METHODOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF NON-NORMALLY DISTRIBUTED FINANCIAL RATIOS: A COMMENT

This comment argues that proposals to replace financial ratio analysis with regression analysis of the separate ratio components are unnecessary and misguided. Financial ratios are used to predict other variables and not to predict their own components. These ratios also help deal with the size scale problem inherent in regular accounting data, but regression error terms would suffer from the same size effect as the regular data. The actual statistical distribution of financial ratios is an open, important question, but that question in itself does not call for an abandonment of fmancial ratios.     

Is there a labor shortage?

Business Economics - A panel discusses ongoing and prospective developments in the US labor market. Michael Horrigan points out that job losses in the COVID recession were heavily concentrated...     

From time use to contingent work to labor supply: thoughts on the contributions of Alan Kreuger

Business Economics - Alan had a real concern with “getting it right,” even when getting it right was something that was going to be very, very difficult to do. I focus on some trends in...     

The ethics of the New Finance

This paper examines the normative ideas flowing from the contemporary theories that make up the New Finance. These theories include the Irrelevance Theorem, Efficient Market Hypothesis, Capital Asset Pricing Model, Options Pricing Model, and Agency Theory. The behavioral consequences that would ensue if everyone took the normative precepts of the New Finance seriously are subjected to a Kantian analysis to determine their ethical implications. It is concluded that the corporate world in the New Finance is a place where the firm can select any operating and financial strategies that it wishes, and the investors will respond immediately through a combination of homemade portfolio diversification, clever option positions, and carefully constructed agency relationships, all of which results in a pervasive nihilism. Recommendations are offered on how these features of the New Finance might be avoided or moderated. Dr. James O. Horrigan is the Forbes Professor of Management at the Whittemore School of Business and Economics of the University of New Hampshire. He has published articles on accounting and finance in the Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, and Journal of Finance.