Mutual Fund Expense Disclosures: A Behavioral Perspective

Mutual funds have enjoyed phenomenal growth with their numbers exceeding the number of public companies and their assets aggregating in excess of $9 trillion. Increasingly they are the investment instrument of choice by the proverbial widows, widowers and orphans, and a few school teachers are included as well. But how are best can that choice be one that is not only informed but informed in a way more likely to elicit a wise decision? This paper examines from a behavioral perspective how regulation can best disclose information related to two key factors for investors to compare competing mutual funds: fund returns and fund expenses. Our analysis reflects that the current disclosure process is deficient because it fails to reflect the insights of research on judgment and decision making, and particularly the need to distinguish between the availability of information and its processability by its user. The message of our article is straightforward: if regulators adhered to the insights provided by our paper, not only investors, but also the fund\u27s directors, would be greatly empowered so that better returns and lower costs could be expected

Bonding, Structure and the Stability of Political Parties: Party Government in the House

The public policy benefits that parties-deliver are allocated by democratic procedures that devolve ultimately to majority rule. Majority-rule decision making, however, does not lead to consistent policy choices; it is unstable. In this paper, we argue that institutions - and thereby policy coalitions -- can be stabilized by extra-legislative organization. The rules of the Democratic Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives dictate that a requirement for continued membership is support on the floor of Caucus decisions for a variety of key structural matters. Because membership in the majority party’s caucus is valuable, it constitutes a bond, the posting of which stabilizes the structure of the House, and hence the policy decisions made in the House. We examine the rules of the House Democratic Caucus and find that they do in fact contain the essential elements of an effective, extralegislative bonding mechanism

Standard Transistor Array (STAR). Volume 1, addendum 1: CAPSTAR user's guide

The cell placement techniques developed for use with the standard transistor array were incorporated in the cell arrangement program for STAR (CAPSTAR). Instructions for use of this program are given

A conceptual design study for the secondary mirror drive of the shuttle infrared telescope facility (SIRTF)

Various conceptual designs for the secondary mirror actuator system to be used in the Shuttle Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) were evaluated. In addition, a set of design concepts was developed to assist in the solution of problems crucial for optimum performance of the secondary mirror actuator system. A specific conceptual approach was presented along with a plan for developing that approach and identifying issues of critical importance in the developmental effort

Standard Transistor Array (STAR). Volume 1: Placement technique

A large scale integration (LSI) technology, the standard transistor array uses a prefabricated understructure of transistors and a comprehensive library of digital logic cells to allow efficient fabrication of semicustom digital LSI circuits. The cell placement technique for this technology involves formation of a one dimensional cell layout and "folding" of the one dimensional placement onto the chip. It was found that, by use of various folding methods, high quality chip layouts can be achieved. Methods developed to measure of the "goodness" of the generated placements include efficient means for estimating channel usage requirements and for via counting. The placement and rating techniques were incorporated into a placement program (CAPSTAR). By means of repetitive use of the folding methods and simple placement improvement strategies, this program provides near optimum placements in a reasonable amount of time. The program was tested on several typical LSI circuits to provide performance comparisons both with respect to input parameters and with respect to the performance of other placement techniques. The results of this testing indicate that near optimum placements can be achieved by use of the procedures incurring severe time penalties

Cosmic X-ray physics

The soft X-ray sky survey data are combined with the results from the UXT sounding rocket payload. Very strong constraints can then be placed on models of the origin of the soft diffuse background. Additional observational constraints force more complicated and realistic models. Significant progress was made in the extraction of more detailed spectral information from the UXT data set. Work was begun on a second generation proportional counter response model. The first flight of the sounding rocket will have a collimator to study the diffuse background

Cosmic X-ray physics

The analysis of the beryllium-filtered data from Flight 17.020 was completed. The data base provided by the Wisconsin diffuse X-ray sky survey is being analyzed by correlating the B and C band emission with individual velocity components of neutral hydrogen. Work on a solid state detector to be used in high resolution spectroscopy of diffuse or extend X-ray sources is continuing. A series of 21 cm observations was completed. A paper on the effects of process parameter variation on the reflectivity of sputter-deposited tungsten-carvon multilayers was published

Agenda Control in the Bundestag, 1980-2002

We find strong evidence of monopoly legislative agenda control by government parties in the Bundestag. First, the government parties have near-zero roll rates, while the opposition parties are often rolled over half the time. Second, only opposition parties’ (and not government parties’) roll rates increase with the distances of each party from the floor median. Third, almost all policy moves are towards the government coalition (the only exceptions occur during periods of divided government). Fourth, roll rates for government parties sky- rocket when they fall into the opposition and roll rates for opposition parties plummet when they enter government, while policy movements go from being nearly 100 per cent rightward when there is a rightist government to 100 per cent leftward under a leftist government