John
Cochrane's Web Page
Last update: May 7 2008.
Links
Teaching materials
and class webpags
Family web page (Warning: laughing too hard at the Hippo page may cause health problems.)
Vita A chronological listing of all papers, now with links and citation information.
Short bio.
Data
and Programs for many papers
Books
Asset
pricing Revised Edition. This link gives you a sample chapter.
Click here to go to the
Princeton Unversity press website where you can order the book. (It is sometimes
cheaper at Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.com. In
Financial Markets
and the Real Economy Volume 18 of the International Library of Critical Writings
in Financial Economics, John H. Cochrane Ed., London: Edward Elgar. March
2006. Edited volume of collected articles
Papers
Writing tips
and paper topics for PhD students
Asset Pricing – unpublished old papers (but still useful, I
think)
Fiscal theory and monetary economics
Miscellaneous – includes health insurance and risk sharing, unit
roots, near-rational behavior and transition
All papers
are Adobe Acrobat files. Update your free acrobat reader if you have
trouble by clicking here. If you have
trouble downloading papers, the most common problem is that you have an old
version of acrobat.
All work is copyright © John H. Cochrane. Copyrights of some published papers are held
by the publishers. Please
do not keep copies of these files on any other computer system. You are welcome
to post links.
Decomposing the Yield Curve First big revision, March 14 2008. With Monika Piazzesi; early draft presented at the September 2006 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity conference. We work out an affine term structure model that incorporates our bond risk premia from “Bond Risk Premia” in the AER. There are lots of interesting dynamics – level, slope and curvature forecast future bond risk premia, and we discover that market prices of risk are really simple. We use the model to decompose the yield curve – given a yield (forward) curve today, how much is expected future interest rates, and how much is risk premium? How does the yield or forward rate premium correspond to the term structure of expected return premia? Was the “conundrum” a conundrum? The big revision gets rid of much of the chat and focuses on one, successful affine model.
A Mean-Variance Benchmark for Intertemporal Portfolio Theory Big revision Feb 21 2008 (was December 5 2005). Applies good old fashioned mean-variance portfolio analysis to the entire stream of dividends rather than to one-period returns. Appendix
Inflation
Determination with Taylor Rules: A Critical Review. September 12 2007. The most basic question in macroeconomics is,
what determines the price level? The
Identification
with Taylor Rules: A Critical Review September
12 2007. The parameters of the
These two papers are revisions of “Identification and Price Determination with Taylor Rules: A Critical Review’’ given at the April 2005 mini-conference on monetary economics at Indiana Univeristy, and at the September 2007 NBER EFG meeting at the New York Fed.
Portfolio theory Feb 20 2007 This is a draft of a portfolio theory chapter for the next revision of Asset Pricing. I (of course) take a p = E(mx) approach to portfolio theory before covering the classic Merton-style direct approach. I emphasize the importance of outside income.
Efficient Markets Today Talk given at the Conference on Chicago Economics Nov 10 2007. A second “discount rate” revolution has followed the first efficient-markets revolution, and dramatically changes how we think about financial markets. Alpha and beta are dead.
Comments on the credit situation given at the GSB Global Financial Markets Forum, Sept 25 2007. Some good aspects of the current situation, some unheralded aspects of the Fed’s policy, some things that went wrong, and the downside of some quick fixes. Video of the event.
Options, portfolios and hedge funds. August 2005 Slides for a talk reviewing hedge funds that I’ve given several places. Big points: hedge fund returns look like options, hedge fund betas are a lot bigger than you think, the effects of the option-like nature of hedge fund compensiation, and how do you form a portfolio of hedge funds. (Is fund A shorting something that fund B is going long, and that you already have in your portfolio? If so, what a great way to lose money fast!)
Cost of Capital. Slides for a talk on cost of capital given
at NABE conference, Sept 25 2005. The old advice to use the CAPM and 6% for
cost of capital doesn’t make any sense now that we know expected returns vary
over time.
Asset Pricing and the Equity Premium Slides for the Smith-O’Brian Lecture, Notre Dame University, October 8 2004. (An update of several related talks)
Writing tips and paper topics for PhD
students
Writing tips for PhD students. May 2005 Avoid all those big red marks. Use this as a checklist before you ask me to read your paper!
