An Empirical Analysis of Risk-Return Tradeoffs in the Futures Market

J . Austin Murphy is an Assistant Professor of Finance at Oakland University, Rochester. Michigan

A Large-Scale Cross-Sectional Test of the Risk-Return Implications of the Consumption Risk Model

J. Austin Murphy is an Assistant Professor of Finance in the Department of Accounting and Finance, School of Business Administration at Oakland University, Rochester, MI He is currently on leave as a Fulbright Scholar at the Freie Universitaet Berlin

An Empirical Analysis of Residential Mortgage Refinancing Decision-Making.

This research empirically investigates the relative optimality of several different methods of making refinancing decisions on residential mortgages. The results indicate that a simple rule of refinancing whenever the mortgage rate has dropped 1% was approximately as effective as application of an option pricing model in minimizing the cost of financing over the 1980–2007 interva

Engineering Graduates: Preparation and Progression: Institutes of Technology Honours Bachelor Degree Engineering Graduate Study, June, 2011

The national strategy for higher level education underlines the importance of innovation and enterprise; and well qualified engineers are central to furthering that strategy. This honours bachelor degree engineering graduate study represents an intense dialogue between engineering faculties across the Institutes of Technology to gain insight into the quality of our engineering education. The study provides a fresh insight into how NFQ Level 81honours bachelor degree engineering graduates from the Institutes are perceived by employers, how well the graduates themselves feel they are prepared to perform as engineers, and how both employers and graduates judge the strengths and weaknesses of the engineering programmes in the light of their experience

Child Sexual Abuse and the Impact of Rurality on Foster Care Outcomes: An Exploratory Analysis

Given the cost of long-term foster care placement in both human and economic terms, few studies have specifically explored if any factors help to predict why this vulnerable population spends significantly more time in foster care. The overarching goal of this exploratory study was to use binary logistic regression to investigate whether any child demographic or environmental characteristics predicted the discharge of a child placed in Kentucky\u27s foster care system for child sexual abuse. Results indicated that children in the most rural areas of the state were over 10 times more likely to be discharged from foster care during the federal fiscal year than those residing in the most urban areas. Given this stark reality, a focus must be allocated in understanding this phenomenon. Future research must examine whether the results speak to the necessity of systematic improvement in urban areas or if they are illustrating a unique strength found in rural areas

The only known egg of the Night Parrot? A molecular and morphometric assessment of an alleged egg from the Tanami Desert

The Night Parrot Pezoporus occidentalis is a much sought-after, recently ‘rediscovered’, endangered nocturnal parrot, endemic to arid Central Australia. Very little is known of its ecology, and its eggs have never been formally described. The literature on the eggs of the Night Parrot is collated here, and the provenance of an alleged Night Parrot egg found in the Tanami Desert, Northern Territory, in 1983 was assessed using DNA analysis and physical characteristics. Anecdotal reports from the late 19th–early 20th Century indicate that the Night Parrot lays a clutch of two to six roundish, white eggs. We suggest that its eggs are probably similar to and slightly larger than those of its congener, the Ground Parrot P. wallicus. The alleged Night Parrot egg was definitively identified by mitochondrial DNA analysis to be from the Brown Quail Synoicus ypsilophorus. This represents the first evidence of breeding by this species in the Tanami Desert, and lays to rest a long-standing misconception regarding the parrot

Optimal Resource Allocation in the Brain and the Capital Asset Pricing Model

Using recent findings from brain sciences, we relax the implicit CAPM assumption of sufficient brain resources, and model human brain as solving two optimization problems instead of one, which are: 1) Optimal resource allocation in the brain. 2) Mean-variance optimization. A security market line with varying slopes (flat, upwards, and downwards) arises depending on the resource allocation decisions in the brain. Size, value, and momentum effects also emerge in this enriched framework. This suggests that the classical CAPM is not misspecified. Rather, what appears as misspecification may be the result of ignoring the optimal resource allocation problem in the brain