Asset Allocation and Asset Location: Household Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances

The rapid growth of assets in self-directed tax-deferred retirement accounts has generated a new set of financial decisions for many households. In addition to deciding which assets to hold, households with substantial assets in both taxable and tax-deferred accounts must decide where to hold them. This paper uses data from the Survey of Consumer Finances to assess how many households have enough assets in both taxable and tax-deferred accounts to face significant asset location choices. It also investigates the asset location decisions these households make. In 1998, 45 percent of households had at least some assets in a tax-deferred account, and more than ten million households had at least $25,000 in both a taxable and a tax-deferred account. Many households hold equities in their tax-deferred accounts but not in their taxable accounts, while also holding taxable bonds in their taxable accounts. Most of these households could reduce their taxes by relocating heavily-taxed fixed income assets to their tax-deferred account. Asset allocation inside and outside tax-deferred accounts is quite similar, with about seventy percent of assets in each location invested in equity securities. For nearly three quarters of the households that hold apparently tax-inefficient portfolios, a shift of less than$10,000 in financial assets can move their portfolio to a tax-efficient allocation. Asset location decisions within IRAs appear to be sensitive to marginal tax rates; we do not find evidence for such sensitivity in other tax-deferred accounts.

Does Shareholder Proxy Access Improve Firm Value? Evidence from the Business Roundtable Challenge

We use the Business Roundtable’s challenge to the SEC’s 2010 proxy access rule as a natural experiment to measure the value of shareholder proxy access. We find that firms that would have been most vulnerable to proxy access, as measured by institutional ownership and activist institutional ownership in particular, lost value on October 4, 2010, when the SEC unexpectedly announced that it would delay implementation of the Rule in response to the Business Roundtable challenge. We also examine intra-day returns and find that the value loss occurred just after the SEC’s announcement on October 4. We find similar results on July 22, 2011, when the D.C. Circuit ruled in favor of the Business Roundtable. These findings are consistent with the view that financial markets placed a positive value on shareholder access, as implemented in the SEC’s 2010 Rule.

Earnings Manipulation and Managerial Investment Decisions: Evidence from Sponsored Pension Plans

Managers appear to manipulate firm earnings when they characterize pension assets to capital markets and alter investment decisions to justify, and capitalize on, these manipulations. We construct a measure of the sensitivity of reported earnings to the assumed long-term rate of return on pension assets. Managers are more aggressive with assumed long-term rates of return when their assumptions have a greater impact on reported earnings. Managers also increase assumed rates of return as they prepare to acquire other firms and as they exercise stock options, further confirming the opportunistic nature of these increases. Decisions about assumed rates of return, in turn, influence asset allocation within pension plans. Instrumental variables results suggest that a 25 basis point increase in the assumed rate of return is associated with a 5% increase in equity allocation. Taken together, these results suggest that earnings manipulation arising from managerial motivations influences significant managerial investment decisions.

Metacognition and its effect on learning high school calculus

The following paper discusses the effect of metacognitive training sessions on students’ calculus retention. Students in two high school classes participated. The students in both classes were then given lessons on a chapter without metacognitive training and lessons on a subsequent chapter with training in a set of metacognitive skills. After the latter chapter students scored higher on a post-test and expressed desire to incorporate the skills they learned into their other classes

An archaeological perspective on architectural evolution at Fort Harrison

Fort Harrison is a historic home located in Rockingham County, Virginia. Occupation of the site began in 1749, when Daniel Harrison constructed the original limestone dwelling, and today it is protected and interpreted by Fort Harrison, Inc. The Department of Anthropology at James Madison University has performed exploratory archaeological fieldwork to better document change in the way the site has been utilized. This project has evaluated the hypothesis that the main (front) entrance to the house was relocated from the northerly-facing side to the southerly-facing side, in conjunction with the decision to enlarge the structure. Archaeological findings and architectural evidence are supportive of the original hypothesis and the ultimate goal is to answer why the house was reoriented. Artifact distributions across the site show how activity areas shifted over time. Earlier activity areas are south of the dwelling and more recent activity areas are located north of the dwelling. Also, a major, secondary structure is documented at the current front side of the Harrison dwelling. There may be multiple reasons for the change in orientation. One reason that is favorable is that as road systems were developing and the overall cultural landscape was evolving, the front entrance was moved to the side of the structure that faced the road and downtown Dayton

Deflection During Prestressing of an Unbonded Prestressed Concrete Beam

In recent years great strides have been made towards improving the quality and strength of both concrete and steel. Reliable concrete with a compressive strength of 5000 to 12,000 psi and suitable steel with a tensile strength of over 200,000 psi can be obtained. If high strength concrete and high strength steel can be used together satisfactorily a substantial reduction in materials will result. This is partly due to the fact that the materials are stronger and partly due to the fact that dead load is reduced. In designing a plain reinforced concrete beam it is assumed that about one-third of the concrete (the part of compression ) is effective in resisting moment. The other two-thirds of the concrete serve mainly to encase the reinforcing steel in the tension portion of the beam. From the above facts it appears that much of the added expense of producing stronger concrete would be wasted. (See more in text.