Paper topic suggestions for PhD students. (2003 so a bit out of date) A list of doable topic ideas for class papers and second year papers. Some are potential thesis topics.
The Dog that Did Not Bark: A Defense of Return Predictability. Review of Financial Studies Advance Access September 2007. Taken alone, returns may not look that predictable. However, price-dividend ratios vary, so either returns or dividend growth must be forecastable (or both). Implications for dividends, and long-run forecasts give strong statistical evidence against the null that returns are not forecatsable. I address the Goyal-Welch finding that forecasts do badly out of sample, and the long literature criticizing long-run forecasts. The most important practical takeaway: even if you assume that all variation in market p/d ratios comes from time-varying expected returns, and none corresponds to dividend growth forecasts, you will typically find that market-timing strategies based on fitting the regression don’t work.
Two Trees Jan 2008, (with Francis Longstaff and Pedro Santa-Clara), Review of Financial Studies 21 (1) 347-385. We solve the model with two Lucas trees, iid dividends and log utility. Surprise: it has interesting dynamics. If one stock goes up it is a larger share of the market. Its expected return must rise so that people are willing to hold it despite its now larger share.
Bond
Risk Premia with Monika Piazzesi.
Published in American Economic Review
95:1, 138-160. We forecast one year bond
excess returns with a 44% R2! More
importantly, a single factor, a single linear combination of yields or forward
rates, forecasts one-year returns of all maturity bonds. Read here the Appendix with lots of extra analysis. (Updated Sept
2006 to fix typos in forward rate formulas.) Follow the data and programs link
above if you want the data and programs. Look at the pretty plot of how our forecasts work out of sample since
we wrote the paper. Read the Response to Ken Singleton
regarding his criticism of our results in a paper with Dai and Yang, and then
published in his book Empirical Dynamic
Asset Pricing (
International Risk Sharing is Better Than You Think, Or Exchange Rates are Too Smooth with Michael Brandt and Pedro Santa Clara. Published Journal of Monetary Economics 53 (4) May 2006 671-698. Original July 2001 (NBER WP 8404) The equity premium means that marginal rates of substitution are very volatile, with more than 50% standard deviation. Exchange rates are the ratio of marginal rates of substitution, and they only vary by about 12%. Therefore, marginal rates of substitution must be highly correlated across countries. Risk sharing is better than you think.
Liquidity, Trading and Asset
Prices. Jan 2005. A review of
these issues in the NBER asset pricing group, published in the winter 2005 NBER reporter.
Famous First Bubbles: The
Fundamentals of Early Manias.” Journal of Political Economy 109,
(October 2001),1150-1154. Review of the very nice book by Peter Garber, looking
at the facts behind the tulip “bubble” and related myths. It turns out they are
mythical. I had a lot of fun with this one.
Stocks as Money: Convenience Yield and the Tech-Stock Bubble. May 2002. The “arbitrage opportunity” in Palm vs. 3Com stock might be like the arbitrage opportunity between money and treasury bills. I document many similar features, including high turnover in the “overpriced” security. Presented at the Chicago Fed Conference on asset price bubbles, April 2002.
The Risk and Return of Venture Capital (published version) Journal of Financial Economics, Volume 75, Issue 1, January 2005, 3-52. Last Manuscript Estimates the mean return, standard deviation, alpha and beta of venture capital investments, correcting for selection bias that we only see returns for successful projects. Even if you don’t like venture capital, the selection bias correction is interesting. Original December 2000. Appendix containing data and program descriptions plus extra algebra. See above data and programs link for data and programs.
“By Force of Habit: A
Consumption-Based Explanation of Aggregate Stock Market Behavior” Journal of Political Economy, 107,
205-251 (April 1999) (With John Y. Campbell) JSTOR
Manuscript
with extra appendices A utility function with a slow-moving habit generates
slow-moving countercyclical risk aversion. In turn this generates time-varying
price/dividend ratio that forecasts stock returns, does not forecast dividends,
and so forth. Balancing intertemporal substitution with precautionary savings
gives a constant interest rate, the usual problem with habit models. The NBER working paper version includes
a time-varying interest rate, which also generates yield spreads that forecast
bond returns.
