The Valuation of Cash Flow Forecasts: An Empirical Analysis

This paper compares the market value of highly leveraged transactions (HLTs) to the discounted value of their corresponding cash flow forecasts. These forecasts are provided by management to investors and shareholders in 51 HLTs completed between 1983 and 1989. Our estimates of discounted cash flows are within 10%, on average, of the market values of the completed transactions. Our estimates perform at least as well as valuation methods using comparable companies and transactions. We also invert our analysis and estimate the risk premium implied by transaction values and forecast cash flows, and the relation of the implied risk premium to firm-level betas, industry-level betas, firm size, and firm book-to-market ratios.

Lightweight solar concentrator structures, phase 2

This report summarizes the results of the program conducted by Ultramet under SBIR Phase 2 Contract NAS3-25418. The objective of this program was to develop lightweight materials and processes for advanced high accuracy Space Solar Concentrators using rigidized foam for the substrate structure with an integral optical surface

Teaching adolescents about war

8th grade

Economic Inequality and the Role of Law

In this ambitious book, famed commentator and analyst Kevin Phillips attempts nothing less than a political history of American economic life with a specific focus on the wealthy. Succeeding far more often than not, Phillips interweaves the development of American technology with the rise and fall of economic fortunes, crafting a compelling tale with significant implications for the formulation of public policy and the laws that implement such policy. Festooned with more than seventy charts and graphs, the book explains how wealth has been accumulated throughout the entire history of the United States. It is full of intriguing insights and demands serious consideration of its message and warnings. For example, one of the book\u27s persistent themes is that concentration of economic power inevitably corrupts the political process - a point dramatized in recent debates about campaign finance, including the valiant efforts of Senator John McCain and former Senator Bill Bradley in the most recent presidential-election campaign. But Phillips goes further to show how the political process, thus corrupted, spews forth public policies that protect its patrons, often at the expense of the masses whose votes theoretically sustain that process. Even more important, Phillips shows how the economic concentration that corrupts the political process came about - namely, through exploiting public policies for private gain. As he states with unflinching clarity: Laissez-faire is a pretense. Government power and preferment have been used by the rich, not shunned (p. xiv)

Valuing Options in California Water Markets: A Laboratory Investigation

Risk and reliability dominate water supply discussions in the arid western United States. In the past, water managers built additional storage to mitigate supply risk. The optimal, least expensive storage sites have now been taken, and there are strong, environmental objections to new facilities. Reliability of existing supplies is further diminished due to concerns about endangered species and global climate change. Thus water agencies increasingly turn to contractual mechanisms such as dry-year options to manage supply risk in advance of need. However, although a few water agencies across the West have implemented dry-year options, sufficient data for conventional econometric analysis do not yet exist. We thus utilize experimental economics to analyze the effect of annual dry-year options on water markets. How do market structure (competitive versus market power) and option contract availability affect water price and allocation within a market? Experiment participants trade stochastic realizations of water in a non-uniform double auction parameterized to resemble the California water market. We find that realized gains from trade are on average higher when options can be traded, by 11% in competitive markets and by 21% in dominant buyer markets. Findings in this analysis may assist policymakers in preparing for the next multi-year drought in California.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

McDade Amendment: Moving Towards a Meaningful Limitation on Wrongful Prosecutorial Contact with Represented Parties

In Part I, this article will examine the anti-contact rule, its history, goals, and the path it has taken in the context of prosecutorial contact with represented parties. Part II will discuss the McDade Amendment, its genesis and purpose. Part III will discuss the struggle undertaken by the Department of Justice [hereinafter DOJ ] as it seeks to exempt its lawyers from the anti-contact rule. Finally, Part IV looks at arguments for and against prosecutorial exemption from the anti-contact rule