Understanding the Determinants of Financial Outcomes and Choices

Understanding the Determinants of Financial Outcomes and Choices PDF Author: Gianpaolo Parise
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Understanding the Determinants of Financial Outcomes and Choices

Understanding the Determinants of Financial Outcomes and Choices PDF Author: Gianpaolo Parise
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Essays on the Determinants of Student Choices and Educational Outcomes

Essays on the Determinants of Student Choices and Educational Outcomes PDF Author: Justin A. Wong
Publisher: Stanford University
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 121

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Book Description
This dissertation is composed of three essays. Essay 1, "Does School Start Too Early For Student Learning?", considers the connection between school start time and student performance. Biological evidence indicates that adolescents' internal clocks are designed to make them fall asleep and wake up at later times than adults. This science has prompted widespread debate about delaying school start times in the U.S., a country which has some of the earliest start times worldwide. The debate suffers, however, from a glaring absence of evidence: the small number of prior studies has been too low powered statistically to test whether later start times improve achievement. I fill the gap by studying achievement across a large, nationally representative set of high schools that have varying start times. I identify the positive effect of later clock start times, as well as the independent effect of greater daylight at school start time. My primary empirical method is cross-sectional regression with rich controls for potentially confounding variables. The findings are confirmed by regression discontinuity analysis focused on schools close to time zone boundaries. I quantify the net gain in welfare from having an additional hour of sunlight before school starts by comparing the substantial lifetime earnings benefits for students against the likely the societal costs. Essay 2, "Student Success and Teaching Assistant Effectiveness In Large Classes", considers the impact teaching assistants (TAs) have on student performance. In universities, TAs play a crucial role by providing small group instruction in lecture courses with large enrollment. The multiplicity of TAs creates both positive opportunities and negative incentives. On the one hand, some TAs may excel at tasks--such as helping struggling students--at which other TAs fail. If so, all students may be able to learn better if they can match themselves to the TA that best suits their needs. On the other hand, the multiplicity of TAs means that students in the same class often receive instruction that varies in quality even though they are ultimately graded on the same standard. In this paper, we use data from a large lecture course in which students are conditionally randomly assigned to TAs. In addition to administrative data on scores and grades, we use survey data (which we generated) on students' initial preparation, their study habits, and their interactions with TAs. We identify the existence of variation among TAs in teaching effectiveness. We also identify how TAs vary in their effectiveness with certain subpopulations of students: the least and best prepared, students with different backgrounds, and so on. Using our parameter estimates, we simulate student achievement under scenarios such as random assignment to TAs, elimination/retraining of the least effective TAs, and matching of TAs to students based on initial information to show the potential gains in student welfare from more efficient matching. Essay 3, "A Study of Student Majors: A Historical Perspective", considers whether differing financial returns across degrees are a significant factor in a student's choice of a major. During the late 1990s, the U.S. experienced a technology boom that significantly increased the initial salary offers to engineering students, and computer science students in particular. These dramatic increases in returns provide an excellent opportunity to examine not only how students respond to salary levels, but also to salary trends. The existing literature has focused on the extent to which differing financial returns can affect a student's choice of undergraduate major. This paper extends the analysis to test if trends in salary levels also affect the share of students selecting into various majors using a comprehensive dataset of all post-secondary institutions. I find that students select into majors that offer higher salaries and have greater wage growth. Using a flexible empirical model that allows students to respond to both changes in salary levels and growth, I find that the results hold across majors and within engineering disciplines. These results help to explain why, for instance, the percentage of students choosing to major in computer science grew more rapidly than could be explained by salary level alone.

The Future of the Public's Health in the 21st Century

The Future of the Public's Health in the 21st Century PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309133181
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
The anthrax incidents following the 9/11 terrorist attacks put the spotlight on the nation's public health agencies, placing it under an unprecedented scrutiny that added new dimensions to the complex issues considered in this report. The Future of the Public's Health in the 21st Century reaffirms the vision of Healthy People 2010, and outlines a systems approach to assuring the nation's health in practice, research, and policy. This approach focuses on joining the unique resources and perspectives of diverse sectors and entities and challenges these groups to work in a concerted, strategic way to promote and protect the public's health. Focusing on diverse partnerships as the framework for public health, the book discusses: The need for a shift from an individual to a population-based approach in practice, research, policy, and community engagement. The status of the governmental public health infrastructure and what needs to be improved, including its interface with the health care delivery system. The roles nongovernment actors, such as academia, business, local communities and the media can play in creating a healthy nation. Providing an accessible analysis, this book will be important to public health policy-makers and practitioners, business and community leaders, health advocates, educators and journalists.