Explaining the Poor Performance of Consumption-Based Asset Pricing Models (With John Y. Campbell). Journal of Finance 55(6) (December 2000) 2863-2878. The CAPM outperforms the consumption-based model in artificial data from the habit persistence model used in "By force of Habit.."
Beyond Arbitrage: Good-Deal Asset Price Bounds in Incomplete Markets (With Jesus Saa-Requejo.) Journal of Political Economy 108, 79-119, 2000 We add a Sharpe ratio or discount factor volatility constraint to the standard no-arbitrage restriction and obtain useful bounds on option prices in environments that don't allow perfect replication. Most importantly we show how to do this in multiperiod and continuous-time, continuous-trading environments, and there are lots of applications and pretty pictures. Final manuscript with algebra appendix
“A Cross-Sectional Test of an Investment-Based Asset Pricing Model” Journal of Political Economy, 104 (June 1996) A factor model with two investment returns (roughly, investment growth) to explain the cross section of stock returns. It is also where I first thought about conditional vs. unconditional models, scaling factors in GMM, and (somewhat dangerous) plots of average returns vs. predicted.
“Asset Pricing Explorations for Macroeconomics”,1992 NBER Macroeconomics Annual 115-165. (With Lars Peter Hansen) Many variations on Hansen-Jagannathan bounds, including bounds that reflect the low correlation of consumption growth with asset returns, and bounds that reveal interest rate variation by variation in the conditional mean discount factor. A plea to take macro-finance seriously, aimed both at macro and finance audiences. It’s the only way to tell or even define if prices are “rational”, and what else sets marginal rates of transformation to marginal rates of substitution?
“Explaining the Variance of Price-Dividend Ratios” Review of Financial Studies (1992) 5:2, 243-280 Variance of p/d = its ability to forecast returns + its ability to forecast dividend growth. It’s all the former, none the latter. The paper includes an alternative to Campbell-Shiller decomposition, and discount factor bounds coming from price-dividend moments.
“Volatility Tests and Efficient Markets: A Review Essay” Journal of Monetary Economics 27 (May 1991) 463-485. A review essay supposedly about Shiller’s book. It got me to think hard about volatility tests, and prove that they are exactly equivalent to regressions that forecast returns from price-dividend ratios.
Production-Based Asset Pricing and the
Link Between Stock Returns and Economic Fluctuations. Journal of Finance
46 (1) (March 1991) 209-237. The q theory works pretty well if you difference
it – investment growth is nicely correlated with stock returns,
and the I/K ratio forecasts future stock returns. JSTOR
Asset pricing – unpublished old papers (but still useful, I think, or they wouldn’t be here!)
"Good-deal option price bounds with stochastic volatility and stochastic interest rate." (With Jesus Saa-Requejo) Jan 1999 A real continuous-time, two-state variable application of the good deal technology.
A rehabilitation of stochastic discount factor methodology July 2000 A short note showing how Kan and Zhou (1999) went wrong. Adapted from comments on Jagannathan and Wang given at the spring 2000 NBER asset pricing meeting. This version contains an algebraic appendix to derive the last equation in the paper.
Rethinking Production Under Uncertainty 1993. Standard production technologies y(t) = shock(t) f(k) allow transformation across time but not across states of nature. Hence, the marginal rates of transformation needed to construct a true “production based asset pricing model” are undefined. This paper starts to think about how one might sensibly construct a technology that allows producers to transform goods across states of nature, and hence to construct a real “production-based” model, independent of preferences. Also did not result in a published paper, as I got stuck on an identification problem.
Production Based Asset Pricing 1988. NBER working paper 2776. This one uses two technologies and two states to infer contingent claims prices from production decisions, and matches the equity premium and term premium. It has nothing to do with the “Production-based” papers that came later in the Journal of Finance and JPE. I abandoned the project because it’s too easy – there are no probabilities in firm decisions with this standard technology, so it’s very easy to get contingent claims prices that differ from probabilities.
Recent work by Frederico Belo and Urbann Jermann may finally break through the identification problems and make the approaches of these last two papers work.
