Most new retired workers in 1982 owned some type of asset, usually a savings, checking, or credit union account, according to data obtained by the Social Security Administration (SSA) in its New Beneficiary Survey. Many recently retired workers also owned their home, often mortgage-free. Homeownership was their most significant asset in terms of its median value. Comparatively few retirees owne...

Payments can be classified as high-value or low-value. High-value transactions are typically related to purchases and sales of financial assets, mainly foreign exchange and securities. These transactions usually involve only financial institutions, large companies or high net-worth individuals. Payment instruments are either cash or non-cash. Cash is probably the most important instrument for l...

As a result of economic pressures caused by deregulation, utilities are looking at new ways to approach the business of operating and maintaining their assets. In particular, one utility has taken a look at managing their substation assets as if they were stocks in a portfolio. Like financial managers who try to maximize return-on-investment for each asset in a client's portfolio, substation ma...

This paper extends the marketed asset disclaimer approach for real option valuation. In sharp contrast to the dominant real option valuation that assumes a stochastic process for an investment’s capital value, this paper demonstrates the valuation of a real option assuming that cash flow follows a stochastic process. We show that this method is at least equally effective and sometimes more intu...

BACKGROUND Unconditional and conditional cash transfer programmes (UCT and CCT) show potential to improve the well-being of orphans and other children made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS (OVC). We address the gap in current understanding about the extent to which household-based cash transfers differentially impact individual children's outcomes, according to risk or protective factors such as orphan s...

This paper considers the optimal asset allocation problem for defined-contribution pension plan members whose terminal utility is a function of replacement ratio, i.e. the pension-to-final wage ratio. When three asset types are available for investment, the optimal portfolio composition, which is horizon dependent, includes investment in both riskless and risky assets. The investment in risky a...

This paper examines whether giving large cash transfers to financially distressed people causes them to avoid bankruptcy. A comparison of Florida Lottery winners who randomly received $50,000 to $150,000 to small winners indicates that such transfers only postpone bankruptcy rather than prevent it, a result inconsistent with the negative shock model of bankruptcy. Furthermore, the large winners...

Abstract Marxists see firm ownership as an instrument for capitalists to exploit workers for “surplus value”. Neo-classical economists treat capital and labour equally as factors of production, which generate wages for workers and profits for capital owners. Both “Surplus value” and profits should be, and indeed are, on average, positive in typical market economies. This paper proposes a theory...

Various researches have been carried out about benefits of accounting information and their influence on decision making of financial statements users. For example, many researches have examined the relationship between accounting variables and stock returns or stock price. This study determines and compares the relative and incremental content of accounting variables, too. For this purpose, th...

Unfortunately the fair value of a liability that is not actively or efficiently traded is not readily ascertainable through a financial market. This is in contrast to publicly traded assets such as bonds and stocks. However various approaches can be taken to determine estimates of such values based on discounted cash flow (DCF) techniques. Such techniques are also used to determine the fair val...