prior probability

I just finished drafting the Spring 2022 Syllabus for my large business law survey course. Below are a few select pages from my new and improved syllabus.

My daughter Adys Ann and I went to Cocoa Beach on Three Kings Day (6 Jan.) to “hang out” and see a SpaceX rocket launch.

The day after Three Kings Day (6 Jan.), our family Christmas tree transforms into an “North American football tree” and stays up until the Super Bowl. Division champions and wild card contenders go on top; bad teams go on the bottom.

In Memoriam: Bella Benvenutti

Our hearts are broken, yet again. My wife and I are mourning another tragic and untimely loss. My former student and dear friend Jan Rene Benvenutti lost the love of his life — his beloved daughter Bella, who was only seven years old.

In honor of my late colleague and dear friend Ray Sturm (pictured below), today I am posting a link to his most-cited work, his 2003 paper “Investor Confidence and Returns Following Large One-Day Price Changes” in which Ray identified an asymmetry in investor reaction to stock market price shocks. In Ray’s own words, “my findings indicate that investors respond differently to negative price shocks than to positive price shocks. In particular, large price decreases generally drive positive post-event abnormal returns, while large price increases do not drive positive or negative abnormal returns.” According to Google Scholar, Ray’s 2003 price-shock paper has been cited at least 50 times, a remarkable and noteworthy feat in the world of academia.

As a follow-up to my previous post in honor of my late colleague and friend Ray Sturm (pictured below), who died recently at the too-early age of 58, today I am a posting a link to his beautiful 2008 paper “Does time have value? An empirical examination of the put option embedded in refundable U.S. air fares,” a research article that Ray co-authored with Drew Winters, a respected professor of finance at Texas Tech.

To the point of this post, of the two dozen or so scholarly papers that Ray published during his academic career, his 2008 time-value paper is one my favorites because of its “Coasean spirit” — i.e. the way in which Ray and Drew combine economic theory and actual practice. Below is an excerpt (footnote omitted):

“The time value of money is a fundamental tenet of finance. Specifically, under any positive discount rate, a dollar today is unambiguously worth more than a dollar tomorrow. Equally unambiguous is the value of time in the price of an option. Specifically, all standard put and call options increase in value as the time to expiration increases. In this paper, we examine ticket pricing in the airline industry and argue that the price of a refundable airline ticket consists of two components—the price of a nonrefundable ticket plus the price of a put option. The refundable ticket is obviously more valuable than the nonrefundable because the put option component gives the owner the right to sell the ticket back to the airline at its original cost. Accordingly, we apply the standard relationship between time to expiration and the value of an option developed in option pricing theory to determine whether airlines price the value of time to expiration in the put option embedded in refundable ticket prices in a manner consistent with theory.”

How many faculty have you ever seen ride to class on a skateboard, compete in surf championships, or play in a rock band? My dear colleague and friend Dr Ray Sturm (pictured below, far right) was a one-of-a-kind scholar, bon vivant, and original researcher (see here and here) who did all these things. Our paths had crossed many times — he was a fellow “lecture capture” professor and kindred spirit at my home institution, one of the few souls who made my little corner of the world a better place. I will be devoting my Spring and Summer 2022 classes to his memory.