Fiscal theory and
monetary economics
Fiscal
theory
Money as Stock 2004. (Original August 1999). Journal of Monetary Economics The fiscal theory of the price level made simple. The `government budget constraint' is not a constraint. I reopen the security market at the end of the day in a cash in advance model, and show that the price level is still determinate. I also resolve the criticism that the fiscal theory mistreats the "government budget constraint." Another big revision. Much shorter and better written.
"Long term debt and optimal policy in the fiscal theory of the price level" Econometrica 69, 69-116 (2001). The fiscal theory with long term debt, and how to match the fiscal theory with business-cycle variation in debt and inflation. We typically write fiscal theory models with one-period debt, but the maturity structure turns out to matter a lot. For example, if the government pays off a perpetuity, then the price level is determined by the coupon coming due each year and that year’s taxes, with no present value of future taxes. I also resolve the empirical puzzle that inflation and deficits seem not to commove. That’s exactly what we expect of a government that’s trying to smooth inflation in the face of fiscal shocks.
"A Frictionless model of U.S. Inflation" NBER Macroeconomics Annual, April 1998.
The fiscal foundations
of monetary regimes (paper, and powerpoint presentation) January 2003. The choice of
monetary regime – interest rate rule, exchange rate peg, currency board,
dollarization, etc. depends on fiscal constraints, especially for developing
countries. Talk given at the 2003 NBER/NCAER Neemrana conference,
Monetary economics
The Fed and Interest Rates -- A High Frequency Identification Jan 2002 with Monika Piazzesi. We measure monetary policy shocks by how they surprise daily bond markets. There's a beautiful Taylor rule in interest rate forecasts.
“What do the VARs Mean?: Measuring the Output Effects of Monetary Policy Journal of Monetary Economics 41:2 April 1998 277-300 (Revision of NBER WP 5154 June 1995; (Manuscript with a bit clearer pdf). Responses to monetary policy shocks seem long and drawn out. Do we need models with extensive frictions? No, because the response of policy to polich shocks is also drawn out. If you allow expected policy to affect output and inflation, you can make sense of drawn out impulse-response functions with a very short structural response, but a long-lasting impulse.
“Shocks” Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy 41, (December
1994) 295-364. A comprehensive look at which shocks matter and which don’t,
including technology, money, oil and credit. None of the above accounts for
much of economic fluctuations or inflation. Monetary policy shocks in
particular account for very little output fluctuation and zero inflation
variation. “Consumption” shocks, reflecting information agents see but we do
not see do a pretty good job, but are harder to integrate into economic theory.
The Return of the Liquidity Effect: A Study of the Short Run Relation Between Money Growth and Interest Rates” Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 7 (January 1989) 75-83. In the short run, we expect money growth and interest rates to be negatively correlated – the “liquidity effect.” In the long run, they should be positively correlated – the “inflation effect.” I used bandpass filters to isolate the “runs” and confirmed this prediction. This paper was part of my PhD thesis, and inspired by reading a misleading graph in a Wall Street Journal Op Ed that claimed we were in a new “super-neutrality” regime in which the correlation was always positive.
Health Insurance; risk sharing
“Time-Consistent Health Insurance” Journal of Political Economy, 103 (June 1995) 445-473. None of us has health insurance, really. You get sick, you lose your job or get divorced, and now you have a preexisting condition. This paper shows how to implement “premium increase insurance” that gets around the problem. If you get sick, you get a lump sum that allows you to pay higher insurance premiums. It allows a private-market solution to the main problem of health insurance attracting regulation.
A Simple Test of Consumption Insurance” Journal of Political Economy 99:5 (October 1991) 957-976. Are consumers effectively insured against idiosyncratic shocks, either by formal institutions such as charities, private insurance, government programs, or by informal mechanisms such as gifts and “loans” from relatives, friends and neighbors? I test for insurance using regressions of consumption growth on exogenous variables. Thinking through the specification of the regressions is not easy. I reject full insurance for long illness and involuntary job loss, but not for spells of unemployment, loss of work due to a strike and an involuntary move.
