Vassar College Digital Library

Vassar Scholarship

Vassar Scholarship, the institutional repository formerly known as Digital Window, reflects the research and scholarly output of the Vassar College community.  It provides access to a variety of collections, including senior theses and projects across a wide range of disciplines.

Arbitrage in closed-end funds: New evidence

Publication Date
2006-August-20
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Arbitrage pressures that could equalize closed-end fund share prices with fund portfolio values appear to be largely absent in an extensive data set. Observed fund behavior violates the static arbitrage bounds of Gemmill and Thomas (2002) and is inconsistent with...

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Can You Hear Us? A Content Analysis of Queer Representation in Audio Dramas

Publication Date
2021-January-01
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In this thesis, I analyze queer representation in seven popular audio drama podcasts. By studying examples of implicit and explicit mentions of sexuality and gender identity, queerness as an integral plot point, and general discussions of sexuality, along with fan...

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Closed-end fund discounts and interest rates: positive covariance in US data after 1985

Publication Date
2005-September-01
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Previous papers find no relationship between interest rates and the discounts of US closed-end funds before 1985. This is taken as evidence against management fees being a cause of discounts because a negative relationship is expected: if interest rates rise...

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Limited arbitrage, segmentation, and investor heterogeneity: Why the law of one price so often fails

Publication Date
2003-August-28
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There are numerous examples of assets with identical payout streams being priced differently. These violations of the law of one price result from two factors. First, investors have heterogeneous asset valuations so that if two groups of investors trade in...

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Noise-trader risk: does it deter arbitrage, and is it priced?

Publication Date
2005-September-12
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Arbitrage positions that benefit from the reversion of closed-end fund discounts to rational levels show excess returns that increase in magnitude the more funds are mispriced. At the same time, fund trading volumes and bid-ask spreads more than double as...

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Noise-trading, costly arbitrage, and asset prices: evidence from US closed-end funds

Publication Date
2005-August-30
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The behavior of US closed-end funds is very different from that of the UK funds studied by Gemmill and Thomas (2002). There is no evidence that their discounts are constrained by arbitrage barriers, no evidence that higher expenses increase discounts...

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Secular Dreams, Bloody Oracles: Staging State and Religion in Classical Athens and Enlightenment Paris

Publication Date
2020-January-01
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I perform a comparative reading of <em>Iphigeneia Among the Taurians</em> by Euripides (around 414 BCE) and the adaptation <em>Iphigénie en Tauride</em> by Claude Guimond de La Touche (1757 CE). I aim to read the development of the secular with regards...

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Sentiment and the interpretation of news about fundamentals

Publication Date
2005-August-30
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The reaction of closed-end fund share prices to changes in portfolio values is on average the same whether funds are trading at discounts or premia and whether the changes in portfolio values are positive or negative. If closed-end fund discounts...

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Short selling behavior when fundamentals are known: Evidence from NYSE closed-end funds

Publication Date
2006-January-11
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The larger a closed-end fund's premium over its portfolio value, the more intensely it is sold short. However, the intensity of short selling affects neither the rate at which premia mean revert to fundamental values nor the rate of return...

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Trust and the Law

Publication Date
2017-January-01
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Department or Program
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This chapter provides a selective review of the literature on trust and the law. We highlight the psychological and game theoretic mechanisms underpinning the role of trust in relationships with incomplete contracts. We also discuss evidence on whether behavioral trust...

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Why only some industries unionize: insights from reciprocity theory

Publication Date
2005-February-14
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This paper argues that the degree to which a given industry's labor contracts are complete or incomplete is the major factor determining whether its workforce will be unionized. For instance, assembly line industries feature complete labor contracts because of the...

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