representative agent analysis. The link between the characteristics of these different approaches and the optimal investment policy is clarified.     

The Role of Debt Purchases in Takeovers: A Tale of Two Retailers

In this paper, we examine acquisitions of two financially distressed retailers—Federated's takeover of Macy's, and Zell Chilmark's takeover of Carter Hawley Hale. In both cases the raider purchased some of the target's outstanding debt to launch its takeover attempt. These debt purchases appear to have been facilitated by two salient factors—the raider's expertise in dealing with distressed firm restructuring and the ability of the raider to acquire a large blockholding of debt. Our analysis indicates that, when these factors are present, it is optimal for a raider to initiate a takeover of a distressed firm through purchasing a block of the firm's debt. Target bondholder reaction will be favorable whereas shareholder reaction may be either favorable or unfavorable.     

Assessing multi-dimensional performance: environmental and economic outcomes

This study examines economic performance, environmental performance, and regulatory activity for plants in three industries: pulp and paper, oil, and steel. Stochastic frontier production function models show significant deviations from production efficiency. Older plants are less efficient in production, but perform no worse on emissions. Plants spending more on pollution abatement tend to do worse on both production efficiency and emissions. Stricter local regulatory pressure is associated with somewhat lower emissions, but has mixed effects on production efficiency. Positive correlations between SUR residuals for emissions and production efficiency suggest unmeasured plant-level characteristics that drive both economic and environmental performance.

Weekly scheduling models for traveling therapists

This paper presents a series of models that can be used to find weekly schedules for therapists who provide ongoing treatment to patients throughout a geographical region. In all cases, patient-appointment times and visit days are known prior to the beginning of the planning horizon. Variations in the models include single vs. multiple home bases, homogeneous vs. heterogeneous therapists, lunch break requirements, and a nonlinear cost structure for mileage reimbursement and overtime. The single home base and homogeneous therapist cases proved to be easy to solve and so were not thoroughly investigated. This left two cases of interest: the first included only lunch breaks while the second added nonlinear overtime and mileage reimbursement costs. For the first case, 40 data sets were solved, each consisting of either 15 or 20 therapists and between roughly 300 and 540 patient visits over five days. For each instance, we were able to obtain the minimum cost of providing residential healthcare services using a commercial solver. The results showed that CPU time increases more rapidly than total cost as the total number of visits grows. For the second case, which was much more difficult, it was necessary to develop heuristics to find good solutions quickly. Results for 5- through 20-therapist instances are presented and compared to the linear programming relaxation lower bounds. In the first of two parametric analyses, the tradeoff between the number of therapists on staff and the cost of providing service was examined. In the second, a similar tradeoff was explored between cost can the number of home bases used by the therapists.