By Topic

This Finance survey examines (a) On 10 January 2024, the SEC approved spot Bitcoin exchange-traded products: https://www.sec.gov/news/statement/gensler-statement-spot-bitcoin-011023\ The SEC's approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded products makes investors overall measurably better off. 

This European survey examines (a) Creation of a more unified capital market in Europe - with a common pool of capital, a single rule book and a strengthened European Securities and Markets Authority, comparable to the US Securities and Exchange Commission – would lead to a substantial shift in the balance of companies listing their shares in the EU vis-a-vis the US; (b) Creation of a more unified capital market in Europe - with a common pool of capital, a single rule book and a strengthened European Securities and Markets Authority, comparable to the US Securities and Exchange Commission – would substantially increase the availability of funding for start-ups and growing companies across the EU 

This Finance survey examines (a) The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on working and shopping habits has not been fully priced into current private valuations of downtown commercial properties in major cities; (b) A continued fall in commercial real estate valuations would trigger another round of banking panic 

This US survey examines: A tolling program for New York City is out for public consultation with proposed charges on vehicles entering the central business district of Manhattan summarized here: https://new.mta.info/document/129191 (a) The proposed tolls on vehicles entering the central business district of Manhattan are likely to lead to a substantial reduction in traffic congestion in the targeted area; (b) The proposed tolls on vehicles entering Manhattan are likely to lead to a substantial increase in traffic congestion just outside the central business district, above 60th Street, in the outer boroughs and New Jersey 

This Finance survey examines (a) Despite the empirical failures of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) in explaining expected stock returns, a shareholder-value maximizing publicly-traded firm should still use the CAPM to calculate the cost of equity in capital budgeting; (b) The equity risk premium that U.S. publicly traded firms should use in cost of equity calculations in April 2023 is above 6% 

This European survey examines (a) A constitutional rule that limits the size of budget deficits that governments can run as a share of GDP is an effective way to impose discipline on a country’s public finances; (b) Germany’s debt brake is a substantial constraint on vital public investment in physical/digital infrastructure and the green transition 

This Finance survey examines that Harry Markowitz, the Nobel Prize-winning pioneer of modern portfolio theory, passed away earlier this year: https://afajof.org/news/in-memoriam-harry-markowitz-past-president-of-the-american-finance-association-1927-2023/ (a) Application of the principles of modern portfolio theory allows investors in practice to achieve substantial improvements in the risk-expected return trade-off relative to naive strategies such as equal-weighting that do not take account of return covariances; (b) A continued fall in commercial real estate valuations would trigger another round of banking panic 

This Finance survey examines (a) The amount of passively invested funds has reached levels at which it has a measurable detrimental effect on market efficiency. 

This Finance survey examines (a) Allowing short selling of financial securities, such as stocks and government bonds, leads to prices that, on average, are closer to their fundamental values; (b) When short sellers start to establish substantial short positions in a stock, the stock is likely to have been overvalued; (c) Requiring investors to disclose short positions in a stock at the equivalent threshold as they are required to do for long positions would improve the informativeness of stock prices