Unit roots; permanent and
transitory components
Permanent and Transitory Components of GNP and Stock Prices” Quarterly Journal of Economics CIX (February 1994) 241-266. This is my favorite solution to the permanent/transitory decomposition issue for GNP and stock prices. I use bivariate autoregressions of consumption and GNP, and of dividends and stock prices. Consumption and dividend growth are unpredictable, so act as stochastic trends for GNP and stock prices. A movement in stock prices with no current change in dividends is completely transitory, so can be labeled an “expected return” shock. A movement in stock prices with a change in dividends is permanent and so is a “permanent earnings” shock. Note the QJE switched Figure II and III.
“A Critique of The
Application of Unit Root Tests” Journal
of Economic Dynamics and Control 15 (April 1991) 275-284. Running a battery
of unit root/cointegration tests and then imposing the answers on subsequent
analysis is a bad idea. Alas, there is no substitute for plotting the data and
thinking about what makes sense.
“Multivariate
Estimates of the Permanent Components in GNP and Stock Prices” Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control,
12 (June/July 1988) 255-296. (With Argia M. Sbordone). This paper sits halfway
between the “random walk in GNP” JPE and “permanent and transitory components”
QJE. The “random walk” is univariate. Here, we realized that consumption could
tell you a lot about the permanent component of GNP. Here, we use that insight
in spectral and variance-ratio calculations. The answers are the same as in
“permanent and transitory components”, but I now prefer the simpler VAR
treatment in that paper. When GNP or stock prices are cointegrated with a random walk the subtle long-horizon and
“nonparametric” techniques needed in the “random walk in GNP” really are no
longer needed; short order models to produce good long-term forecasts.
“How Big is the Random
Walk in GNP?” Journal of Political
Economy 96 (October 1988) 893-920. Short-order ARMA models suggest that GNP
looks a lot like a random walk. But short-order ARMA models are fit to match
one-step ahead forecasts, and can do a poor job of capturing long-term
forecastability. I used a variance-ratio statistic (variance of long-term
differences / variance of one-year differences) to show that there is a lot of
mean-reversion in GNP that short-order ARMA models miss. I think the subsequent
“permanent and transitory components” answers the substantive question better,
but the warning about using long-term implications of short-term models remains
worthwhile today.
“The Sensitivity of Tests of the Intertemporal Allocation of Consumption to Near-Rational Alternatives” American Economic Review 79 (June 1989) 319-337. Many tests of the permanent income model or consumption based asset pricing models exploit predictions that imply trivial utility costs. For example, adjusting consumption when you get the check rather than when you get the news can have utility costs of a few cents. Since our models abstract from small real-world costs and frictions, I proposed the idea of using the region of trivial utility costs as a measure of “economic standard errors” for model predictions.
Macroeconomics in Russia” in Economic Transition in Eastern Europe and Russia: Realities of Reform, Edward Lazear Ed., Hoover Institution Press, 1995. Imagine for a moment that the Federal Reserve imposed the following policies in the United States: Every company must pay for all its inputs before they are shipped, and taxes must also be prepaid. But there is no trade credit, and banks do not make working capital loans to purchase inputs. Checks take 90 days to clear… Chaos would result… This is roughly what happened in Russia during the summer of 1992. The story… points to the importance of macroeconomic policies, and the unintended macroeconomic effects of policy, in understanding developments in Russia and the Former Soviet Union. It also suggests that many macroeconomic problems are not inevitable consequences of the transition to a market economy, but rather that they are avoidable unintended effects of partial liberalizations.
Inflation
Stabilization in the Reforming Socialist Economies: The Myth of the Monetary
Overhang” Comparative Economic Studies 33:2 (1991) 97-122. (With Barry W. Ickes.)
Financial markets and the Real Economy (latest proofs, August 2007) Everything you wanted to know, but didn’t have time to read, about equity premium, consumption-based models, investment-based models, general equilibrium in asset pricing, labor income and idiosyncratic risk.
Review of “Famous First Bubbles” by Peter M. Garber December 2000. A review of Peter Garber's book on tulip bubbles and south seas, for the JPE.. Published version from JPE website October 2001.
New Facts in Finance April 1999. This is a review essay of the transition from unpredictable returns and CAPM to predictable returns and multifactor models. Economic Perspectives XXIII (3) Third quarter 1999 (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago), also NBER working paper 7169.
