Publications

19 Aug 2012
News

A realistic discount rate for pensions

June 2005 (Revised November 2006)
Background Note

Valuation Methods and Discount Rate Issues: A Comprehensive Example

By: Marc L. Bertoneche and Fausto Federicic

Presents a comprehensive review of the valuation methods based on discounting cash flows or value creation metrics and shows, through simple example and a straightforward "how-to-do" framework, the perfect consistency and identity of their results under similar... View Details

Keywords: Valuation

Educators

Purchase

09 Feb 2007
Working Paper Summaries

Do Corporate Social Responsibility Ratings Predict Corporate Social Performance?

Keywords: by Aaron K. Chatterji, David I. Levine & Michael W. Toffel

1972
Chapter

Risk and the Discount Rate for Public Investment

By: Michael C. Jensen and Martin J. Bailey

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Investment; Public Sector

SSRN

Article

How Well Do Social Ratings Actually Measure Corporate Social Responsibility?

By: Aaron K. Chatterji, David I. Levine and Michael W. Toffel

Ratings of corporations' environmental activities and capabilities influence billions of dollars of "socially responsible" investments as well as some consumers, activists, and potential employees. In one of the first studies to assess these ratings, we examine how... View Details

Keywords: Governance Compliance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Measurement and Metrics; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Performance Effectiveness; Natural Environment; Pollutants

Article

No Evidence for an Effect of Testosterone Administration on Delay Discounting in Male University Students

By: Georgia Rada Ortner, Matthias Wibral, Anke Becker, Thomas Dohmen, Dietrich Klingmüller, Armin Falk and Bernd Weber

Intertemporal choices between a smaller sooner and a larger delayed reward are one of the most important types of decisions humans face in their everyday life. The degree to which individuals discount delayed rewards correlates with impulsiveness. Steep delay... View Details

Keywords: Delay Discounting; Impulsiveness; Intertemporal Choice; Testosterone; Decision Making; Behavior; Personal Characteristics

Forthcoming
Article

The Credit Rating Agency Market in Africa: Landscape and Future Research Directions

By: Saveshen Pillay and Anywhere Sikochi

We explore the role of credit ratings in global markets and highlight potential opportunities for research on the African credit rating agency market. We trace the evolution of credit ratings and conduct a comprehensive literature review of existing studies globally... View Details

Keywords: Credit Rating; Credit Rating Agencies; Credit; Conflict of Interests; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Financial Markets; Africa

3 Aug 2007 - 8 Aug 2007
Conference Presentation

How Well Do Social Ratings Actually Measure Corporate Social Responsibility?

By: Michael W. Toffel

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Measurement and Metrics

January 2022
Article

Why is Corporate Virtue in the Eye of The Beholder? The Case of ESG Ratings

By: Dane Christensen, George Serafeim and Anywhere Sikochi

Despite the rising use of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings, there is substantial disagreement across rating agencies regarding what rating to give to individual firms. As what drives this disagreement is unclear, we examine whether a firm’s ESG... View Details

Keywords: ESG Ratings; Rating Agency Disagreement; ESG Disclosure; Corporate Social Responsibility; Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Disclosure

February 1991 (Revised November 1993)
Exercise

Valuation and Discounted Cash Flows

A set of five exercises in valuation of simple fixed income securities. No capital budgeting. Students use present value analysis to compute discounted cash flows. Situations/concepts covered include: future value; mortgage payment and repayment; calculating implicit... View Details

Keywords: Finance

Purchase

December 2021
Article

Partisan Professionals: Evidence from Credit Rating Analysts

By: Elisabeth Kempf and Margarita Tsoutsoura

Partisan perception affects the actions of professionals in the financial sector. Using a novel dataset linking credit rating analysts to party affiliations from voter records, we show that analysts who are not affiliated with the U.S. president’s party downward-adjust... View Details

Keywords: Political Affiliation; Credit Rating Agencies; Political Partisanship; Political Elections; Perception; Credit

Article

Forward Discount Bias: Is It an Exchange Risk Premium?

By: K. A. Froot and J. Frankel

Keywords: Currencies; Exchange Rates; International Macroeconomics; Monetary Policy; Currency Controls; Fixed Exchange Rates; Floating Exchange Rates; Currency Bands; Currency Zones; Currency Areas; Rational Expectations; Asset Pricing

September 2023
Article

Stock Price Reactions to ESG News: The Role of ESG Ratings and Disagreement

By: George Serafeim and Aaron Yoon

We investigate whether ESG ratings predict future ESG news and the associated market reactions. We find that the consensus rating predicts future news, but its predictive ability diminishes for firms with large disagreement between raters. Relation between news and... View Details

SSRN

November 2024
Article

Price Discounts and Cheapflation During the Post-Pandemic Inflation Surge

By: Alberto Cavallo and Oleksiy Kryvtsov

We study how within-store price variation changes with inflation, and whether households exploit it to attenuate the inflation burden. We use micro price data for food products sold by 91 large multi-channel retailers in ten countries between 2018 and 2024. Measuring... View Details

Keywords: Macroeconomics; Inflation and Deflation; Price; Consumer Behavior; Personal Finance; Product Positioning

May–June 2019
Article

U-Shaped Conformity in Online Social Networks

By: Monic Sun, Michael Zhang and Feng Zhu

We explore how people balance their needs to belong and to be different from their friends by studying their choices of a virtual-house wall color on a leading Chinese social-networking site. The setting enables us to randomize both the popular color and the adoption... View Details

Keywords: Conformity; Normative Social Influence; Social Networks; Field Experiment; Social and Collaborative Networks; Behavior; Attitudes; Social Media

11 Oct 2007
Working Paper Summaries

How Firms Respond to Being Rated

Keywords: by Aaron K. Chatterji & Michael W. Toffel

January 2014 (Revised February 2016)
Case

U.S. Government Debt and the Debate over a Balanced Budget Amendment

By: Matthew Weinzierl, Katrina Flanagan and Alastair Su

In the first decade of the 21st century, national debt as a share of GDP rose dramatically in the United States and across the developed world. This case consists of excerpts from leading commentators explaining and commenting on this trend and the economic and moral... View Details

Keywords: National Debt; Social Discount Rate; Ricardian Equivalence; Government and Politics; Macroeconomics; United States

Educators

Purchase

September 2010
Article

How Firms Respond to Being Rated

By: Aaron K. Chatterji and Michael W. Toffel

While many rating systems seek to help buyers overcome information asymmetries when making purchasing decisions, we investigate how these ratings also influence the companies being rated. We hypothesize that ratings are particularly likely to spur responses from firms... View Details

Keywords: System; Information; Decisions; Cost; Opportunities; Performance; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Economics; Theory; System Shocks; Rank and Position