Founders, Feminists, and a Fascist -- Some Notable Women in the Missouri Section of the MAA

In the history of the Missouri Section of the MAA, some of the more interesting people who influenced the growth and development of the section through the years were and are women. In this chapter, we discuss the contributions of a few (certainly not all) of these women to the Missouri Section and mathematics as a whole, including Emily Kathryn Wyant (founder of KME), Margaret F. Willerding (who dealt with sexism in the 1940s), Maria Castellani (an official in Mussolini’s Italy before coming to America), and T. Christine Stevens (co-founder of Project NExT). Without them, and others like them, both mathematics and the Missouri Section of the MAA would be poorer

Initial Public Offerings and the Firm Location

The firm geographic location matters in IPOs because investors have a strong preference for newly issued local stocks and provide abnormal demand in local offerings. Using equity holdings data for more than 53,000 households, we show the probability to participate to the stock market and the proportion of the equity wealth is abnormally increasing with the volume of the IPOs inside the investor region. Upon nearly the universe of the 167,515 going public and private domestic manufacturing firms, we provide consistent evidence that the isolated private firms have higher probability to go public, larger IPO underpricing cross-sectional average and volatility, and less pronounced long-run under-performance. Similar but opposite evidence holds for the local concentration of the investor wealth. These effects are economically relevant and robust to local delistings, IPO market timing, agglomeration economies, firm location endogeneity, self-selection bias, and information asymmetries, among others. Findings suggest IPO waves have a strong geographic component, highlight that underwriters significantly under-estimate the local demand component thus leaving unexpected money on the table, and support state-contingent but constant investor propensity for risk

Native American Dioramas in Transition

A panel discussion regarding the exhibit "Native American Dioramas in Transition" (September 12, 2009 - January 4, 2010) and the decision to remove 14 dioramas from public display exploring some of the concerns about the dioramas, discussing new ways of learning about Native cultures, and providing an opportunity for comment to Museum members, donors, and invited guests. The presenters were Amy Harris (Introduction: Director, Exhibit Museum of Natural History), Robert E. Megginson (Introduction: Lakota, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Mathematics), Raymond Silverman (Moderator: Director, Museum Studies Program), Frank Ettawageshik (Panelist: Artist, Past Tribal Chairman, Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians), John N. Low (Panelist: Visiting Asst. Prof., American Indian Studies, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), and Lisa C. Young (Panelist: Research Scientist and Lecturer, Museum and Dept. of Anthropology). Held at the Exhibit Museum of Natural History, University of Michigan.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/64498/1/native_american_dioramas.mp

The effects of venture capital syndicate diversity on earnings management and performance of IPOs in the US and UK: An institutional perspective

This study examines the extent to which principal-principal agency conflicts within venture capital (VC) syndicates lead to additional principal-agent conflicts in IPO firms in two institutional contexts. Using a matched sample of 274 VC-backed IPOs in the US and the UK, it shows that the diversity of a VC syndicate increases pre-IPO discretionary current accruals, used as a proxy for earnings management, but the impact of such diversity is higher in the US. There is also evidence of higher underpricing and lower aftermarket performance in firms with higher earnings management and VC diversity, and these negative performance effects are also higher in the US. Our findings indicate that local and informal institutions have a significant effect on multiple agency conflicts in IPO firms and performance outcomes