Another Paper Done

I spent most of the last week working on a paper for a conference deadline on Monday. We managed to get the thing done Sunday night (I was in my office until 1:00 a.m. Sunday morning), and planned on submitting it Monday after one last quick read-through. Of course, on Monday morning we got an email announcing that the deadline had been extended. We should have expected it since this happens almost every year for this conference (the Eastern Finance Association annual meeting).

So, we gave the paper one last thorough going over. It was sent out today. It' s early, and the paper will need a lot more work (and polishing) before it's ready to submit to a journal. But the initial results look good, and it's always satisfying to have a finished version (even if it's preliminary) of a paper.

I like working with these coauthors. It's the first time I've worked simultaneously with two fellow alumni of the Unknown Alma Mater, and the initial experience has been very, very good.

Conference Presentations By the Numbers

Once you've gone to a half dozen academic presentations, you begin to notece the same comments appearing over and over. Along those lines, here's a classic piece from George Stigler's in the 1977 Journal of Political Economy — “The Conference Handbook.” Stigler suggested that econ seminar participants could speed things up by making objections to the speaker's presentation using the following numbered list:

1. Adam Smith said that.
2. Unfortunately, there is an identification problem which is not dealt with adequately in the paper.
3. The residuals are clearly non-normal, and the specification of the model is incorrect.
4. Theorizing is not fruitful at this stage; we need a series of case studies.
5. Case studies are a clue, but no real progress can be made until a model of the process is constructed.
6. The second-best consideration would, of course, vitiate the argument.
7. That is an index number problem (obs., except in Cambridge).
8. Have you tried two-stage least squares?
9. The conclusions change if you introduce uncertainty.
10. You didn’t use probit analysis?
11. I proved the main results in a paper published years ago.
12. The analysis is marred by a failure to distinguish transitory and permanent components.
13. The market cannot, of course, deal satisfactorily with that externality.
14. But what if transaction costs are not zero?
15. That follows from the Coase Theorem.
16. Of course, if you allow for the investment in human capital, the entire picture changes.
17. Of course, the demand function is quite inelastic.
18. Of course, the supply function is highly inelastic.
19. The author uses a sledgehammer to crack a peanut.
20. What empirical finding would contradict your theory?
21. The central argument is not only a tautology, it is false.
22. What happens when you extend the analysis to the later (or earlier) period?
23. The motivation of the agents in this theory is so narrowly egotistic that it cannot possibly explain the behavior of real people.
24. The flabby economic actor in this impressionistic model should be replaced by the utility-maximizing individual.
25. Did you have any trouble in inverting the singular matrix?
26. It is unfortunate that the wrong choice was made between M1 and M2.
27. That is alright in theory, but it doesn’t work out in practice (use sparingly).
28. The speaker apparently believes that there is still one free lunch.
29. The problem cannot be dealt with by partial equilibrium methods; it requires a general equilibrium formulation.
30. The paper is rigidly confined by the paradigm of neoclassical economics, so large parts of urgent reality are outside its comprehension.
31. The conclusion rests on the assumption of fixed tastes, but (of course) tastes have surely changed.
32. The trouble with the present situation is that the property rights have not been fully assigned.

HT: The Freakonomics blog.

Some of the commenters on the piece added more options. Here are some of the better ones:

1. How did you handle endogeneity problem?” (Note: this almost always works well at finance conferences, particularly for corporate finance pieces)
2. Your standard errors are too small because you failed to cluster (or clustered at the improper level).
3. At Fed banks, certainly one of the items for this list would be, “How is this of any relevance to monetary policy?”
4. The results are driven by unobserved heterogeneity.
5. Did you try using a Difference-in-Difference technique? Did you try using a non-parametric estimation?
6. Experiments conducted by Kahnmen and Tversky have clearly demonstrated that people do NOT choose rationally under those conditions.
7. Is there a weak instruments problem?
8. But what if the actors aren’t rational?
9. Isn’t this just Modigliani-Miller?
   
10. How is your model identified?
11. Have you included fixed effects?
12. That’s ok in practice, but it won’t work in theory.
13. This theory is only valid in the static case and won’t work in the dynamic one.
14. Why do we care about this? or “Why is this question important anyway?"
15. That’s true, but not very interesting
16. That’s not a large effect you’ve found, it’s a small effect.
17. That’s not a small effect you’ve dismissed, it’s a large effect.
18. Did you try first-differencing?
19. What happens if you estimate it by GMM?
20. You just ran a bunch of regressions. What have we learned from your analysis?
21. Here's a popular one, in the “I did this back in..” vein:“I was troubled that you didn’t cite my work in the field.”
22. Your empirical results are obviously biased by a troubling sample selection issue.
23. But what if we view this as a 2-stage game?.
24. ‘In an efficient market, that type of arbitrage isn’t possible’.
25. I believe your correlation is a spurious one unless you convince me you checked for co-integration.

