Tuesday Link Dump

No teaching today, so it's time to catch up - there are quizzes to grade and solutions to a problem set to type up for the students. I post the worked out solutions to my problem sets on the web after the problem set has been collected so students see where they went astray in the assignment (and it saves time in class - they can see digest the solutions on their own time rather than me having to blow a whole class period working through them).

And last but not least, I have RESEARCH to do. I've got a paper to carve up and rewrite. The initial draft of the paper was written by my colleagues -- a very good theorist, and a very young but promising empiricist. But the other two "ain't from around these parts". So, since I'm the only one who speaks (and writes) English as a first language, I get to be the writer/editor. Luckily, I like editing.

It's even more interesting, since our study extends some seminal work by someone who's likely to be the referee. So I have to be vewwy, vewwy careful to be complimentary of his contributions (after all, while I'm not hunting Wabbits, I AM hunting publications). Ah well, that's what Chapstick is for.

So, here are some links to keep you busy while I try to be productive:

Stockpickr has a list of the Top 100 Business Blogs (and no, FR isn't on it - sniff!).

CFO.com discusses some issues related to spreadsheet security.

What should you call the payouts an executive receives following a merger? Footnoted.org has some examples from recent mergers.

Banks are talking about developing "Death derivatives". If they can get the right data, it could potentially provide pension funds another tool for hedging mortality risk.

Finally, for the "inside baseball" post of the day, it looks like discrimination in higher education is still around. But now it's against Asian American Students. After all, it wouldn't be fair to make admissions decisions strictly based on merits now, would it?

Back to work -- I don't have tenure yet!