Improving Health in the Community

Improving Health in the Community PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309055342
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
How do communities protect and improve the health of their populations? Health care is part of the answer but so are environmental protections, social and educational services, adequate nutrition, and a host of other activities. With concern over funding constraints, making sure such activities are efficient and effective is becoming a high priority. Improving Health in the Community explains how population-based performance monitoring programs can help communities point their efforts in the right direction. Within a broad definition of community health, the committee addresses factors surrounding the implementation of performance monitoring and explores the "why" and "how to" of establishing mechanisms to monitor the performance of those who can influence community health. The book offers a policy framework, applies a multidimensional model of the determinants of health, and provides sets of prototype performance indicators for specific health issues. Improving Health in the Community presents an attainable vision of a process that can achieve community-wide health benefits.

Financial Analysis and Decision Making

Financial Analysis and Decision Making PDF Author: David E. Vance
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
ISBN:
Category : Beslutningstagning-ledelse
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
This US publication covers a broad range of financial analysis to help the reader solve financial problems & make effective business decisions. Presented in a clear format complete with examples.

Closing the Financial Inclusion Gap by Understanding What Factors Drive Consumer Selection of Financial Service Providers

Closing the Financial Inclusion Gap by Understanding What Factors Drive Consumer Selection of Financial Service Providers PDF Author: Sherry Lee Williams
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 127

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Book Description
This research seeks to determine what factors and combinations of banking features drive the choice of a financial service provider. Two studies have been devised to explore the research question. The initial study, uses factor analysis and logistic regression to examine the importance of perceived cost, convenience, and relational trust in the choice of a financial services provider. An additional study uses choice-based conjoint analysis to conduct an exploratory study to identify combinations of banking features that potential customers perceive as most attractive. The study simulates real-world buying situations that ask research participants to trade one financial services attribute for another. Results from the first study suggest that a consumer's choice of banks, prepaid cards, online lending, and the US Postal Service for financial services is associated with a preference for convenience while relational trust and perceived cost drives the choice of "street" AFS providers. In the second study, results from the choice-based conjoint analysis suggest that fees are significantly more important than convenience and level of customer contact across all categorical variables (age, gender, race/ethnicity, employment, income, and education). Additionally, in-person customer service contact is considered more important than convenience. Understanding these factors, optimal combinations and proportions, and trade-offs through the eyes of the consumer, may be of value to both policy makers and industry officials alike when grappling with options to strengthen financial inclusion.

Quality of Financial Reporting Choice

Quality of Financial Reporting Choice PDF Author: Daniel A. Cohen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
In this dissertation, I investigate the determinants and economic consequences associated with firms' financial reporting choices. Recognizing the endogeneity associated with these choices, I find evidence of a positive association between investors' demands for firm-specific information and financial reporting quality. I also find that higher proprietary costs are associated with a lower quality of financial information. As for the economic consequences, the evidence suggests that firms with high quality financial reporting policies have reduced information asymmetries. However, after accounting for the endogeneity associated with the reporting quality choice, I find no significant evidence that firms choosing to provide financial information of higher quality enjoy a lower cost of equity capital. These results demonstrate the importance of explicitly modeling the endogeneity of financial reporting choices in investigating the associated economic consequences.