If you can think of others to add to the list, feel free to put them in the comments section.

Giving an Academic Talk

I can count the number of really good (i.e. memorable) academic presentations I've seen on one hand. If I lower the bar to "pretty good", there's still only a limited list.

If you want to improve your presentation skills, here's a very good collection of advice on how to give an academic presentation from Jonathan Shewchuck, a Computer Science professor at Berkeley. Even if you're not a CS guy, read it anyway - most of what he discusses is relevent to almost any presentation. He breaks down just about everything you need to know:

• How to make sure your slides are clean and crisp (less is more)
• How to organize the presentation (more time on motivation and less on technical details)
• Helpful advice on actually giving the talk (be aware of nonverbal communication).

I'd argue that even most experienced presenters can pick up a tip or two from his piece. Once a given bit of research is completed, it's very hard to improve its quality without significant cost. On the other hand, it's relatively easy to improve your ability to present your research. And the marginal payoff to increased presentation skills is pretty big -- conference presentations are a critical part of building your academic and professional reputation, and if you're on a campus visit, your research presentation is one of the most important factors in determining whether you'll get an offer.

So read Shewchuck's list here before your next presentation.

A Good Conference, Followed By More Crazy

I thought I'd put a few impressions of the EFA conference from this past week. While pretty short, it was a very good time: catching up with old friends, making some new ones, getting a lot of work done, and SLEEEEEP!

Because of all the other stuff going on in the Unknown Household, I was only able to get away for a day, so I took an early Friday flight to Baltimore, followed by the train to Washington. I arrived at the conference hotel just before lunch. Between 11:00 Friday and 1:30 Saturday (when I took the hotel shuttle to the airport for my return flight) I

• Had two papers presented (both were presented by coauthors), and received good comments on both. In both cases, the papers were well received by the discussant and the audience.
  
• Met with coauthors on three papers (the two mentioned above and a third one that's also coming along nicely). On two of the papers, we just talked briefly to discuss what needs to be done next to get them out the door. On the third paper, my coauthor and I spent about a hour applying various methods of statistical torture to the data, yielding some pretty nice confessions (oops! - that would be "results").
• Arranged to present a paper at my undergraduate Alma mater in the fall. I know a good number of the faculty, none of which were there back in the dark ages when I was an undergrad. We've been talking about my coming to present some of my work for some time, and it looks like it'll finally happen
• Talked with another potential coauthor about combining some of my data with his methodology.
• Most importantly, I went to bed by 9:30 and (since there was no-one clamoring for a 3 a.m. feeding) slept almost 9 1/2 hours without interruption. Woo Hoo!
  

Just to show that nothing ever changes for long, when I got back, I called the Unknown Wife, and she said it was all right to go to a book store and veg a bit (it's one of my favorite ways to decompress).

Of course, this was followed by a second phone call an hour later telling me that Unknown Son was getting nosebleeds. We called the on-call oncologist and was informed that he was likely low on platelets (they are the clotting factor in the blood, and often get depressed following chemotherapy). So, it was a quick drive home, followed by a trip to the ER, followed by an overnight stay at the hospital so he could get a platelet transfusion (since it was the weekend, we couldn't do it on an outpatient basis.).

He was discharged the next morning, and all's been quiet since.

For now.

FMA Decisions Are Out!

I just heard from a coauthor - we got a paper accepted at the Denver FMA meeting in October. The idea resulted from taking an idea we'd been working on and applying it to another data set we had available.

It's funny - we submitted two papers: this one was an early version, and the other was pretty much finished. However, to be fair, the results on this one were more interesting. And since we'd already gotten one paper on the program, we were actually glad we got the second one rejected - doing two papers at a conference means there's less time for catching up with friends.

This tale of two papers reminds me of a piece I read a while back (unfortunately, I can't recall its title). It discussed how there's a trade-off in research between "newness" and "required rigor". In other words, if you're working on a topic that's been done to death (e.g. capital structure or dividend policy), you'll be asked to do robustness tests out the yazoo. On the other hand, if it's a more novel idea, there's a lower bar on the rigor side, because the "newness" factor gets you some slack on the rigor side. .

In general, however, the "rigor" bar has been ratcheting up for the last 20-30 years, regardless of the "newness" factor. To see this, realize that the average length of a Journal of Finance article in the early 80s was something like l6 pages - now it's more like 30-40. As further (anecdotal) evidence, a friend of mine had a paper published on long-run returns around some types of mergers in the Journal of Banking and Finance about 9 years back. They made him calculate the returns FIVE different ways.

