NCAA – An Overview of Socioeconomic Status’s Impact on College Athletes, and the Regulations and Impact That Can Revolutionize the Amateurism World

This article will begin with a review of the rules and regulations concerning the likeness of athletes, and amateurism status used by the NCAA. It will also shed light on several key cases including: Oliver v. NCAA, Keller v. NCAA, and O’Bannon v. NCAA. After that, a discussion of how one’s socioeconomic status further illustrates that the ongoing problem with the current NCAA amateurism system. Finally, this paper will present suggestions for solving the current issues with the NCAA amateurism system, and provide different alternatives that the NCAA could take to revolutionize the world of amateurism, while remaining profitable

Testing Asymmetric-Information Asset Pricing Models

We test models of asset pricing under asymmetric information using plausibly exogenous variation in the supply of information caused by the closure or restructuring of brokerage firms’ research operations. Consistent with predictions derived from a Grossman and Stiglitz-type model, share prices and uninformed investors’ demands fall as information asymmetry increases. Cross-sectional tests support the comparative statics. Prices and uninformed demand experience larger declines, the more investors are uninformed, the larger and more variable is turnover, the more uncertain is the asset’s payoff, and the noisier is the better-informed investors’ signal. We show that prices fall because expected returns become more sensitive to a liquidity-risk factor

The Value of Research

We estimate the value added by sell-side equity research analysts and explore the links between analyst research, informational efficiency, and asset prices. We identify the value of research from exogenous changes in analyst coverage. On announcement that a stock has lost all coverage, share prices fall by around 110 basis points or $8.4 million on average. The share price reaction is attenuated the more analysts continue to cover the stock, suggesting that there are diminishing returns to coverage at the margin. The adverse effect of coverage terminations is proportional to the analyst’s reputation and experience and to the size of the broker’s retail sales force. Exogenous reductions in coverage are followed by: less efficient pricing and lower liquidity; greater earnings surprises and more volatile trading around subsequent earnings announcements; increases in required returns; and reduced return volatility. Simulations suggest investors can trade profitably on the volatility changes. Finally, retail investors sell and large institutional investors buy around coverage terminations, suggesting that different investor clienteles have different demands for analyst research

Verification Testing: Meet User Needs Figure of Merit

Verification is the process through which Modeling and Simulation(M&S) software goes to ensure that it has been rigorously tested and debugged for its intended use. Validation confirms that said software accurately models and represents the real world system. Credibility gives an assessment of the development and testing effort that the software has gone through as well as how accurate and reliable test results are. Together, these three components form Verification, Validation, and Credibility(VV&C), the process by which all NASA modeling software is to be tested to ensure that it is ready for implementation. NASA created this process following the CAIB (Columbia Accident Investigation Board) report seeking to understand the reasons the Columbia space shuttle failed during reentry. The reports conclusion was that the accident was fully avoidable, however, among other issues, the necessary data to make an informed decision was not there and the result was complete loss of the shuttle and crew. In an effort to mitigate this problem, NASA put out their Standard for Models and Simulations, currently in version NASA-STD-7009A, in which they detailed their recommendations, requirements and rationale for the different components of VV&C. They did this with the intention that it would allow for people receiving MS software to clearly understand and have data from the past development effort. This in turn would allow the people who had not worked with the MS software before to move forward with greater confidence and efficiency in their work. This particular project looks to perform Verification on several MATLAB (Registered Trademark)(The MathWorks, Inc.) scripts that will be later implemented in a website interface. It seeks to take note and define the limits of operation, the units and significance, and the expected datatype and format of the inputs and outputs of each of the scripts. This is intended to prevent the code from attempting to make incorrect or impossible calculations. Additionally, this project will look at the coding generally and note inconsistencies, redundancies, and other aspects that may become problematic or slow down the codes run time. Certain scripts lacking in documentation also will be commented and cataloged

Gender Equality and Women Empowerment in Nigeria: The Desirability and Inevitability of a Pragmatic Approach

Promoting gender equality has become a globally recognized and an acceptable reality. Gender issues have also been identified as critical to the achievement of national development goals. In fact, the attainment of gender equality is not only seen as an end in itself it is equally a catalyst to, and a sine-qua-non for the achievement of sustainable development. This paper which attempted an assessment of the level of attainment of gender parity and women empowerment using three critical indicators namely: enrolment in education at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels, employment and political decision-making, utilized valuable secondary sources of data. The paper which argues that, at the heart of the problematic of gender disparity in Nigeria, is the action dilemma by the Nigerian government which has compounded the problem of expanding the capacity level that is required to enhance the opportunity of accommodating the varying needs of both male and female gender also contends that the attainment of gender equality in Nigeria which is already time-barred, will be a mirage due to multi-dimensional constraining factors. This paper which subsequently hinged the actualization of gender equality and women empowerment on tile desirability and inevitability of a pragmatic approach, concluded with some useful remarks. Keywords: Gender equality, women empowerment, Nigeria, pragmatic approach.

Sustainable Development in Nigeria: The Policy Gap and Action Dilemma

Central to sustainable development, is efficient and effective natural resource management which encapsulates economic, social and environmental components and requires societies to pursue growth paths that generate optimal flow of income built on the twin principles of justice and equity. In Nigeria, sustainable development requires an integrated and inter-disciplinary policy planning and management which transcend the parochial legal, political, environmental, economic and ethical boundaries. This policy approach has become a desideratum, given the growing global concern that human activities increasingly threaten the health of natural systems that is at the heart of sustainable development. This study  which utilized valuable secondary sources of data examines the sustainable development question in Nigeria and contends that policy gaps and disconnect and the ensuing action dilemma have the potency of constraining the actualization of sustainable development efforts with the possibility of environmental crisis. The study therefore recommended among others an inter-disciplinary policy approach, action programme and governmental/private sector collaboration. Keywords: Sustainable Development, Policy Gap and Action Dilemma