Portfolio Advice for a Multifactor World April 1999. This is a review and interpretation of how portfolio theory should adapt in a multifactor, predictable world. See especially the three dimensional update of the two fund theorem. Economic Perspectives XXIII (3) Third quarter 1999 (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago), also NBER working paper 7170.
"Where is the Market Going? Uncertain Facts
and Novel Theories" Will stocks average 9% for the next 50 years? The
equity premium, return predictability, and a review of Economic Perspectives
XXI: 6 (November/December) 1997 (Federal Reserve Bank of
Investments notes. Jan 2005. Notes for MBA investments classes. Summary of background (statistics, regression, time series, matrices, maximization) and a concise treatment of some of the standard topics (bond notation and expectations hypothesis, bond pricing)
"Time series for macroeconomics and Finance" Lecture notes for PhD time series course. Jan 2005 revision finally includes the figures!
Solving real business cycle models by solving systems of
first order conditions Set of
lecture notes from 1993. Still, underground copies are circulating, so you can
get a fresh one here.
Comments
Written
Comments
Risks and Regimes in the Bond Market. April 2008. Comments on Atkeson and Kehoe’s paper for the 2008 Macroeconomics Annual. Risk premia are important for understanding interest rates, and monetary policy. I see no evidence for “anchored expectations” in interest rate data. Once you take account of risk premiums, expected long run interest rates are still very volatile. The yield curve has not become more downward sloping on average, as it should if inflation risks have decreased. If anything, risk premia in long-term bonds are increasing. Atkeson and Kehoe advocate a fascinating view that risk premia cause monetary policy, not vice versa.
‘Macroeconomic
Implications of Changes in the Term Premium’ by Glenn Rudebusch, Brian Sack
and Eric Swanson. Comments given at the conference “Frontiers in Monetary
Policy Research” at the
“A new measure of Monetary Policy” by Christina and David Romer, presented at the July 2004 EFG meeting.
What ends recessions? by David and Christina Romer, 1994 NBER Macroeconomics Annual 58-74. JSTOR
What are monetary policy shocks? The fed never says “and another 50 bp for the
heck of it.” This led to “What do the VARs mean?” above
“Why Test the Permanent Income Hypothesis? Comments on ‘The Response of Consumption to Income: a Cross-Country Investigation’” by John Campbell and N. Gregory Mankiw, European Economic Review 35 (4) May 1991. Why indeed, now that we think of equilibrium models, not a “consumption function.”
What Should Macroeconomists Know About Unit Roots? Comments on
‘Pitfalls and Opportunities: What
Macroeconomists Should Know About
Unit Roots’” by John Campbell,
1991 NBER Macroeconomics Annual 6, (1991), 201-210 JSTOR Another
blistering critique of the (mis) use of unit root econometrics.
Comment slides
“Daily Monetary Policy Shocks and the Delayed Response of New Home Sales” by James D. Hamilton. Comments given at April 2007 NBER Monetary Economics program meeting, NY. Includes some new thoughts on “what’s a monetary policy shock?”
“The Returns to Currency Speculation” by Craig Burnside, Martin Eichenbaum, Isaac Kleshchelski and Sergio Rebelo. Comments given at Jan 2007 AEA/AFA meetings.
Anomalies by Lu Zhang, presented at the November 2004 AP meeting.
For glider pilots
Me, poolishing the tail before takeoff. Ok, nobody ever polishes the tail that way, but it made for a good photograph. Photo by Chris Strong for the GSB alumni magazine
Me, ready for takeoff and finishing at the 2007 18 meter national contest, Albert Lea MN. Photo by Paul Remde.
Ok you’re not really a glider pilot, but this looks a lot more fun than asset pricing, doesn’t it? Go to the SSA (Soaring Society of America) web page to see what gliders look like and where you can try it. The sailplane racing association has more information about glider contests. If you go out to an airport say “trial lesson” and make them put you in front. Don’t say “ride” or they’ll treat you like a tourist, stuff you in back and charge you too much. Chicago Glider club (where I fly)
Videos (youtube links): Aerobatics over the Alps; Soaring over the Alps
Chicago
Glider club CFI training page
MacCready and other theory of how to fly contests
NISC rules for 2008; rules in doc format; The rules contain a short guide to flying the contest and a summary of important rules changes for 2008.