In any event, to make a long story short, I'm hoping we got accepted at FMA because the reviewers though our paper was a good, new idea.

But it's probably because we got lucky.

But either way, we'll take it - see you in Denver!

We Are In Final Approach

Once again, it's that happy time - the end of the semester at Unknown University.

I teach my last classes tomorrow - in one, I hand back some assignments and talk about the final (that means today is all about the grading, and in the other (the student managed fund), I hand out stock assignments for which they must come up with final analyses.

As always, the last week was crazy - the student-managed fund class makes a presentation to the Alumni at the end of every semester, and it's always a mad rush to get it done. They did it this Saturday. As usual (with one or two "foot in mouth" moments) they did a job that far exceeded expectations.

So, all I have left is a bunch of grading (for tomorrow's class) and a couple of exams to write. Then it's back to research (lots of projects to rein in) until Unknown Son starts the next round of treatment.

As my end-of semester treat, I get to fly to Washington for a couple of days for the Eastern Finance Association meeting - catching up with old friends, seeing a few presentations, and (best of all) getting a good night's sleep (Unknown Baby Boy is cute, but it'll be a while before he sleeps through the night). So, I'll take the opportunity to sleep 8 hours without interruption. Woo Hoo!

A Rough Week, and A (Small) Pleasant Surprise

A rough week in the Unknown Household. My sister and mother were planning on driving down Sunday to see the Unknown Baby. Then Saturday, I got a call that my mom had had a heart attack and passed out on the floor. She's all right, and is currently resting comfortably (??) in the ICU waiting to have surgery (she has four "minor" blockages). The surgery will be either Wednesday or Thursday. So, yesterday I drove the two hours to the hospital to visit her. With the Unknown Baby-induced sleep deprivation, it took a fair bit of effort to make it safely there and back.

Today, I taught my classes, and was just getting ready to head back home for a much-needed nap (man - these midnight feeding are getting old very quickly) when I got a call from two coauthors (a former colleague and a former student). They told me that a paper of ours had been accepted at the American Accounting Association (AAA) annual meeting.

It was particularly good news because I didn't even know (or more likely, had forgotten) that it had even been submitted. So, it's like found money. Not a big deal, but I'll take it.

Ah well, it's midnight, and Unknown Baby has input/output issues.

My Picture With Bill Walton

I just got back from the R.I.S.E. conference in Dayton. There were some pretty good sessions, and my students got a lot out of it (as usual). The highlight for me was hearing Bill Walton (the "World's Tallest Grateful Dead Fan") speak -- I grew up a Boston Celtics fan, and he closed his career (as the quintessential Sixth Man) with them.

He was an exceptional speaker - since he's only 5 years older than me, his illustrations and anecdotes were a real trip down memory lane. Also, he's gone through some major stress: he's had over 60 surgeries on his back and feet, and spent almost two years on the floor due to spinal problems. At one point, he was so depressed and in despair that he contemplated suicide. So I get where he's coming from.

Now, only a few years after having his spine pretty much surgically reconstructed in an amazing medical procedure (they basically built an internal support cage around his spine), he's cycled 100 miles across Death Valley.

And yet, the recurring themes of his talk were family ("there's nothing like the pride of a father") relationships, and a whole lot of John Wooden memories. There's something about major crap happening to you (and I know that of which I speak) that gives you perspective.

As a father, cyclist, beate up former jock, and child of the 70s, I can say that I've heard few talks that affected me as much.

Afterward, we (I and my two students) got a chance to get our picture taken with him. Since I operate under a pseudonym, I cut out everyone's face. But just to give you a sense of proportion everyone's head (except for Walton's) is cropped just at the top of the head - I'm about 5' 7"", and the taller of my two students (the one to my left) is 6'2"". The top of my head was about a good half a foot below Walton's chin- it looks like he's standing on a chair. He is an absurdly tall man.

Now THAT was cool.

Back In Dayton Again

I'm out at the R.I.S.E. forum in Dayton with a couple of Unknown University students. I've seen about a half dozen of these, so I thought I'd take a few minutes off from the speakers and knock out a quick post.

We have our new (used) car, and settled with the insurance company on the old one (they came up about $300 from their initial offer on our old car, so the arguing paid off. And, for a net cost of $1400 (the amount of the new (used) car we bought less the insurance settlement, we went from a $2000 Camry with 125,000 miles on it (and some minor body damage) to a 2001 Camry with only 85,000 miles (and a body in pretty much pristine shape. So, all in all, it worked out.

