Decentralized Investment Banking: The Case of Discount Dividend-Reinve stment and Stock-Purchase Plans

Discount dividend-reinvestment and stock-purchase plans allow shareholders to capture part of the underwriting fees incurred in new stock offerings and save sponsoring firms some of the usual underwriting costs. We tested the degree to which individual investors can profitably serve this investment banking function by implementing simple investment/trading strategies designed to capture the discounts and distribute the shares in the market. The large profits earned by our strategies raise serious questions about why it takes firms so long to raise the target level of capital and why many eligible shareholders do not participate in these discount plans.

Employee Stock Ownership Plans and Corporate Restructuring: Myths and Realities

During the first six months of 1989 U.s. corporations acquired over $19 billion of their own stock to establish employer stock ownership plans (ESOPs). We evaluate the common claims that there exist unique tax and incentive contracting advantages to establishing ESOPs. Our analysis suggests that, particularly for large firms, where the greatest growth in ESOPs has occurred, the case is very weak for taxes being the primary motivation to establish an ESOP. The case is also weak for employee incentives being the driving force behind their establishment. We conclude that the main motivation for the growth of ESOPs is their anti-takeover characteristics.

The impact of satellite temperature soundings on the forecasts of a small national meteorological service

The impact of introducing satellite temperature sounding data on a numerical weather prediction model of a national weather service is evaluated. A dry five level, primitive equation model which covers most of the Northern Hemisphere, is used for these experiments. Series of parallel forecast runs out to 48 hours are made with three different sets of initial conditions: (1) NOSAT runs, only conventional surface and upper air observations are used; (2) SAT runs, satellite soundings are added to the conventional data over oceanic regions and North Africa; and (3) ALLSAT runs, the conventional upper air observations are replaced by satellite soundings over the entire model domain. The impact on the forecasts is evaluated by three verification methods: the RMS errors in sea level pressure forecasts, systematic errors in sea level pressure forecasts, and errors in subjective forecasts of significant weather elements for a selected portion of the model domain. For the relatively short range of the present forecasts, the major beneficial impacts on the sea level pressure forecasts are found precisely in those areas where the satellite sounding are inserted and where conventional upper air observations are sparse. The RMS and systematic errors are reduced in these regions. The subjective forecasts of significant weather elements are improved with the use of the satellite data. It is found that the ALLSAT forecasts are of a quality comparable to the SAR forecasts

The Chess Players

Originally conducted primarily as a game of war and strategy, chess has evolved to reflect historical developments in Western civilization as well as inspired literary and artistic endeavors in such a fashion as to provide comment, often as metaphor, on the human condition and our place in a cosmos influenced as frequently by chance as by order. The evolution of the game itself, particularly the promotion of a weak and relatively unimportant piece to the most powerful, at a time when a similar shift was taking place in the real world, ensured its survival as it served as an educational tool, an entertainment, and a method for developing military strategy. At the same time, chess has provided inspiration for writers, artists, and filmmakers, whether on the sidelines or as part of the general composition, or providing more substantial thematic and/or metaphorical material. Finally, it is a reflection of humanity’s place in the cosmos altogether. The constantly shifting balance between order and chaos, and its effect on the human condition, is perpetually subject to randomness, introducing choice into the equation: a choice between options which may lead to chaos or order depending on the human element. The Chess Players is a novel-in-stories which are connected by themes involving the role of the queen in chess; tradition—both in a family context and on a larger, social scale; the significance of random chance, giving imagination and intuition the opportunity to take advantage of it; and a tinge of feminism: Irina Orzeł, arriving in a café on an early spring day, with its intimation of something new pending in the air, brings a sea-change to the denizens of an all-male chess club while undergoing a transformation of sorts of her own. The accompanying collection of essays, “A Game For All Reasons: Musings on the Interdisciplinary Nature of Chess,” discusses the evolution of the modern chess queen; Geoffrey Chaucer’s use of chess and fortune in the Book of the Duchess and the Knight’s Tale; and the influence of chess on modernist Marcel Duchamp, who incorporated improvisation and chance into his idiosyncratic fusion of chess-as-art, and surrealist Samuel Bak, whose Jewish heritage and views on war and the human condition inform his paintings, using chess to portray both the devastation of the former and his hope for the latter