Inside Information and Public News: R-Squared and Beyond

This paper finds that the majority of stock price movements remain unexplained after controlling for both public and private information. This suggests that economists’ inability to explain asset price movements is the result of either noise or naive asset pricing models.asset pricing; news; private information

Sources of Funds and Quality Effects in Higher Education

Economists have suggested that the quality of higher education is not independent of the sources of funds used to fund that education. This paper examines the relationship between student measures of teaching quality and institutional revenue sources. The results indicate that a greater reliance on private subsides is associated with higher measures of teacher quality. A greater reliance on public subsidies, however, leads to lower teacher quality ratings. The importance of these results for shaping public policy decisions is also discussed.higher education; educational finance

Dye laser remote sensing of marine plankton

Dye laser, emitting four wavelengths sequentially in time, has been incorporated into helicopter-borne lidar flight package, for performing studies of laser-induced fluorescence of chlorophyll A in algae. Data obtained by multicolor lidar technique can provide water-resource management with rapid-access wide-area coverage of the impact of various environmental factors for any body of water

The Allocation of Public School Expenditures

While the Serrano v Priest decisions and Proposition 13 effectively rendered California school district budgets exogenous, intra-district resource allocation remains largely at the discretion of school district administrations. As a result, Serrano v Priest and Proposition 13 alleviate concerns about the potentially endogenous relationship between student body composition and inter-district resource disparity and allow us to focus on consistently estimating the effect of classroom versus non-classroom spending. We find that teaching expenditures have a positive effect on student performance while nonteaching expenditures have a negative effect. Either the reallocation of $100 from administrative to classroom spending, with no change in overall expenditures, or an$100 increase aimed directly at the classroom moves the average California high school approximately 5 percentage points higher in the state test score rankings. These results are similar across grade levels (elementary, middle and high schools) and subject areas (mathematics, reading, language, spelling, social studies, and science). Our results suggest that both current and future educational expenditures should be targeted towards the classroom.school spending; test scores

Laboratory tank studies of a single species of phytoplankton using a remote sensing fluorosensor

Phytoplankton were grown in the laboratory for the purpose of testing a remote fluorosensor. The fluorosensor uses a unique four-wavelength dye laser system to excite phytoplankton bearing chlorophyll and to measure the chlorophyll fluorescence generated by this excitation. Six different species were tested, one at a time, and each was grown two to four times. Fluorescence measured by the fluorosensor provides good quantitative measurement of chlorophyll concentrations for all species tested while the cultures were in log phase growth. Fluorescene cross section ratios obtained in the single species tank tests support the hypothesis that the shape of the fluorescence cross section curve remains constant with the species (differences in fluorescence cross section ratios are a basis for determining composition of phytoplankton according to color group when a multiwavelength source of excitation is used. Linear relationships exist between extracted chlorophyll concentration and fluorescence measured by the remote fluorosensor during the log phase growth of phytoplankton cultures tested

Visible absorbance spectra: A basis for in situ and passive remote sensing of phytoplankton concentration and community composition

The concentration and composition of phytoplankton populations are measured by an optical method which can be used either in situ or remotely. This method is based upon the in vivo light absorption characteristics of phytoplankton. To provide a data base for testing assumptions relative to the proposed method, visible absorbance spectra of pure cultures of 20 marine phytoplankton were obtained under laboratory conditions. Descriptive and analytical statistics were computed for the absorbance spectra and were used to make comparisons between members of major taxonomic groups and between groups. Spectral variation between the members of the major taxonomic groups was observed to be considerably less than the spectral variation between these groups. In several cases the differences between the mean absorbance spectra of major taxonomic groups are significant enough to be detected with passive remote sensing techniques

German Debt Traded in London During World War II: A British Perspective on Hitler

Two series of German bonds, issued in 1924 and 1930, traded on the London Stock Exchange throughout Hitler’s 1933-1945 regime in Germany. We isolate both structural breaks and turning points in these bond series. Major turning points follow Hitler’s reintroduction of conscription in 1935, the outbreak of war in 1939 and the D-Day invasion of June 1944. The German bonds’ sustained downtrend after 1935 suggests that bondholders recognized the negative implications of Hitler’s program. Bond prices recover during the war, however, and appear to anticipate the overthrow of Hitler and the postwar settlement of foreign bondholders’ claims.bonds, Germany, Hitler

Exit, Voice, and the Role of Corporate Directors: Evidence from Acquisition Performance

This study examines the characteristics of corporate boards for 82 companies that attempted 106 acquisitions during the 1980s. We find that poor performance is more likely to occur in firms that have recently experienced higher turnover of outside and lower turnover of inside directors. Companies with smaller boards, more reputable members, and larger equity holdings also outperform their counterparts. Our results do not suggest that more outside directors lead to improved performance but that outsiders often resign from the board instead of challenging managerial shirking. We conclude that choosing directors for whom board exit is costly will better reduce agency costs.

Turning Points in the U.S. Civil War: A British Perspective

This paper examines the Confederate cotton bonds floated in Europe in March 1863 and traded on the London market. Over our March 27, 1863 to June 17, 1865 sample we isolate two, non-reversed, "turning points" that follow news of Confederate defeat at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July 1863 and the fall of Atlanta in September 1864. Our analysis suggests that the turning points important to Southern interests differ from those identified for the Northern side by Willard, Guinnane and Rosen (1996). It seems that war news did not always have symmetric effects on North and South.

Fraud and Financial Markets: The 1997 Collapse of the Junior Mining Stocks

The Vancouver Composite Index fell by over 25% in less than six weeks during spring 1997 as the junior mining sector collapsed. We argue that this market collapse was triggered by the failure of Bre-X Minerals when that company’s Indonesian claims, previously believed to contain the world’s largest gold deposit, were shown to be pure fraud. Our event study, based on market returns for the Vancouver Composite Index and for a portfolio of 59 gold stocks, shows the effects of the Bre-X scandal to be both sizeable and significant. There is also some evidence that smaller exploration companies were hardest hit.Bre-X; event study; fraud; gold; mining