Digital Commons Network^™

How Should We Motivate Effort, Shamima Khan

Theses and Dissertations

This research uses an experimental design to study if the pattern and positioning of rewards influence the amount of effort participants put in. The three key hypotheses tested here are: 1) are people more likely to complete a task if the incentives are given in more regular intervals, 2) do uncertainty of reward timing hurt or help in maintaining motivation, 3) is intrinsic motivation more influential than the patterns in which incentives are structured? The treatments in this experiment are created by varying the reward structure of candies and pens in exchange of a simple math test completion. Among the …

A Cost Of Doing Business: Defense Contracting Fraud, Shane M. English

Capstones

The federal government relies heavily on outside contractors to provide essential research and services. Following World War II, the Department of Defense and the military began to rely on approved government contractors to develop, test and improve weapons and tools used to keep soldiers and the nation safe.

Defense contracting is a massive business that commands billions of dollars a year. Despite the magnitude of the United States' contracting system, detecting fraud and preventing bad actors from continuing to profit off of the government has proven difficult. The systems at hand: civil and criminal charges, suspension and debarment have consistently …

Not On The Menu, Kathryn Casteel, Zameena Mejia

Capstones

The element of “unwelcomeness” and the burden of proof on the plaintiff to prove sexual conduct in the workplace is one of the flaws of Title VII that make it difficult to protect victims of sexual harassment. This is particularly true in restaurants where a sexual environment is often thought of as “part of the job.” Formal complaint systems, if available, in restaurants are often flawed, even though they can pose as an affirmative defense for the defendant if they are available and a victim does not file a complaint. In the cases examined, all involved an accused supervisor or …

Long Odds: Inside The Process Of Applying For Affordable Housing Through Nyc’S Lottery System, Scott Klocksin

Capstones

This story is a look at the process of applying for affordable housing through lotteries set up by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation & Development. The story follows Chris Kelly, a 36 year-old freelance writer and personal assistant, through the process of applying through the lotteries and eventually through the final stages of securing an affordable apartment.

Spend Your Student Loans On A Vacation. No One Is Watching., Raul A. Hernandez, Morten Buttler

Capstones

Student loan debtors who spend their loans on non-educational expenses   increase the likelihood of financial hardship once they begin repayment. Contributing to the financial struggles of student loan debtors is an overly-complicated student loan system which can entangle borrowers with unclear financial statements and a glut of federal loan repayment programs.

Link to capstone project: https://medium.com/@raul.hernandez/spend-your-student-loans-on-a-vacation-no-one-is-watching-a71834ed6f45#.vj61hhxig

The Pop Behind Pop-Ups, Lauren Klose

Capstones

Small businesses on Long Island have been suffering due to a variety of reasons including taxes and regulations on small businesses. Despite this, one entrepreneur, Howie Frank, has decided to fight back and start a small business that is only open for six months out of the year: Everything Christmas. He cashes in on the most profitable time of the retail season, and has since grown his company in the past eight years to four locations and four franchise locations. His intent is to continue this expand this business which he dedicates all of his time to, year round.

http://www.laurenklose.com/

The Promise Of Cooperatives Falls Short For Immigrant Women, Lisa Thomson

Capstones

A worker cooperative is a special type of business where the workers are also the owners, which allows them to share in running the day to day of the business as well as the profits. They are becoming popular way for immigrant women to gain economic independence and become entrepreneurs. As the city invests an increasing amount of money to support this initiative, the services available are scattered and disjointed, are often run by people who are new to cooperative development, while the promise of stable employment and higher wages go unmet.

An Analysis Of The Relationship Between Ceo Compensation And Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure Type And Quality, Nicole M. Heron

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The construct of corporate social responsibility (CSR) itself is comprised of three underlying components: environmental, social, and corporate governance. However, it is unclear from the extant literature whether and how these underlying components of CSR are related to CEO compensation. In the absence of a theoretical model of CSR that specifically considers its underlying components, I present in this paper an exploratory analysis of the relationships between CEO compensation and CSR disclosure type and quality. My CSR proxies are based on a firm’s environmental, social and corporate governance-related disclosure, as reported by Bloomberg. I calculate total CEO compensation as the …

Investigating Personal Intelligent Agents In Everyday Life Through A Behavioral Lens, Sara Moussawi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Personal intelligent agents (PIA), such as Apple’s Siri, Google Now, Facebook’s M, and Microsoft’s Cortana, are pervading our lives. These systems are taking the shape of a companion, and acting on our behalf to help us manage our everyday activities. The proliferation of these PIAs is largely due to their wide availability on mobile devices which themselves have become commonly available for billions of people. Our continuous interaction with these PIAs is impacting our sense of self, sense of being human, perception of technology, and relationships with others. The Information Systems (IS) literature on PIAs has been scarce. In this …

Do Executives Have Fixed Effects On Firm-Level Stock Price Crash Risk?, Jiaxin Liu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper investigates whether individual CEOs and CFOs have “styles” (i.e. manager’s fixed effects) in withholding corporate bad news, which is captured using firm-level future stock price crash risks. Tracking managers that move across firms and employing a manager fixed-effect model, I find that both CFOs and CEOs have fixed effects on firm-level stock price crash risks in the future using multiple crash risk measures adopted from previous studies (e.g. Kim et al.(2011a,b)). In addition, I find that CFOs’ managerial ability is positively associated with one crash risk measure. Lastly, I find systematic differences in CEO vis-à-vis CFO’s preferences in …

