LAWRENCEVILLE -- Dr. Ilhan Meric (left) of Voorhees, professor of finance at Rider University, presented a paper on Latin American equity markets at the 1997 annual conference of the Business Association of Latin American Studies (BALAS) in Brazil.

The paper received the BALAS/Thunderbird best paper award at the conference sponsored by Thunderbird, the American Graduate School of International Management of Glendale, AZ.

It was co-authored by Dr. Mitchell Ratner of Elkins Park, PA, associate professor of finance at Rider; Dr. Ricardo Leal of the University of Nevada, and Dr. Gulser Meric of Rowan University.

In the paper, Dr. Meric and his colleagues study the co-movements of the four largest Latin American emerging equity markets (Brazil, Mexico, Chile, and Argentina) with each other and with four of the five world's largest developed equity markets (United States, Japan, United Kingdom, and Germany).

The findings show that the four Latin American equity markets have been increasing and the benefits of international diversification with these four Latin equity markets have been decreasing.

Dr. Meric also has a paper on inflation and financial decisions accepted for publication in the Journal of Financial Education and another paper comparing the financial charactertistics of U.S. and Japanese chemical firms accepted for publication by the International Business Review. Dr. Gulser Meric, his wife, is a co-author of both papers, while Dr. Linda Ross and Dr. Stephanie Weidman of Rowan are also co-authors of the second paper.

Dr. Meric has been a member of the Rider finance faculty from 1969 to 1976 and from 1981 to present. Under a 1997-98 Davis fellowship, he examine the financial characteristics of manufacturing firms in European Community countries with Dr. Benjamin Eichhorn, associate professor of management sciences at Rider.

Rider University is an independent, co-educational, non-sectarian institution with a 353-acre campus in Lawrenceville, NJ, and a 23-acre campus in Princeton, NJ. The University offers 57 undergraduate programs and 15 graduate programs in business, liberal arts, science, education, and music. Ninety-five percent of Rider's faculty members hold doctorate or other appropriate advanced degrees. U.S. News and World Report has again ranked Rider in the top tier of northern universities based on the quality of its programs.