Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

The Influence Of Rotating Savings And Credit Associations Dynamics On Local Trade Flows In Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, Fred Phanuel Okangi, Theresia E. Busagara

Business Management Review

This study examines the influence of Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs) on local trade flows in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Using a structured questionnaire, data were gathered from 107 ROSCA members to assess three key areas: the operational dynamics of ROSCAs, the socio-economic profiles of ROSCA members, and the accessibility of financial resources among ROSCA members. The findings reveal a significant positive relationship between the effective management of ROSCAs and increased local trade flows, underscoring that well-organized associations can facilitate smoother financial transactions. Furthermore, the diverse socio-economic profiles of ROSCA members were shown to promote knowledge-sharing and networking opportunities, …

Farm-Level Financial Decision-Making Methodologies Within A Cow-Calf Enterprise: A Scoping Review, Heidi R. Johnson, Huiting Huang, Brenna Grant

Journal of Applied Farm Economics

Beef cow-calf enterprises face unique financial challenges, requiring methodologies to assess management and technology adoption decisions’ costs, revenues, and profitability. This scoping review synthesizes research on farm-level financial assessment methods specific to cow-calf operations aiming to adopt a new practice or technology. A literature search was conducted to capture various methodologies, examining studies published between 1960 and 2024. A total of 372 articles were screened for eligibility; 61 articles met the defined inclusion criteria. Eight economic and financial methodologies were identified: break-even analysis, cost effectiveness, gross margin, enterprise analysis, partial budgeting, cost-benefit analysis, financial feasibility and net present value, and …

Usaid Grant Recipient Data Fy2002-2025, Susan Turner Haynes

Faculty Works

Grant recipient data from USAID from fiscal years 2002-2025.

A Policy Reversal As Structural Break: A Lesson From China’S Land Lease Financing For Infrastructure, Yilin Hou, Lin Li, Lei Shao

Center for Policy Research

Land-based revenues as a fiscal instrument to finance infrastructure tie public investment to real estate markets, where demand fluctuations cause fiscal consequences. This paper takes policy reversals as structural breaks and examines their impacts on infrastructure investment. We dissect China’s 2016 policy reversal that disallowed developers to finance land purchase with debt, causing sharp declines in local government land revenues, slashing their fiscal base for infrastructure investment. Using prefecture-level panel data and continuous difference-in-differences identification, we estimate the reversal reduced land-lease revenues by 55%. Two-stage least squares estimates suggest a 10% land-revenue decline translates into 6.6% investment reduction. Decomposing the …

Assessing The Influence Of Audit Committee Characteristics On The Effectiveness Of Risk Management Practices In Public Statutory Corporations In Tanzania, Gerald J. Soi, Siasa Issa Mzenzi, Said Suluo

Business Management Review

This study was conducted to examine the influence of audit committee characteristics on the effectiveness of risk management in Public Statutory Corporations (PSCs) in Tanzania, and the moderating effect of the size of an entity on this relationship. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data, which was completed by 424 chief internal auditors and directors of finance from PSCs across various Tanzanian regions, and analysed using SmartPLS (PLS-SEM) version 4.0. The findings indicate that the expertise of the audit committee and the frequency of meetings with a substantive risk agenda positively influence risk management effectiveness in PSCs. Conversely, the …

Market Reactions To Software M&A: Cross-Border Vs. Domestic Evidence, Aaryan Magan

CMC Senior Theses

The software industry in the United States has seen a period of sustained merger and acquisition (M&A) activity as firms seek synergies in diverse product offerings, efficiency plays, or intellectual capital. Within this activity is also a subset of deals that comprise U.S. acquirers transacting with foreign companies. These cross-border transactions have become an integral part of M&A strategy for companies across all industries. This paper aims to gauge investor sentiment regarding cross-border M&A deals in the software industry relative to domestic M&A deals in the software industry. The event-study methodology captures Cumulative Abnormal Returns (CAR) in two distinct event …

A New Functional Setting For Term Structure Modeling Using The Health-Jarrow-Morton Framework, Michael Pokojovy, Ebenezer Nkum, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr.

Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Publications

The well-known Heath–Jarrow–Morton (HJM) framework provides a universal and efficacious instrument for modeling the stochastic evolution of an entire yield curve by explaining the interest rate dynamics in continuous time under no-arbitrage conditions. Existing implementations involve exponentially weighted function spaces as theoretical settings for the former stochastic evolution. While the choice of weight can have a drastic effect on model calibration and subsequent forecasting, it cannot be estimated from market data and does not allow for any objective interpretation. The proposed approach does not have this shortcoming as it adopts a suitably designed unweighted function space. The HJM equation is …

The Budget, Fiscal Year 2026-2027, Tennessee. Department Of Finance And Administration

Budget Volume 1

This document is the final budget for the coming fiscal year.

Equity Fund Monthly Report, January 2026, Archway Investment Fund

Archway Investment Fund

No abstract provided.

Machine Learning: Thematic Feature Grouping, And The Magnificent Seven: A Forecasting Analysis, Mirarmia Jalali, Mohammad Najand, Andrew Cohen

Finance Faculty Publications

This study examines the predictability of monthly excess returns for the “Magnificent Seven” U.S. technology firms using machine learning and economically motivated thematic feature grouping. Framed as a focused study of the most systemically consequential equity panel in modern markets—seven firms representing over 30% of the S&P 500—the analysis confronts a small-N, large-P environment where economically structured dimensionality reduction is essential. Using 154 firm-level characteristics categorized into 13 economic themes, we evaluate linear, penalized, tree-based, and neural network models in a small-N, large-P setting. Unrestricted models suffer substantial overfitting and fail to outperform the historical average benchmark out-of-sample. In contrast, …

International Evidence On The Relationship Between Financial Literacy And Corporate Cash Holdings, Kenneth Yung, Reza Kahibavil, Su Li, Arian Amidi

Finance Faculty Publications

This study is the first investigation of the relationship between corporate cash holdings and financial literacy (FL). We find that a one‐standard‐deviation increase in FL is associated with an 8%–27% reduction in corporate cash holdings, depending on the measure of FL used. Moreover, higher FL reduces the market value of excess cash, indicating that financially literate environments discourage value‐destroying cash accumulation. The results remain robust across alternative definitions of FL and cash holdings, estimation methods, and country subsamples. We further rule out the influence of endogeneity, refinancing risk, and variation in cash needs. Additional analyses identify agency costs as the …

Natural Resource Rents And Energy Poverty Nexus In Next Eleven Economies, Muhammad Salah Uddin, Ayub Ali, Zobayer Ahmed, Md Nasir Uddin Sikdar, Ahsan Habib, Abdullah Elah Al-Mahde

Finance Faculty Publications

Energy poverty (EP) remains a persistent global challenge with important implications for economic development, public health, and social welfare. While natural resources, particularly oil and gas, are often viewed as key sources of energy access, their effectiveness in mitigating EP remains underexplored in emerging economies. This study examines the relationship between natural resource rents (NRR), specifically oil rents (OR) and natural gas rents (NGR), and energy poverty (EP) in the Next Eleven (N-11) countries from 2000 to 2020. The primary objective is to assess how NRR influences EP at various levels of poverty using the Method of Moments Quantile Regression …

How Operational And Disclosure Complexity Shapes The Conglomerate Discount, Feng Dong, John A. Doukas, Son Wilson, Rongyao Zhang

Finance Faculty Publications

This study examines how firm operational diversification and disclosure complexity jointly drive the conglomerate discount. We disentangle disclosure complexity, which is determined by managerially influenced financial transparency, from accounting complexity, which is a direct informational consequence of operational complexity. We find that operational diversification is consistently associated with significant conglomerate discounts, while disclosure complexity independently reduces firm value and amplifies the magnitude of the discount when diversification is high. These findings suggest that transparent disclosures can mitigate valuation costs, offering important implications for managers seeking effective communication, investors assessing complex firms, and policymakers aiming to enhance disclosure quality and market …

Can Art Function As A Financial Asset Class? Conditions, Risks, And Emerging Solutions, Aurelia Labbé

MA Theses

The art market has grown significantly over recent decades, supported by rising global demand, record auction results and increasing interest from collectors pursuing financial returns. This evolution has encouraged the development of investment-oriented practices and strengthened the notion that artworks can function as financial assets. This shift takes place in a market shaped by subjectivity, opacity and limited regulatory oversight, where valuation methods, provenance documentation and professional standards remain highly uneven. These conditions make art investment particularly complex and raise essential questions about the factors that support or weaken the legitimacy of art as an asset class. This thesis examines …

