School district quality and property values: Examining differences along school district boundaries

Examining differences across school district boundaries rather than school attendance zone boundaries has several advantages. These advantages include being applicable when attendance zones are not available or less relevant to educational outcomes as arises with within district school choice and for examining the effect of factors like school spending or property taxes that do not vary within districts. However, school district boundaries have often been in place for many years allowing households to sort based on school quality and potentially creating distinct neighborhoods on either side of boundaries. We estimate models of housing prices using repeated cross-sections of housing transactions near school district boundaries in Connecticut. These models exploit changes over time to control for across boundary differences in neighborhood quality. We find significant effects of test scores on property values, but those effects are notably smaller than both OLS and traditional boundary fixed effects estimates.     

The Role of Authentic (vs. Hubristic) Pride in Leveraging the Effectiveness of Cost Transparency

Journal of Business Ethics - In the era of consumer distrust of corporations, transparency is becoming a must rather than an option. While prior research has explored why businesses should disclose...     

Trading Behaviour of Foreign Institutional Investors: Evidence from Indian Stock Markets

Asia-Pacific Financial Markets - The existence of behavioural bias such as positive feedback trading (PFT) and herding is well researched for advanced economies. This paper explores whether foreign...     

Sad but smiling? How the combination of happy victim images and sad message appeals increase prosocial behavior

Marketing Letters - The present research examines how a combination of a happy (vs. sad) victim image and a strong sad message appeal can promote prosocial behavior. The underlying reason is that...     

Multi-market trading in the Eurodollar futures market

On March 18, 2004, the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange launched trading in Eurodollar futures contracts in an attempt to compete with a U.S. rival, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange responded to the challenge by introducing several policy changes that aided the transfer of its trading volume in Eurodollar futures from open outcry to the electronic trading platform, Globex, thereby retaining its market share. We compare trading volume, effective spread, and price discovery in Eurodollar futures at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange before and after the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange began trading the same contract. We find a general increase in trading volume on Globex beginning October 2003, way before the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange launched its contract. Globex provides greater price discovery than open outcry during the entire time period under study. Our research thus supports the global trend of conversion of traditional open outcry systems into electronic exchanges.     

Small asymmetric fractional factorial plans for main effects and specified two-factor interactions

Fractional factorial plans represented by orthogonal arrays of strength two are known to be optimal in a very strong sense under a model that includes the mean and all the main effects, when all interactions are assumed to be absent. When a fractional factorial plan given by an orthogonal array of strength two is not saturated, one might think of entertaining some two-factor interactions also in the model. In such a situation, it is of interest to examine which of the two-factor interactions can be estimated via a plan represented by an orthogonal array, as also to study the overall efficiency of the plan when some interactions are in the model alongwith the mean and all main effects. In this paper, an attempt has been made to examine these issues by considering some practically useful plans for asymmetric (mixed level) factorials with small number of runs.     

Intraday Price Discovery in the DJIA Index Markets

Abstract:  This paper explores the dynamics of price discovery between the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) index and its three derivative products: the DIAMOND exchange-traded fund (ETF), the floor-traded regular futures, and the electronically traded mini futures. Even though the American Stock Exchange is the primary listing exchange for the ETF, the analysis indicates that the electronically traded ETF on the Archipelago (ArcaEx) electronic communications network dominates the price discovery process for DIAMOND shares. The E-mini futures contribute the most to price discovery, followed by the ArcaEx DIAMOND. The DJIA index and regular futures contribute least to price discovery. The analysis is repeated using the derivatives of the S&P 500 index as a robustness check. The results indicate that multi-market trading ensures greater pricing efficiency. Informed traders favor electronic trading because of immediate and anonymous trade execution.     

Physical activity and childhood obesity

More than one-third of American children and teenagers are considered overweight or obese. Unfortunately, obesity is often a persistent and dangerous health condition that is costly to manage. It is one of the leading causes of preventable death and combating the condition has become a national priority. To this end the two most common recommendations are: eat a healthier diet and increase physical activity. Using data from both the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the NLSY79 Children and Young Adult files, this study examines the relationship between physical activity and the persistence of childhood obesity. More specifically, Cox-proportional hazard techniques are used to quantify the impact a child’s physical activity has on the likelihood that they exit an overweight or obese state. Results indicate that being physically active reduces the probability that an overweight or obese child remains overweight or obese. Strikingly, there is not a significant difference between children who are active daily and those who are active a few times per week, suggesting that being active may be more important than the frequency of activity.