Islamic Finance: Lower Risk, But at What Cost? - BusinessWeek: "Financial products based on 8th-century religious laws may seem an unlikely haven during a global crisis. But Islamic banking and financial services, based on traditional Muslim laws known as Sharia, are enjoying a major resurgence. ... Read more

From the AFA program:SSRN-In Search of Attention by Zhi Da, Joseph Engelberg, Pengjie Gao: "Abstract: Turnover, extreme returns, news and advertising expense are indirect proxies of investor attention. In contrast, we propose a direct measure of investor demand for attention -- active attention -- ... Read more

I had a student ask about this...Why China Hates The Carry Trade: "A carry trade is when you borrow from a currency with a low interest rate, and then invest in a currency with a higher interest rate. Say the US interest rate is 3%, and the Chinese interest rate is 5%. Borrow at 3%, invest at 5%, ma ... Read more

Great article by Andrew Ross Sorkin at the NY Times:DealBook Column - Do Stockholders Really Know Best? - News Analysis - NYTimes.com: "British takeover law essentially handcuffs the board of a target company from doing anything to block a deal. No poison pills. No staggered boards. No changing the ... Read more

Here is the paper we were talking about yesterday in class when we relaxed the Modigliani and Miller assumptions of no transaction costs and allowed there to be market imperfections. The conclusion was that financial slack may be more valuable than we used to think.SSRN-The Real Effects of Financial ... Read more

Love And Envy Linked By Same Hormone, Oxytocin: "A new study carried out at the University of Haifa has found that the hormone oxytocin, the 'love hormone,' which affects behaviors such as trust, empathy and generosity, also affects opposite behaviors, such as jealousy and gloating." ... Read th ... Read more

Finally a finance article that students will care about! Clusterstocks's Business Insider posts on the price of beer in various countries as tied to market power of the top beer producers. Morgan Stanley: Blame Market Consolidation For The Soaring Cost Of Beer: "Morgan Stanley shows pretty convincin ... Read more

UPDATE: Some Retailers Could Follow Wal-Mart's Credit Program - WSJ.com: "While companies with very strong credit are considered the most likely to be able to follow Wal-Mart if they choose, there are others that could supply their credit rating in certain cases for the supplier to obtain bank finan ... Read more

YouTube - Nice Guys Finish First (1/5) - Richard Dawkins: "First (of five) part of the 1986 documentary from the BBC Horizon series. In this video Richard Dawkins explains how natural selection can favour co-operation in nature, so long as it is of benefit to the selfish gene....in their attempts to ... Read more

The Psy-Fi Blog: Anchoring, The Mother of Behavioral Biases:"Anchoring is an easy-to-demonstrate, hard-to-eradicate behavioural bias that has all sorts of nasty implications for investors, many of them not obvious. In fact, along with availability, it has the claim to be the mother of all biases.The ... Read more