Corporate Finance Commons^™

Do Market Anomalies Add Up?, Larissa C. Steinfeldt

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This is a study about abnormal characteristics in the stock market and how to successfully use them in personal portfolios. Market anomalies are unexpected excess returns that occur in relation to certain variables. Five commonly known market anomalies (market cap, price-earnings ratio, price-book value, momentum, volatility) are tested to give evidence for their presence. Existing variables are then combined in different portfolios in order to observe whether they generate greater excess returns combined rather than individually. This study will also reveal whether long-term holding is possible and how the anomalies react in bullish and bearish markets.

Single Point Of Entry And The Bankruptcy Alternative, David A. Skeel Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay, which will appear in Across the Great Divide: New Perspectives on the Financial Crisis, a Brookings Institution and Hoover Institution book, begins with a brief overview of concerns raised by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy about the adequacy of our existing architecture for resolving the financial distress of systemically important financial institutions. The principal takeaway of the first section is that Title II as enacted left most of these issues unanswered. By contrast, the FDIC’s new single point of entry strategy, which is introduced in the second section, can be seen as addressing nearly all of them. The ...

Confronting The Peppercorn Settlement In Merger Litigation: An Empirical Analysis And A Proposal For Reform, Steven M. Davidoff, Jill Fisch, Sean J. Griffith

Faculty Scholarship

Shareholder litigation challenging corporate mergers is ubiquitous, with the likelihood of a shareholder suit exceeding 90%. The value of this litigation, however, is questionable. The vast majority of merger cases settle for nothing more than supplemental disclosures in the merger proxy statement. The attorneys that bring these lawsuits are compensated for their efforts with a court-awarded fee. This leads critics to charge that merger litigation benefits only the lawyers who bring the claims, not the shareholders they represent. In response, defenders of merger litigation argue that the lawsuits serve a useful oversight function and that the improved disclosures that result ...

Ethics And Market Economic System: A General Review And A Survey, Reza G. Hamzaee

International Journal of Applied Management and Technology

Recent global recession has motivated this predominantly historical and exploratory research of thoughts and perceptions. A continuous planning of governmental correction of any market failure, such as various types of externalities and information asymmetry, has been strongly recommended by the pioneers of free enterprise systems. Capitalism—in which private ownership of means of production, physical capital, human capital, financial capital, brand-name capital, social capital, land, and mineral deposits are all protected by law without implementation of a series of certain evolving ethical standards and principles—may not continue to be the same efficient system as implied to be by the ...

Does Board Independence Reduce The Cost Of Debt?, Michael Bradley, Dong Chen

Faculty Scholarship

Using the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the associated change in listing standards as a natural experiment, we find that while board independence decreases the cost of debt when credit conditions are strong or leverage low, it increases the cost of debt when credit conditions are poor or leverage high. We also document that independent directors set corporate policies that increase firm risk. These results suggest that, acting in the interest of shareholders, independent directors are increasingly costly to bondholders with the intensification of the agency conflict between these two stakeholders.

When Is A Dollar Not Worth A Dollar? The “Trapped” Cash Controversy, Russell Engel, Bridget Lyons

Business Faculty Publications

During 2013 the concept of “trapped cash” garnered heightened attention as reports of Dell, Apple and other firms holding massive cash levels outside the US surfaced. So called “trapped cash” refers to cash and liquid investments held by subsidiaries located outside the United States. Firms with overseas subsidiaries located in jurisdictions where the tax rate is lower than the rates in the US can reduce taxes by attributing profits to foreign locales. But bringing the cash back to the US subjects the funds to the US corporate tax rate, less credit for foreign income taxes paid.

The House Ways and ...

Using Inoculation Messages To Protect “Stay In The Market” Beliefs During Financial Crises, Lindsay Lyles Dillingham

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

This paper focuses on the problem of collapsed “stay in the market” (SIM) beliefs during financial crises. The primary purpose of this investigation was to ascertain whether or not inoculation messages represent a viable communication strategy to preemptively protect SIM beliefs during forthcoming financial crises. Ancillary purposes of this study were to further investigate the role of print and video crises, explicit instructions regarding post-inoculation talk (PIT), and gain and loss frame inoculation messages on the inoculation process. This study used a between subjects factorial design (3 x 2 plus four additional conditions) to explore ten hypotheses. Data collected from ...

Financial Reporting Quality Of Chinese Reverse Merger Firms: The Reverse Merger Effect Or The China Effect?, Kun-Chih Chen, Qiang Cheng, Ying Chou Lin, Yu-Chen Lin, Xing Xiao

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In this paper, we examine why Chinese reverse merger (RM) firms have lower financial reporting quality. We find that while U.S. RM firms have similar financial reporting quality as matched U.S. IPO firms, Chinese RM firms exhibit lower financial reporting quality than Chinese ADR firms. We further find that Chinese RM firms exhibit lower financial reporting quality than U.S. RM firms. These results indicate that the use of RM process is associated with poor financial reporting quality only in firms from China, where the legal enforcement is weaker than U.S. In addition, we find that compared ...

Institutional Trading During A Wave Of Corporate Scandals: 'Perfect Payday'?, Gennaro Bernile, Johan Sulaeman, Qin Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper examines the role of institutional trading during the option backdating scandal of 2006-2007. Unlike their inability to anticipate other corporate events, institutional investors as a group display negative abnormal trading imbalances (i.e., buy minus sell volumes) in anticipation of firm-specific backdating exposures. Consistent with informed trading, the underlying trades earn positive abnormal short- and long-term profits. Moreover, the negative abnormal imbalances are larger in magnitude when backdating is likely a more severe issue and manifest earlier ahead of firm-specific exposures as the scope of the scandal broadens. Local institutions, in particular, display negative trading imbalances earlier in ...

