Background
Zeckhauser, Richard Jay was born on November 1, 1940 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Son of Julius Nathaniel and Estelle (Borgenicht) Zeckhauser.
( A Primer for Policy Analysis is an overview of economic...)
A Primer for Policy Analysis is an overview of economic theory as it is applied to environmental problems. It does not, however, consider other approaches to such problems. In their book, Stokey and Zeckhauser argue that policy-making decisions are economic decisions and economic theory is applicable to policy-making.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393090981/?tag=2022091-20
(Based on the careful examination of more than 500,000 app...)
Based on the careful examination of more than 500,000 applications to fourteen elite colleges and hundreds of interviews with students, counselors, and admissions officers, this book details the advantages and pitfalls of applying early as it provides a map for students and parents to navigate the process.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674016203/?tag=2022091-20
( Eight essays address the inherent problems of the agenc...)
Eight essays address the inherent problems of the agency relationship, such as monitoring performance and the careful design of incentives. By applying agency theory to actual practices in areas as diverse as tax-sheltered programs and transfer pricing, the contributors present conceptual tools and practical ideas for shaping agency structures to serve the best interests of both parties. A research colloquium book.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0875842569/?tag=2022091-20
( Alpha, higher-than-expected returns generated by an inv...)
Alpha, higher-than-expected returns generated by an investment strategy, is the holy grail of the investment world. Achieve alpha, and you've beaten the market on a risk-adjusted basis. Quantitative Strategies for Achieving Alpha was borne from equity analyst Richard Tortoriello's efforts to create a series of quantitative stock selection models for his company, Standard & Poor's, and produce a “road map” of the market from a quantitative point of view. With this practical guide, you will gain an effective instrument that can be used to improve your investment process, whether you invest qualitatively, quantitatively, or seek to combine both. Each alpha-achieving strategy has been extensively back-tested using Standard & Poor's Compustat Point in Time database and has proven to deliver alpha over the long term. Quantitative Strategies for Achieving Alpha presents a wide variety of individual and combined investment strategies that consistently predict above-market returns. The result is a comprehensive investment mosaic that illustrates clearly those qualities and characteristics that make an investment attractive or unattractive. This valuable work contains: • A wide variety of investment strategies built around the seven basics that drive future stock market returns: profitability, valuation, cash flow generation, growth, capital allocation, price momentum, and red flags (risk) • A building-block approach to quantitative analysis based on 42 single-factor and nearly 70 two- and three-factor backtests, which show the investor how to effectively combine individual factors into robust investment screens and models • More than 20 proven investment screens for generating winning investment ideas • Suggestions for using quantitative strategies to manage risk and for structuring your own quantitative portfolios • Advice on using quantitative principles to do qualitative investment research, including sample spreadsheets This powerful, data intensive book will help you clearly see what empirically drives the market, while providing the tools to make more profitable investment decisions based on that knowledge--through both bull and bear markets.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071549846/?tag=2022091-20
( Should chronically disruptive students be allowed to re...)
Should chronically disruptive students be allowed to remain in public schools? Should nonagenarians receive costly medical care at taxpayer expense? Who should be first in line for kidney transplants —the relatively healthy or the severely ill? In T argeting in Social Programs , Peter H. Schuck and Richard J. Zeckhauser provide a rigorous framework for analyzing these and other difficult choices. Many government policies seek to help unfortunate, often low-income individuals —in other words, "bad draws." These efforts are frequently undermined by poor targeting, however. In particular, when two groups of bad draws —"bad bets" and "bad apples" —are included in social welfare programs, bad policies are likely to result. Many politicians and policymakers prefer to sweep this problem under the rug. But the costs of this silence are high. Allocating resources to bad bets and bad apples does more than waste money —it also makes it harder to achieve substantive goals, such as the creation of safe and effective schools. And perhaps most important, it erodes support for public programs on which many good bets and good apples rely. By training a spotlight on these issues, Schuck and Zeckhauser take a first step toward much-needed reforms. They dissect the challenges involved in defining bad bets and bad apples and discuss the safeguards that any classification process must provide. They also examine three areas where bad apples and bad bets loom large —public schools, public housing, and medical care —and propose policy changes that could reduce the problems these two groups pose. This provocative book does not offer easy answers, but it raises questions that no one with an interest in policy effectiveness can afford to ignore. By turns incisive and probing, Bad Draws will generate vigorous debate.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0815778805/?tag=2022091-20
Zeckhauser, Richard Jay was born on November 1, 1940 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Son of Julius Nathaniel and Estelle (Borgenicht) Zeckhauser.
