Tracking Decisions in North Carolina’s Public High Schools
by Michael Harris Abstract This paper analyzes the criteria employed to assign students into tracked English and Mathematics classes across public high schools in North Carolina. Specifically, I examine the probability of high track placement moving from eighth grade to ninth grade classrooms based upon both achievement and demographic factors. Analysis is performed at both […]
Merrill Lynch Consults® Program: An Analysis of Performance
by Megha Bisarya Abstract Compared to mutual funds, separately managed accounts are a relatively new product for the financial services industry. They are customized portfolios of stocks or bonds that are monitored by professional investment managers but owned by the individual. This study analyzes the performance of Merrill Lynch’s separately managed accounts program, known as […]
Predicting Financial Debt Crises: A Case Study of India
by Matthew Sperber Abstract The following paper develops a qualitative and quantitative model for predicting financial debt crises. The qualitative model breaks down the balance sheet of emerging market countries to identify weaknesses in the country’s assets and liabilities. The values of the items on a country’s balances sheet are then compared to the pre-crisis […]
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 […]
