Time-Zone Arbitrage in Vanguard International Index Funds
By Katelyn Rae Donnelly Historically, mutual funds have often calculated their asset values for international mutual funds using stale prices, because some fund components register their last trades before the market close. These stale prices have caused daily fund returns to be predictable. This allows an arbitrage opportunity for investors who move their money at […]
The Role of Conflict Diamond Sanctions in Postwar Peace Commitment
by Karin Sun Abstract This paper models post-civil war conflict recurrence in Africa as a two-player sequential game. I treat the two “players” in my model, an incumbent government and a rebel group, as profit-maximizing firms who must each allocate a fixed supply of labor between diamond production and armed warfare. I then analyze the […]
Property Rights and Growth: a Matter of Extremes
by Joshua Kazdin Abstract This text explores the impact of property rights on economic growth by analyzing pooled cross-section ratings of property rights in 120 countries across a 35 year period. Empirical results are couched within a theoretical model that incorporates institutions into a general production function, adding property rights as an idiosyncratic shock. A […]
The Debt Laffer Curve: Estimates for 1990-2005
by Elena Bachvarova Abstract This paper shows the Debt Laffer curve for all low- and middle-income countries for the period 1990-2005. Due to data limitations, only 127 of the 149 such countries are represented. Eastern Europe and Asia, with the exception of Myanmar and Lao PDR, do not suffer from debt overhang. Latin American countries […]
On the Failure of the Median Voter Theorem in the Presence of Multiple Contests of Varying Types
by Edward Philpot Abstract The median voter theorem, rst formalized by Duncan Black in 1948, is the result of a classic model used to describe the positioning of candidates in majority-rule elections, eponymously stating that candidates will converge to the median. The goal of this paper is to describe how the median voter theorem fails […]
An Empirical Analysis of Fundamental Indexation
by David Garver Abstract The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and the case for efficient market equity pricing has been dealt a series of blows over the last twenty years. The recent emergence (Arnott, Hsu & Moore, 2005) of a set of strategies that purport to beat the capitalization weighted market portfolio suggested by the […]
The Effect of Maternal Employment on Adolescent Development
by Daniel Pu Abstract The sharp rise in maternal employment in the recent decade may have unintended consequences for child development. Previous research has shown the negative impacts of maternal employment during early childhood on child cognitive development. However, no studies have investigated the long term effects of maternal employment. This study fills this void […]
Clean Growth: Emissions taxes and endogenous technological change
by Daniel Cook Abstract This paper studies the long-run effects of imposing a tax on the emissions from energy usage. We impose an endogenous tax on polluting emissions from energy use in a model where energy firms can do R&D in order to clean up their energy product. The model is an extension of that […]
Risky Business: The Effect of Family Income on Teen Risky Sexual Behavior
by Caitlin McLaughlin Abstract Risky sexual behavior can have profound consequences for a teen’s physical wellbeing, mental health, and future economic success. We explore this topic by examining the relationship between total household income and risky sexual behaviors including the use of birth control, number of sexual partners, age at first intercourse, and the contraction […]