The worldwide soaring turnpoint exchange has the turnpoint and landpoint database (updated April 2008). You’ll have to cut these down to fit in a Cambridge model 20.
Some long tasks using Northern Illinois turnpoints.
Illinois Soaring forecast links. My weekend morning forecast ritual.
Since Feb 2006 I have been writing the “contest corner” column for Soaring Magazine. Here’s a list of topics I have in mind for future columns. Feel free to suggest other topics or to let me know which of these you want to hear sooner rather than later.
Here are drafts of upcoming columns and repository of old columns.
Invitation to contests. Feb 2006
Local contests. April 2006
Contest Finishes. It’s a “how-to” article, with no ranting and raving about rules. June 2006
Sports class growing pains. Handicaps, team selection and more. August 2006
Upwind and downwind The theory of upwind and downwind turnpoints. Oct 2006
Circling in Psychological Sink Musings on how to produce a contest-winning attitude. Dec 2006
Thermal Detectors Feb 2007
Distance Rules Explains the new scoring formulas that give more distance points. April 2007
Goodbye Rolling Finish Feb 2008. Explains the new finish penalty that replaces rolling finishes under a finish cylinder.
Start anywhere March 2008. Explains the new start procedure, with some things to watch for.
Karl Striedieck classics
These are most of Karl’s “contest corner” articles. They are copyright © Karl Striedieck, so check with him before republishing or reproducing. Dates are my best guesses based on the Soaring Magazine index
The US Team and the Rules December 2003
Tweaking the TAT November 2002
User Friendly Contests December 2000
World View Jan 2001
A Better Sniffer August 2002
Bridging the Gap Feburary 2003
Club/Sports issues October 2000
The SRA December 2001
Contest Fees June 2004
Crewless Pilots December 1999
Going it Alone (more crewless pilots, not how Karl wins contests without leeching.)
GPS starts I August 1999
GPS starts II July 2001
H2woe November 2004
MAT Rules report May 1999
Mommy, where do rules come from March 2000
Odds and ends May 2003
Rules Complication August 2000
Tasking October 2002
The CD June 2002
The Troops February 2004
MacCready and other theory of how
to fly contests
Just a little Faster Please Jan 2007. Condensed and rewrote the article for publication in Germany. This version is better, except the numbers are all m/s and km. Slovenian translation.
Just a Little Faster Please July 2000. Article for Soaring Magazine on applying new MacCready theory.
"MacCready Theory with Uncertain Lift and Limited Altitude" Technical Soaring 23 (3) (July 1999) 88-96. This version cleans up some typos that crept into the published version. Acrobat 3.0 pdf file Programs contains matlab and gauss programs for making the calculations.
"The start time game in competition soaring" Technical Soaring 22 (2) (April 1998) 56-64 . This article analyzes when to start early, when to start late, when a big gaggle will form, and so on. Acrobat 3.0 pdf file.
Notes for talk given at the Midwest mini-convention, Feb 2000 MS-Word doc file. Same general stuff as in "Just a little faster please"
Safer finishes. Draft of an article for Soaring magazine, arguing for a high finish gate and no rolling finishes to reduce accidents on and near the home airport.
Contest Safety Feb 2002 Power point slides for presentation at 2002 convention. Where are the accidents, what can you do to avoid them, and what can rules do to make contests safer.
Plea for the 500 foot rule. Message to r.a.s. Sept 2003 on the high finish
Added time FAQ. A short and less technical explanation of the 15 minute time addition, with a response to frequently asked questions from the spring 2003 r.a.s. debate.
Time for distance Draft of a Soaring magazine article to explain a scoring improvement for turn area tasks. (ms doc file)
Miscellaneous
Views on Tonopah A sidebar to accompany the Soaring Magazine coverage of the 2002 15 meter nationals at Tonopah (ms doc file)
Newcastle fields. Powerpoint drawings from ground tours of fields around NCI.
"Decisions at Littlefield" July 2000. Draft of a sidebar to the 2000 Standard nationals for Soaring Magazine.