Management Forecast Credibility And Underreaction To News, Tee Yong Jeffrey Ng, Irem Tuna, Rodrigo Verdi

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In this paper, we first document evidence of underreaction to management forecast news. We then hypothesize that the credibility of the forecast influences the magnitude of this underreaction. Relying on evidence that more credible forecasts are associated with a larger reaction in the short window around the management forecasts and a smaller post-management forecast drift in returns, we show that the magnitude of the underreaction is smaller for firms that provide more credible forecasts. Our paper contributes to the literature by providing out-of-sample evidence of the drift in returns documented in the post-earnings-announcement drift literature, with the credibility of the ...

Three Essays On Bank Lending And Corporate Finance, Liqiang Chen

Open Access Dissertations and Theses

This thesis includes three essays on several important topics in empirical finance: Chief Executive Officer (CEO) risk-taking incentives, the cost and syndicate structure of bank loans and corporate investments with internal funds. This thesis contributes to these aspects of finance literature and the three essays are presented in Chapter 2, 3 and 4.

The first essay investigates how implicit contractual relationship between creditors and borrowers attenuates the conflict of interest between creditors and shareholders that arises from CEO compensation contracts when a corporation can be considered a nexus of explicit and implicit contractual relationships among stakeholders. We find that bank ...

Women In The Workforce: An In-Depth Analysis Of Gender Roles And Compensation Inequity In The Modern Workplace, Rebecca L. Ziman

Honors Theses

This paper explores the increase in participation and education of American women in the workforce with a special focus on women in business and accounting roles. The paper then goes on to discuss the wage gap between genders, how to remedy inequality in the workplace, and highlights several reasons why pursing a solution to gender inequality is beneficial for both the employee and the company.

Leverage Buy-Out Case Study, Binh Duc Nguyen

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

A Taxing Problem, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

MNCs move assets and products across borders. How does one know if they are doing so to avoid paying taxes?

Assessing Revenue Managers' Level Of Trust In Information Systems: An Exploratory Study Of Las Vegas Casino Resorts, Landon Taylor Shores

UNLV Theses/Dissertations/Professional Papers/Capstones

This study examined revenue managers' level of trust in their revenue management system (RMS) at Las Vegas casino resorts. The study utilized an e-mail interview to measure revenue managers' attitudes about their RMS's degree of reliability and dependability, the degree to which they trust their RMS's pricing recommendations, and if a revenue manager's level of trust in technology had any effect on their likelihood of trusting their RMS.

The study invited 11 property and corporate revenue managers from Las Vegas casino resorts to participate in an e-mail interview, with nine revenue managers agreeing to participate. The main ...

Firm Litigation Risk And The Insurance Value Of Corporate Social Performance, Ping-Sheng Koh, Cuili Qian, Heli Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper advances the risk management perspective that superior social performance enhances firm value by serving as an ex ante valuable insurance mechanism. We posit that good social performance is more valuable as an insurance mechanism for firms with higher litigation risks. Moreover, value generation of corporate social performance (CSP) depends on whether a firm has gained pragmatic legitimacy (i.e., a firm's financial health) and moral legitimacy (i.e., whether or not a firm operates in a socially contested industry) among its stakeholders. We find that the value of CSP as insurance against litigation risk is practically significant ...

Women As Leaders In Differing Microfinance Models, Rae M. Randleman

Journal of Interdisciplinary Feminist Thought

One of the original microfinance institutions (MFIs) is Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and the founder of the bank is Muhammad Yunus (2007). Yunus (2007) initiated a discourse that stated that microloans granted to women resulted in, among other things, increased female empowerment. Much of the global microfinance industry (MFI) has mimicked Yunus’ focus on women and thus created a global master narrative which stated that the capitalist system of credit provided to marginalized women can alleviate poverty and empower women. Other development organizations contend that by itself microfinance cannot empower women; empowerment also requires long-term efforts to influence change in ...

Standard Setting Should Remain In The Private Sector, Nichole Calhoun

Undergraduate Review: a Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

"In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay's first paragraph.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is the body that establishes accounting standards in the United States. The FASB has a specific operating procedure that it goes through before it will issue a statement for a new standard. During the early stages of this process, a task force is appointed to research a topic of concern and a memorandum is issued to invite discussion. Then there is a public comment period, during which information from and views of interested parties are accepted and reviewed. Some parties that often ...

101 Financial Accounting Practices: Practical Questions And Answers, George E. Ekeha

George E Ekeha

More often that not, our accounting practices at the corporate levels have been very different from what actually goes on in our schools and universities. Many of our graduate students in accounting get into the real world of work and realised that whatever they learnt in the classrooms have not much impact on the practice of accounting in the corporate environment.

This book intends to bring some practical (not totally though, but I am sure it would help others to start thinking about the solutions) questions for prospective accounting graduates to test themselves on the realities of accounting jobs. The ...

Assessing The Financial Failure Using Z-Score And Current Ratio: A Case Of Sugar Sector Listed Companies Of Kse, Muhammad Shahzad Ijaz, Ahmed Imran Hunjra, Rauf I. Azam

Ahmed Imran Hunjra

Since 1968, after the development of multivariate model, financial health of the corporate sector to predict their financial failure is heavily studied. Altman Z-Score is the most efficient model to judge the financial failure of the companies. This study uses Altman’s Z-Score and current ratio to assess the financial status of sugar sector companies listed at Karachi stock exchange. Sugar sector is the second largest slice among all sectors listed at Karachi stock exchange. Total population sampling technique was used in this study and all thirty five sugar sector listed companies at KSE were included in this study to ...