Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association (TIAA) and College Retirement Equities Fund (CREF), the largest pension system in the country, has lost its tax exemption, a change that has both created problems and opened doors to new ventures. TIAA-CREF is now seeking opportunities to manage state tuition-savings plans, and has also established six…

Money is being spent on training, without investment in human resources. Investment requires verifying benefits and risks to determine the best options. The role of the individual must be strengthened and investment incentives increased. (SK)

Analyzes shareholder reports of equity mutual funds whose total returns were high in absolute terms, but low in relative terms. Reveals that mixed-return shareholder reports use a nonlinear hyperstructure, dramatize ideas through contrasting narrators, embed a variety of subgenres, and complement verbal with visual discourse in order to make…

Suggests five steps to help plan for retirement: (1) start planning for a retirement home; (2) launch a retirement business now; (3) maximize 401(k) contributions; (4) be informed about 401(k); and (5) create an "event" timeline for college, weddings, and other expensive items. (JOW)

Discusses the Croatian government bill on telecommunications permitting the founding of private radio/television stations. Notes that 10 TV stations have been operating (illegally). States that the greatest problem facing private television is monetary. Notes that foreign investment will not be attracted to Croatia because of small population, a…

Considers how the Internet is revolutionizing the investment world and how the Securities and Exchange Commission recently passed a rule requiring businesses to use plain English to try and rid disclosures of their traditionally complex and ambiguous language. (SC)

Teachers often regard themselves as unlikely candidates for financial success, chiefly because they earn low starting salaries. But people of modest means can build wealth over time if they adhere to certain simple strategies. The goal here is to explain this point as it applies to K-12 teachers. It begins, however, by acknowledging the salary…

The New York state attorney general's office is close to announcing a settlement with the 525,000-member New York State United Teachers over a relationship between the union and ING Group, a large financial-services company based in the Netherlands. In that arrangement, the union's Member Benefits division--a separate trust that provides…

We examine an economy whose consumers have different discount factors for utility, possibly not exponential. We characterize the properties of efficient allocations of resources and of the shadow prices that would decentralize such allocations. We show in particular that the representative agent has a decreasing discount rate when, as is usually…

Building on the existing education literature, we address two interrelated questions. First, how sensitive are estimated returns to two-year and four-year colleges to the inclusion of in-school work experience? Second, do the estimated returns to in-school work experience vary by type of educational institution attended? Regarding the first…

While many teachers have district-funded pensions that are the envy of their counterparts in other professions, the reality is that most must still augment their retirement savings. Yet K-12 educators and administrators are often uninformed about how to invest wisely. In this article, the author relates how former educator Dan Otter discovered…

This article describes how to determine your return on investment when deposits of varying amounts are made over irregular time intervals.

The National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Research in Education (CARE), consisting of a national commission, research advisory group, and research team at New York University, aims to provoke thoughtful and actionable discussions about the mobility and educational opportunities for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs)…

While it is recognised that employers invest a substantial amount of money and time in training, the exact nature and amount of this investment is poorly measured and understood. This project set out to supplement the available data, which have many limitations, with more detailed data for selected industries. However, it became quickly apparent…

Rural communities face significant obstacles in providing access to the high-quality pre-k programs needed to help mitigate these problems. In addition to limited local tax revenues, many rural areas experience high rates of poverty and a scarcity of qualified teachers. Given these and other challenges, federal investments may be necessary in…