AB, Harvard University, 1962. Doctor of Philosophy, Harvard University, 1969.
Junior fellow Society Fellows Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1965-1968, member faculty, since 1968, professor political economic Kennedy School, since 1972, Frank P. Ramsey professor political economy. Founder, board directors Niederhoffer, Cross & Zeckhauser, 1968—1984. Senior advisor, principal Equity Resource Investments, since 2005.
Business advisory board Tengion, Inc., since 2006.
(Based on the careful examination of more than 500,000 app...)
( Should chronically disruptive students be allowed to re...)
(This book provides the first comprehensive and consistent...)
( Eight essays address the inherent problems of the agenc...)
( Alpha, higher-than-expected returns generated by an inv...)
( A Primer for Policy Analysis is an overview of economic...)
(Book by Knowlton, Winthrop, Zeckhauser, Richard J.)
Co-author: A Primer for Policy Analysis, 1978, Demographic Dimensions of the New Republic, 1982, The Early Admissions Game: Joining the Elite, 2003. Editor or co-editor: Benefit-Cost and Policy Analysis, 1974, What Role for Government, 1983, Principals and Agents: The Structure of Business, 1985, American Society: Public and Private Responsibilities, 1986, Privatization and State-Owned Enterprises: Lessons from the United States, Great Britain, and Canada, 1989, Strategy and Choice, 1991, Wise Choices: Games, Decisions, and Negotiations, 1996, Targeting in Social Programs: Avoiding Bad Bets, Removing Bad Apples, 2006. Editor or co-editor The Patron's Payoff: Conspicuous Commissions in Italian Renaissance Art, 2008.
Contributor 248 articles to professional journals, chapters to books. Research finance, college admissions, climate change and healthcare.
The primary challenge facing our society is how to allocate resources in accordance with the preferences of the citizenry. Unfortunately, centralised decision-making is hopelessly distorted by a political process that encourages individuals to misrepresent their preferences and inevitably favours certain groups over others. Thus my conceptual work has tried to discover possibilities for decentralised allocation procedures, particularly when uncertainty and asymmetric information are problems.
This work has naturally focussed on incentives for honest revelation.
Welcome results are (1) that paying the expected externality effectively decentralises multi-stage externality and group decision problems under uncertainty, and (2) that a point-votingtype mechanism for public goods can elicit honest preferences and lead to an efficient bundle. Similarly I have shown that involuntary unemployment is
a consequence of worker and firm heterogeneity. That groups employing Bayesian decision methods cannot preserve Pareto optimality.
That a fundamental nonconvexity arises if externality leads to shutdown. And that voting mechanisms must be inefficient if intensities of preference matter. Other work has dealt with agency theory, insurance, and populations with heterogeneous risk.
I have also been involved in a variety of policy investigations, exploring ways to promote the health of human beings, to help labour markets and financial markets operate more efficiently, and to foster informed and appropriate choices by individuals and government agencies.
Cross-fertilisation between these policy investigations and my conceptual work has been of great value. In considering such topics as risk analysis (life valuation, calibration of probabilities) and the redesign of regulatory processes, I have found uncertainty and decentralisation to be important issues, and a major theme of my current work on human resources and health is the importance of heterogeneity (possibly unobservable) in the population.
Board directors Commonwealth School. Fellow: American Association for the Advancement of Science, Institute Medicine/NAS, Association Public Policy and Management, Econometric Society.
Married Nancy Mackell Hoover, September 9, 1967. Children: Bryn Gordon, Benjamin Rennell.