If you've finished exams or are looking for a diversion...

...I thought you might be interested in these posts.  They are my take on what students do outside the classroom for a course.

This first one was written six years ago.  It represents an ideal I'd like to see approximated. It's called, How do students play at their schoolwork?

This second one was written just a few weeks ago.  It is grimmer in describing the environment, but more realistic.  It's called Measuring Attendance and Knowledge Transfer.

I hope you have a great summer.  If it occurs to you, in six months or a year drop me a note to let me known what you're up to and whether anything from our class stuck with you.

Prof. Arvan

Grades Posted in Moodle

If you go into the class Moodle site you will find a new discussion forum which has your course grade in it and a little summary remark.  Also, if you go to the Grades link on the left you will see all your component scores to show how your grade was determined.

I'll put the grades in Banner in a bit.  Good luck on the rest of this week.

A little video for tomorrow's class

From the movie The Paper Chase.

Tidbits for Tuesday

• I will bring donuts for our last class session/review of the semester.  If you want coffee or some other beverage, that's on you. 
• There are blog posts due in advance of the session (preferably by tomorrow evening, which is the scheduled time).  Comments are not required this week, since we don't have a Thursday class.  But if you read somebody else's post and want to react to it by all means do.  
• I will also go over how I will determine final course grades.  
• This is not required but you might find this piece on Stanford from the most recent issue of the New Yorker more than a little interesting, and perhaps quite a contrast to your own college experience.  

For Our Last Class Session Next Tuesday

I'd like to talk about the following piece in conjunction with a tiny bit on the organization as a culture and our wrap up.

The Creative Monopoly - NYTimes.com via kwout

Links/Issues for Tomorrow's Class session

"No one can earn a million dollars honestly."
       -- William Jennings Bryan

Historical Fortune 500
Kevin Hallock paper on Interlocking Directorates
David Larcker presentation on Executive Compensation

What is happening in the product market to enable a firm's stock to experience high growth rates?

When this happens was the stock undervalued earlier?

What about CEO risk aversion?
Disruptive Innovation

A couple of videos to watch before class on Tuesday

We're talking about Executive Compensation on Tuesday.  I encourage you to watch these videos to make the topic more real for you.  This first one is from Forbes.  It's about CEO pay in the 500 largest companies. The video is in the middle of the page.  One obvious fact that emerges from this is that the bulk of the pay is from the cashing in of prior accumulated stock or stock options.   Some of these CEOs take very little in salary.   Another interesting thing is how Forbes measures company performance - by growth rate in stock share value over an extended period.  This makes sense if the market evaluates the company's balance sheet accurately.

The other video is from the NewsHour last Wednesday, about Citigroup Shareholders rejecting a pay package for their CEO.  This is news worthy because of its novelty.  Indeed, M&R says this can't happen, that it's the Board that sets CEO compensation, the shareholders having no say in the matter.  But that has changed recently as a consequence of Dodd-Frank regulation.  It's certainly interesting to ask whether this new form of governance will have a retarding impact on CEO compensation, particularly at companies that don't perform well by the Forbes metric.

On the personification of power and what it means to be a good writer

This is a featured piece on Robert Caro, a Pulitzer Prize winning author and autobiographer of Lyndon Johnson.  Johnson, while in the Senate was the practitioner of power par excellence.  That's power as in "power over."  It's a good read for a slow Sunday.  And it makes one wonder whether the gridlock we see in Congress today is because there is nobody of Johnson's ilk anymore.

A current example of "strutting"

This one backfired, but the intent is clear enough.

Less Is More

During the middle of today's presentation, it occurred to me I should have given more guidance on how to conduct these sessions.  In today's session Big Bang "covered" the entire chapter in B&D,  with slides both on the examples and all the points in the chapter.  That approach gives breadth but not much depth.  It would be better for the subsequent presentations to focus on some key aspect of the chapter and then get into it deeper.  Try for examples not in the book.  See if you can hit a nerve with the other students in the class.  Also, if your team wants that, you can lead the discussion of the posts, if you think that will help you get into your topic.  Just let me know if you want to do that.