Automating Partial Period Bond Valuation With Excels Day Counting Functions
An Excel model for calculating the actual price of bonds under a 30 day/month, 360 day/year day counting assumption by nesting the DAYS360 function within the PV function is developed. When programmed into an Excel spreadsheet, the model can accommodate annual and semiannual payment bonds sold on or between interest dates using six fundamental inputs, including the bond’s par value, maturity date, annual stated rate of interest, and payment frequency, the annual market rate of interest, and the settlement date. Thus, the model can be applied across the business curriculum in a variety of introductory and more advanced level courses.
Accounting for Bonds With Accrued Interest in Conformity With Brokers' Valuation Formulas
This article explains how to apply brokers' valuation methods to accounting for bonds when interest payments do not coincide with settlement or balance sheet dates. We show how to calculate a bond's present value on these dates using a simple approach that conforms with the method used by brokerage institutions to compute the bond's “actual price.” We then clarify how a broker subtracts accrued interest from this actual price to arrive at the quoted price, and how this quoted price relates to the bond's carrying amount and “fair value” (per SFAS Nos. 107, 115 and 124). We also precisely compute the change in a bond's carrying amount over fractional periods after settlement and around balance sheet dates. Finally, we demonstrate how to integrate these refinements into intermediate textbook illustrations. Throughout, we provide instructions for computing bond valuations using spreadsheet application functions.
Deliberative Democracy and the Resource Curse: A Nationwide Experiment in Tanzania
Oil and gas discoveries in developing countries are often associated with short-sighted economic policies and, in response, calls to insulate resource management from populist impulses. We report on a randomized experiment testing methods to overcome this apparent tension between sound resource governance and democratic politics. Soon after Tanzania’s discovery of major natural gas reserves, we invited a nationally representative sample of voters to an intensive public deliberation of policy options featuring nationally recognized experts and small-group discussions. Democratic deliberation reinforced the public’s strong preference for rapid spending of gas revenues, but also increased support for various prudential and economically orthodox measures, including independent oversight of gas revenues, limits on government borrowing, and selling gas abroad rather than subsidizing fuel at home. These effects were driven by deliberation per se, rather than a pure information treatment, and show no evidence of contamination by facilitatoror peer-effects in group deliberations. www.cgdev.org Justin Sandefur, Nancy Birdsall, James Fishkin, and Mujobu Moyo