How Much Is Purchasing Power Parity Worth?

Updating Bilson \u27s (1984) investment strategy using an out-of-sample forecast procedure, we find much smaller profits from a trading strategy based on purchasing power parity. Though the total profit is significant at a 5 percent level, it is substantially lower than what Bilson found. Our results suggest Bilson\u27s excess profits are due to the sample of data used and the in-sample nature of the tests. Hence, this paper demonstrates that the simple investment strategy leads to the same conclusion that econometric testing does; namely, that purchasing power parity is only marginally useful in forecasting exchange rates

Investigating students seriousness during selected conceptual inventory surveys

Conceptual inventory surveys are routinely used in education research to identify student learning needs and assess instructional practices. Students might not fully engage with these instruments because of the low stakes attached to them. This paper explores tests that can be used to estimate the percentage of students in a population who might not have taken such surveys seriously. These three seriousness tests are the pattern recognition test, the easy questions test, and the uncommon answers test. These three tests are applied to sets of students who were assessed either by the Force Concept Inventory, the Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism, or the Brief Electricity and Magnetism Assessment. The results of our investigation are compared to computer simulated populations of random answers.Comment: 8 pages; submitted to Phys Rev PE

Mortality of Vertebrates and Invertebrates on an Athens County, Ohio, Highway

Author Institution: Department of Zoological and Biomedical Sciences, Ohio UniversityAlthough previous road-kill surveys have tallied the number and kinds of vertebrates that were victims of vehicular traffic (mostly birds and mammals), none has recorded invertebrate mortality. A 14-month survey on foot of each side of a 1.6 km (1 mi) stretch of dual lane highway provided 188 vertebrate and 1,162 invertebrate victims. Finding rare and unusual species of invertebrates suggests that this technique be used as a supplementary faunal survey

A process for the separation of barite and sphalerite

The present price of zinc has stimulated a greater interest in Sphalerite Barite separations than has been manifested for some time. A great many processes have been worked on and have failed for many reasons, the main one being that the physical characteristics of the ore varied so much. The process that is successful must be independent of these variations. The following process is one that depends on a chemical phenomenon and is adapted to any sphalerite-barite separation. This series of experiments was performed by the authors at the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy, Rolla, Mo. and was embodied in a thesis --page 1

An Examination of Value Line’s Long-term Projection

Unlike previous papers, which have focused on the timeliness ranks, we examine Value Line’s 3–5 year projections for stock returns, earnings, sales and related measures. We find that Value Line’s stock return and earnings forecasts exhibit large positive bias, although their sales predictions do not. For stock returns, Value Line’s projections lack predictive power; for other variables predictive power may exist to some degree. Our findings suggest the spectacular past performance of the timeliness indicator reflects either close alignment with other known anomalies or data mining, and that investors and researchers should use Value Line’s long-term projections with caution

Kuroguro Presence: A Conceptual Design Collaboration

This case study explored how a team of three fashion design instructors and practitioners developed a collaborative conceptual design, aiming to improve their teaching methods and upskill their craft via learnings from their own social interactive practice

Monte Carlo and Bootstrapping Carry Trade Simulations in Excel

In a currency carry trade, an investor borrows money in a low interest rate currency and invests in a high interest rate currency. The trade is profitable if the future exchange rate does not adjust to the interest rate differential. After downloading exchange rate data, a Monte Carlo simulation of a carry trade is performed in Excel based on a normal distribution and the data’s mean and standard deviation. A bootstrapping carry trade simulation exercise is also generated by randomly selecting observations from the historical data. In contrast to the Monte Carlo simulation, the bootstrapping exercise preserves the skewness within the historical data. A carry trade simulation can generate student interest and strengthen student understanding of Excel modeling, Investments, International Finance, and Statistics. The assignment can also be used to illustrate uncovered interest rate parity and forward rate bias

The Relationship Between the Value Effect and Industry Affiliation

We examine industry affiliation and the relationship between stock returns and book‐to‐market equity (the value effect). The robustness of the value effect is supported as a significant value premium is shown to exist in 15 of 21 industries. Both industry and firm‐level value effects are identified; however, the firm‐level effect is the more prominent of the two. Further, the value effect is shown to be strongest in value industries and weakest in growth industries. Finally, we show evidence consistent with the claim that the value premium is due to investors requiring higher returns from firms in distressed conditions