Finance professor Abraham Park’s blog post on the Graziadio Business Report this week uses the analogy of a three-story house to explain the big deal about subprime loans.

The subprime debacle is a deeper problem than just the mortgages they affect, he says. “It has revealed that the risk-pricing system by credit agencies is deeply suspect, which in turn has brought into suspicion not only subprime evaluations, but all other risk-based evaluation in the financial market,” Park writes.

–Dr. Ariff Kachra finds R&D scientists expect reciprocity in knowledge exchanges.

In Strategic Management Journal this May, consistently rated one of the top publications in the management area, Pepperdine strategy professor Ariff Kachra and Roderick E. White of the University of Western Ontario published the first study to examine how social, competitive, and firm boundary cues together influence the transfer of know-how (i.e., expertise). The authors tested 79 biotechnology R&D scientists in eight different scenarios to determine the level of effort they would expend to transfer know-how.

The Mexican financial sector has implemented significant new systems for managing transactions and financial information, says Pepperdine finance professor Dubos Masson, an expert in treasury management, in newly posted article to the Graziadio Business Report. For today’s treasury professional, the Mexican banking market may offer a few new challenges, but many familiar products and services will be readily available.

Energy consumption and environmental quality are both related to the job market, suggests Owen P. Hall, Jr., editor-in-chief of GBR (Graziadio Business Report) and a professor of decision sciences at Pepperdine University. Examining California’s Greenhouse Gas Initiative, Hall advocates that California adopt a long-term approach that balances growing environmental awareness and increasing energy dependency from unreliable sources with the need to grow the economy and generate more jobs.

Business law professor Larry Bumgardner, J.D., questions whether the Securities and Exchange Commission’s focus on enhanced disclosure alone will have any significant impact on the levels of compensation paid to CEOs and other top executives.