Monday, October 29, 2007

The News-Gazette.com:Top salaries continue to rise as UI competes for talent

Well this was sent to me, it is not to as a means of saying so and so gets too much, merely to report that it really is a different world. This is from the University of Illinois.

The News-Gazette.com:Top salaries continue to rise as UI competes for talent :
"As of fall 2006, the average salary for a full-time professor at the UI was $95,700, up $13,400 or 16 percent since 2002. When comparing that average salary to those at the 21 institutions, the UI ranks third from the bottom, behind Michigan, Texas and North Carolina but ahead of Washington and Wisconsin....In recent years, as turnovers have occurred in high-level positions at the university, salaries for new employees have often risen well above the predecessor's pay. Four years ago, the UI's vice president for technology and economic development, David Chicoine, earned $262,500. UI College of Business Dean Avijit Ghosh will assume that post in January and earn $339,000....Of the more than 100 people who earn $200,000 or more at the UI, many are in the business and law schools. And many hold endowed chairs, meaning some of the salary is funded by a donor.Such top faculty earners include finance Professor Jeff Brown, who has the title of William Karnes Professor of Mergers and Acquisitions, and a salary of $245,000;"
This does show how much salaries can vary. At small schools (such as SBU) it may take the sum of four years to make that much. :( Oh well...having traveled to mid Ohio, Orlando, and NYC in the last three weeks, I can definitely say I would not want to trade places.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Do Finance Profs practice what they preach?

Sometimes the most important finding of an article is not played up while lesser items (especially those that appear to more exciting or controversial) are given more play. For instance from SmartMoney:

Finance Profs Reveal How They Invest Own Money (The Pro Shop) | SmartMoney.com:
"Colby Wright, assistant professor of finance at Central Michigan University and James Doran, finance professor at Florida State University, [survey] ... finance professors. After all, they're arguably the most educated and well-informed people when it comes to understanding the mysteries behind stock price movements. [I think the article somehow left out 'best looking", funniest, and "nicest" as well.] So Wright and Doran set out to survey all the professors of finance in the U.S. and ask what's most important to them when investing their own money. The survey resulted in 642 usable responses. They published their results earlier this year in a paper titled 'What Really Matters When Buying and Selling Stocks?"
The findings were not exactly what we would think. For instance the survey suggests that PE ratios, market multiples, and momentum investing are among the keys and not CAPM, efficient markets and the market risk factors.
"Out of 43 variables given, the most important were a company's price/earnings ratio and how close a stock is to its 52-week high to low. Considering the material most finance professors teach their students as a way of explaining stock price movements — like the capital asset pricing model and discounted cash flows — Wright calls the findings surprising"
Which is true to a degree, but virtually all finance classes also cover market multiples, such as PE ratios, in some format. For instance in my classes I harp on the fact that both Discounted CAsh Flow analysis and multiples are really doing something very similar just in a different way and there is a place for both. In fact, we generally say that the time to perform a DCF projection is often not worth it for small investments.

Had that been the entire story it MIGHT have been blog worthy. However, after reading the actual article it screamed "Blog me!"

It could be argued that the main finding of the paper was not the reported use of mutliples and momentum investing, but that "...over two-thirds of the sample are passive investors, and not because they don’t have the time to invest."

Thus, the headline grabbing headlines were not from the entire sample but only a small subsample of active investors.

Which to my biased reading suggests that the majority of finance professors do appear to practice what they preach!