In memoriam: Professor Kathryn R. Heidt

What is most notable about the life and the career of Professor Kathryn R. Heidt is not that it was tragically cut short by her death on May 24, 2005, but that she was able to achieve so much, both personally and professionally, in the too-brief time allotted to her. After receiving her bachelor’s degree from Penn State and her J.D. from Cleveland State College of Law, Professor Heidt clerked for two years for the Honorable John T. Patton of the Ohio Court of Appeals before becoming an associate with the Philadelphia law firm Duane Morris & Heckscher. Opting for a change in her path in the law, she obtained an LL.M. from Yale Law School and began her distinguished academic career. Before joining the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh as a Professor of Law in 1995, Professor Heidt had served on the law faculty at Wayne State University Law School, and had been a visiting faculty member of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, the University of North Carolina School of Law, New York Law School, and the Law Faculty of the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands.\u

The artesian water of the Ruskin area of Hillsborough County, Florida: interim report

The purpose of the investigation is to make a detailed study of the geology and ground water in the Ruskin area, especially as related to the problem of salt-water encroachment. The major objectives of the program includes: (1) An inventory of wells to determine their number and distribution, their depths and diameters, and other pertinent information. (2) A study of artesian pressures. (3) Analyses of water from selected wells to determine the location and extent of any areas in which the artesian water is salty. (4) A study of the surface and subsurface geology as related to the occurrence and movement of ground water. (5) An estimate of the quantity of ground water withdrawn. (PDF contains 24 pages.

Managed Features and Hedge Funds:

In this paper we study the possible role of managed futures in portfolios of stocks, bonds and hedge funds. We find that allocating to managed futures allow investors to achieve a very substantial degree of overall risk reduction at limited costs. Apart from their lower expected return, managed futures appear to be more effective diversifiers than hedge funds. Adding managed futures to a portfolio of stocks and bonds will reduce that portfolio’s standard deviation more and quicker than hedge funds will, and without the undesirable side-effects on skewness and kurtosis. Overall portfolio standard deviation can be reduced further by combining both hedge funds and managed futures with stocks and bonds. As long as at least 45-50% of the alternatives allocation is allocated to managed futures, this again will not have any negative side-effects on skewness and kurtosis.

Foundations of Portfolio Theory

Prize Lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel, December 7, 1990.Portfolio Theory;

EDUCATIONAL FINANCE IN MINNESOTA: AN EXAMINATION OF THE FOUNDATION AID PROGRAM

Public Economics,

AN ANNOTATIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF RESEARCH ON THE ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON AGRICULTURE

Anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse" gases have the potential to substantially warm climates worldwide. While the timing and magnitude of global warming is uncertain, scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predict that average global temperature may increase by 1.5- 4.5³C (2.7-8.1³F) over the next 100 years. Changes in precipitation will likely accompany any changes in temperature. However, the magnitude, and even direction of these changes is difficult to predict with much confidence on a regional basis. The agricultural sector may be profoundly affected by future changes in temperature, precipitation, solar radiation, and carbon dioxide concentrations. Over the past decade, there has been a growing body of research examining the potential impacts of climate change on agriculture. The purpose of this paper is to report and summarize recent research on the potential economic impacts of global climate change on agriculture. To that end, an annotative bibliography of articles is presented in this paper.Environmental Economics and Policy,

In Search of the Optimal Fund of Hedge Funds

In this paper we investigate whether it is possible for a fund of hedge funds to not only offer investors access to a diversified basket of hedge funds but to provide skewness protection at the same time. We study two different strategies. The first is for a fund to buy stock index puts and leverage itself, in line with the skewness reduction strategy proposed earlier in Kat (2002). In general, the latter strategy is too dependent on the actual asset allocation strategy followed by investors to allow a fund to be constructed that is optimal for all investors at the same time. However, for investors that invest more or less equal amounts in stocks and bonds and who keep their hedge fund allocation below 30% such a fund can indeed be structured. The second strategy is for a fund to buy put options on itself. We show that this does allow a fund to offer skewness protection to different types of investors at the same time, but compared to the optimal strategy the protection will be somewhat less accurate. Under both strategies the fund of funds is likely to incur a significant loss in expected return. As long as the hedge fund allocation stays below 30%, however, the loss of expected return on investors’ overall portfolios will remain limited.