Time to go back for a few more speakers and catch up with some old friends. Then it's back to the hotel room to put up a video for my students.

Last semester, I put together a fairly nice video on Modern Portfolio Theory (the math of variance/covariance, portfolio risk and return, efficient frontier, etc...). I'm rounding it out with another one on some historical returns (basically chapter 5 from Bodie, Kane, and Marcus' investments text). This means that I don;t have to lose class time just because I'm away.
(we cancelled class Friday, since I'm out of town).

So even while I'm away, my students don't have to feel deprived (yeah, right).

Back to the speakers.

The R.I.S.E. Forum

I'm back safe and sound (even if a bit sleep deprived) from the R.I.S.E. Forum in Dayton. It was a great experience for my students (and pretty good for me too).

The first night of the conference, we'd just checked in my student s and I were talking in the hallway. One of the conference big shots (he's a regular talking head on MSNBC on stock market matters walked by, and we struck up a conversation. He said he was meeting at a local tavern with some students that had been out to his company , and invited my students along. So, they ended up having a beer or two with him, and talked stocks for about two hours. The next day, they got to hear Chris Gardener (the book The Pursuit of Happiness was based on his story), and even got their a picture taken with him.

The next two days, we all saw a number of excellent sessions, made a lot of good friends and contacts, and even got some ideas for our Student Managed Fund.

I'd recommend the conference for anyone who's considering it.

Off To Dayton

Blogging will be light for the next couple of days - I'm at the R.I.S.E. Forum in Dayton Ohio. I may post a thing or two, but only if the speakers get too boring (and they've been excellent so far).

I Don't Work Well Under Deadlines

"I don't work well under deadlines. But without them, I don't work at all."

I heard that line about 15 years ago from my dissertation chair, and it's stuck with me.

In the last three weeks, I've sent off three papers to conferences.

• For one, I had to edit abut 40 pages or so. My coauthor (who is a theorist and non0native speaker) wrote the first draft. It's a good idea, but the writing needed a lot of work. We sent it off to the American Accounting Association Meeting. We also sent it off to a regional conference, because the school whee one of my coauthors works at counts these things.
  
• A second is a paper that's been floating around for a while. It needed one final going over before submitting to a journal. We realized a week ago that the initial version had been submitted to the Financial Management Association (FMA) conference and rejected a year ago. This version has a lot more stuff in it and is much more polished. However, I hadn't gotten around to making the last few changes to it. So, I finished them and sent it off to the FMA conference. Now it just needs a little more work and we can submit it to a journal.
  
• A third piece involved a paper we'd talked about with a graduate student. It involves a cross-breeding of his dissertation data and a previous paper done by the coauthor from the paper above. We got the dataset from the student with ten days to go before the deadline, and I started writing things up while my other coauthor started the data analysis. Somehow, we produced a 30 page paper with decent results in that time. It also got submitted to FMA. It still needs work, but I think we can have a journal-submittable version in a month or so.
  

Final tally - three papers submitted to 4 conferences in a span of about 2 weeks, followed by 12 hours of solid sleep.

Now I need to finish edits on a short piece that has a conditional acceptance. There's no deadline looming, but I'm in the groove from the last couple of weeks, so I'm here at the College on MLK day.

Arghhhh!

The deadline for submissions to the FMA (Financial Management Association, our national association) national conference is this Friday. I'm trying to get two papers done - one in which I do the data analysis and hand it off to my coauthor for the writeup and another where the reverse happens (she analyzes and hands off to me). Last week I thought I was in good shape.

Uh oh - I spoke too soon.

First, this weekend when no one is around, my office computer gets cut off from the Internet by the University IT department - they said I had a virus. So, for the weekend I used my laptop for interned access (some citations and work on WRDS), and kept running analysis on my desktop - it has two screens and a lot more power.

Come Monday morning my college's IT guy (who is fantastic, BTW) said he'd look at it. So, I backed up all the relevant stuff for the two papers to a portable hard drive and started working on my notebook. I figure he'd scan the hard drives and give it back to me in a day or so.

Next thing you know, my IT guy tells me that my boot drive has gone Tango Uniform (I have two hard drives in the system - one is the boot drive and the other has all my data on it). Luckily I'd backed up everything from the data drive before giving the machine to him.

It's a 4 year old system, so, it looks like I'll be getting a new system with more memory and a bigger hard drive. But in the meantime, I'm working on a laptop with a 12 inch screen.

Ah well, I'm just about done with my part of the first paper, and I just got a load of stuff from my coauthor on the second one. So it'll be a busy week until Saturday.

One of these days I'll run across this Murphy guy, and we're gonna have some words.