Behavioral Finance

Behavioral Finance PDF Author: Gregor Kaufmann
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 82

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Book Description
Behavioral finance, a sub-field of behavioral economics, proposes that psychological influences and biases affect the financial behaviors of investors and financial practitioners. Moreover, influences and biases can be the source for an explanation of all types of market anomalies and specifically market anomalies in the stock market, such as severe rises or falls in stock price. Behavioral finance can be analyzed from a variety of perspectives. Stock market returns are one area of finance where psychological behaviors are often assumed to influence market outcomes and returns but there are also many different angles for observation. The purpose of the classification of behavioral finance is to help understand why people make certain financial choices and how those choices can affect markets. Within behavioral finance, it is assumed that financial participants are not perfectly rational and self-controlled but rather psychologically influential with somewhat normal and self-controlling tendencies. One of the key aspects of behavioral finance studies is the influence of biases. Biases can occur for a variety of reasons. Biases can usually be classified into one of five key concepts. Understanding and classifying different types of behavioral finance biases can be very important when narrowing in on the study or analysis of industry or sector outcomes and results. The efficient market hypothesis (EMH) says that at any given time in a highly liquid market, stock prices are efficiently valued to reflect all the available information. However, many studies have documented long-term historical phenomena in securities markets that contradict the efficient market hypothesis and cannot be captured plausibly in models based on perfect investor rationality. The EMH is generally based on the belief that market participants view stock prices rationally based on all current and future intrinsic and external factors. When studying the stock market, behavioral finance takes the view that markets are not fully efficient. This allows for observation of how psychological factors can influence the buying and selling of stocks. The understanding and usage of behavioral finance biases are applied to stock and other trading market movements daily. Broadly, behavioral finance theories have also been used to provide clearer explanations of substantial market anomalies like bubbles and deep recessions. While not a part of EMH, investors and portfolio managers have a vested interest in understanding behavioral finance trends. These trends can be used to help analyze market price levels and fluctuations for speculation as well as decision-making purposes.

Communities in Action

Communities in Action PDF Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309452961
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 583

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Book Description
In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

2 + 2 = 1 For Financial Decision Makers

2 + 2 = 1 For Financial Decision Makers PDF Author: Nicky J Menakaya Mphil
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Take the Mystery out of Finance, 2 + 2 =1 For Financial Decision Makers Clarity for Non Finance Business Managers. Making sense of the business Numbers, Make and communicate better Financial Decisions. The book is about creating an awareness that money management is crucial for any business. The non-finance executives who are effective at managing the day -to -day finances of a company need clarity to ensure the ultimate survival of the business both in the short term and long term. The 2 + 2=1 For Financial Decision Makers is written to help non-finance managers and professionals to make and communicate better financial decisions, they can make sense of the numbers and why understanding numbers is essential for them to master the key concepts and elements of everyday business activities. With this understanding, you are aware of the consequences of the decisions you make for the business. For instance, simple things like Return on Investment (ROI) when considering the viability of any investment project. How and when the cashflow returns will translate to profitability. This can then be linked to planning for future through the process of effective Budgeting and forecasting, when measured against the actual performance through the business Management Accounts. Reading this book gives good insight on how decisions made by non-finance managers can heavily influence the financial outcomes of why the company exists. With the Finance clarity and the knowledge over time the company manager, executives, will understand how resources are acquired and allocated. It makes for effective communication between the business executive and the Finance team, especially in corporate organisation. Here's all benefits included and what you get from reading this book for Financial Decision Makers: - You will be able to analyse critical main financial statements of your business - You are guided to make more informed decisions regarding the pricing of products and services your company offers. - Interpret income Statements, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statements with examples - You will understand various types of costs in your business, and appreciate how they can be reduced through cost control methods - You will be equipped with the language of finance and an understanding of the factors the finance department must consider as they set out to find a profitable projects, you communicate ad collaborate better to generate opportunities that add value to your organisation. - Essentially, you will communicate more effectively with finance team, other stakeholders such, Lenders, Banks and those that invest heavily on your business. - You will master the skills to use financial concepts, elements and terms with various techniques to engage in better decision making.- Your personal financial wealth will be enhanced as you gain clarity on the key concepts of budgeting, forecasting and Cashflow management of the business. - You are always in the position to talk the language of finance, with impressive financial vocabulary at any level in the organisation, and less overwhelmed by numbers. Summary of chapters: The chapters in the book are organised to explain the structure and purpose of the three major numeric financial statements that describes the performance of the business and financial position to help decision making. You should be interested in a toolkit for every professional business manager to make smart and better decisions for their business, because poor accounting can result in mistrust of business partners, poor business decisions, and in the long term a significant loss of the assets of the business.