Does Blue-Chip Art Genuinely Provide Diversification And Risk Mitigation Once Illiquidity, Transaction Frictions, And Survivorship Bias Are Explicitly Incorporated Into Performance Analysis, Or Is The “Safe Haven” Label Fundamentally Misleading?, Radhika Vissanji

MA Theses

Blue-chip art is widely presented as a safe haven and portfolio diversifier, particularly during periods of financial market uncertainty. This perception is reinforced by art price indices and industry reports that emphasise long-term appreciation, relatively low volatility, and weak correlation with traditional financial assets. Despite the growing prominence of these claims in advisory and institutional discourse, there remains limited agreement on whether such properties persist once the structural characteristics of the art market are fully taken into account. This thesis evaluates whether blue-chip art genuinely delivers diversification and risk-mitigation benefits under realistic market conditions. Focusing on three structural factors, illiquidity, …

Ceo Compensation Changes Following Acquisitions, Leonce Bargeron, David J. Denis

Finance and Quantitative Methods Faculty Publications

We find that CEO compensation increases following acquisitions only in those deals in which acquirer stock is used as the method of payment. These compensation increases are driven by increases in equity-based compensation and are concentrated in riskier acquirers, in riskier acquisitions, and in acquirers whose CEOs have low exposure to the stock price. We find little support for traditional agency cost explanations of changes in CEO pay following acquisitions. However, our findings are broadly consistent with compensation changes representing a contracting solution to a two-sided adverse selection problem that is present only in stock acquisitions.

The Emergence Of Buy Now Pay Later Platforms: A Business Analysis Study, Asher Frye

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis dives into the growth of Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) financing and its implications for consumer financial health. Using Affirm’s 2019-2024 data and recent reporting from regulators, it documents strong BNPL expansion alongside emerging concerns about repayment risk and credit score impacts. These insights motivate me to conduct an experiment testing whether clearer disclosure affects consumer BNPL choices. While the experiment shows no statistically significant effects, it underscores the need for further study of BNPL understanding and consumer behavior.

The Prestige Paradox: Can Venture Capital Prestige Lead To Lower Startup Exit Rates?, Charlie Fenollosa

Honors Theses

This project investigates how the prestige of VC firms investing in early-stage startups affects the likelihood of successful exits, defined as IPOs or acquisitions. Using Crunchbase data on companies, funding rounds, and investments, I construct six measures of prior VC success to proxy for prestige. Contrary to conventional expectations, VC prestige is not associated with increased exit probability, a finding robust to composite, LASSO-selected, and PCA-based indices. Further analysis suggests this relationship is driven by mechanisms through which high VC prestige paired with large syndicates and high funding may create frictions, while prestigious VCs help smaller companies grow more effectively.

Signals Of Value: A Comparative Analysis Of Sde And Ebitda In Predicting Microbusiness Sale Price, Joseph E. Turley

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This dissertation compares the predictive accuracy and stability of Seller’s Discretionary Earnings (SDE) and Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization (EBITDA) in explaining realized sale prices of microbusinesses. Microbusinesses, defined as firms with fewer than ten employees and annual revenue below $2.5 million, face persistent valuation challenges due to information asymmetry, owner dependence, and informal financial reporting. The study analyzes 5,499 completed U.S. transactions from the DealStats database (2014–2024) after applying microbusiness criteria and outlier trimming. Predictive accuracy is measured by absolute percentage error between actual sale prices and prices implied by each metric. Findings show that SDE-based predictions …

Corporate Disclosure Meets Natural Language Processing: Topic Modeling, Disclosure Strategy, And Audit Implications, Wanxin Yu

2026

Corporate disclosures serve as a critical channel for firms to communicate their financial performance, strategic initiatives, and firm-specific risks. In recent years, rapid advances in natural language processing (NLP) have provided powerful new tools for extracting insights from the growing volume and complexity of corporate disclosures. This dissertation consists of three studies that explore how advanced textual analysis can reveal deeper insights into corporate disclosures, managerial behavior, and auditor practices.

The first paper (co-authored) develops a topic-based approach to measuring the substantive content of risk factor disclosures. Using an embedding-based topic modeling framework, we identify 30 interpretable risk topics and …