Relational Pluralism In Boards Of Directors: A Multidimensional View, Zhu Zhu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A large body of literature has been devoted to explaining the influence of corporate boards on their firms’ financial performance, yet the findings paint a puzzling picture. My dissertation seeks to shed light on current research by paying nuanced attention to latent board characteristics and obtaining a more comprehensive understanding of the board-performance relationship. I adapt a relational pluralistic perspective of the board to empirically examine multiple facets of director ties, identities, power relations, and networks and their effect on firm performance. This relational view of the board extends the current understanding of director behavior by aggregating director relationships on …

Essays On Institutional Investor Trading, Karolina Krystyniak

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters that examine the role of institutional investors in stock market efficiency. Institutions are important and influential market participants. This study aims to analyze whether institutional investor trading is consistent with higher attention and better skill, what is the impact of institutional trading on future asset prices and how does institutional trading relate to the liquidity in the market.

The first chapter of the dissertation analyzes institutional investors’ response to stock level liquidity shocks. I find that institutions, especially the transient ones, buy stocks that experience positive liquidity shocks and sell those that experience negative …

The Impact Of Modality Expectancy On Memory Accuracy For Brand Names, Daniel Rubin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

It is proposed that an individual’s expectations regarding the modality by which to-be-remembered brand names will be communicated in the future can impact memory accuracy for those brand names. Specifically, we hypothesize that the likelihood of malapropistic errors (i.e., false recognition of phonetically similar brand names) increases with greater attention to phonemic codes relative to orthographic codes. Attention to these memorial representations is driven by expectations as to whether retrieval will be written or spoken. When visually presented with brand names, those expecting text-based retrieval pay relatively greater attention to the visual forms or orthographies of brand names, as this …

Earnings Management And Bargain Purchase Gains, Yan Yan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of two chapters that investigate earnings management through the recognition of bargain purchase gains in the banking industry and in other industries.

Chapter 1 In business acquisitions where the fair value of net assets acquired exceeds the consideration paid, acquiring firms recognize bargain purchase gains under ASC 805. The determination of the fair value of net assets at date of acquisition gives acquiring management considerable flexibility in judgments. In this chapter, I focus on bargain purchase acquisitions in the banking industry, and find that acquirer utilizes bargain purchase gains to avoid negative earnings and earnings decline. The …

Effects Of Serveware Materiality On Food Perceptions, Consumption, And Waste, Sara Williamson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Three lab studies and three field studies indicate that food waste and consumption is influenced by serveware disposability. Studies indicate that consumers waste more food when eating with disposable plates and consume more food when eating with permanent plates. The effect persists whether participants choose their own type and quantity of food or are given the same amount of food, whether they are responsible for plate disposal or not, and whether the serveware is touched/held or not. Process level support is provided via an IAT test to explain this effect as a perceptual readiness to dispose of food when on …

Essays On Foreign Firms Following Deregistration From U.S. Exchanges, Kathleen Michelle Bakarich

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 2007 the SEC introduced Rule 12h-6, which significantly reduced the requirements for cross-listed firms to leave U.S. markets. While the benefits and costs of cross-listing in the U.S. have been widely analyzed in prior literature, questions as to the impact of deregistration on firms, investors, and other parties have been raised given the increase in foreign firms leaving the U.S. over the past decade. In addition, the growing global adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and worldwide regulatory developments over this time period have brought changes to the home markets to which deregistering firms return potentially influencing the …

Essays On Investor Attention, Hongqi Liu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters that examine investor attention and its impact on corporate events and asset prices using a Google search-based measure of investor attention.

Chapter 1 This chapter investigates investor attention patterns and its determinants. I document that investor attention displays strong seasonality. It is significantly lower on Fridays and in summer months. I find that investor attention increases significantly following earnings announcements and macro news releases, and the effect is stronger for large firms. When faced with both firm-specific and market-wide information shocks, investors’ attention response to firm-specific information attenuates and their trading behavior is also …

Fashioning Desire At B. Altman & Co.: Ethics And Consumer Culture In Early Department Stores, Tessa Maffucci

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We live in an age of fast fashion. Clothing is produced in greater volumes than ever before and the lifecycle of each garment keeps getting shorter and shorter. Many items are manufactured to be worn only one time and then thrown away—as disposable as a cup of coffee. There is much to be learned about our current fashion ecosystem by looking into the past. Beyond the garments themselves we must understand the larger historical and sociological context in which these articles of clothing were produced. How does the shopping environment shape the buying habits and fashion trends of an era? …

Better Work And Global Governance, Paul Alois

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a case study of Better Work, a program run by the International Labor Organization and the International Finance Corporation. It aims to improve working conditions and productivity in the apparel industry. The purpose of this case study is to examine the role that international organizations can play in global governance. The research presented here comes from interviews, document analysis, and an examination of quantitative data on factories’ working conditions. In-person interviews were conducted in the United States, Switzerland, Vietnam, and Indonesia; many phone interviews took place with individuals in other countries. Both publicly available documents and internal …

Hunting For Financial Literacy, Georgia Sozou

Theses and Dissertations

This paper summarizes and explores the results of a survey conducted at Hunter College of the City University of New York that surveys 211 students. It examines the relationships between the students’ individual characteristics, previous personal finance education and the levels of financial literacy of the Hunter College population.

An Evaluation Of The Standard Setting Performance Of The Fasb, Devon Rolleri

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper develops a framework for evaluating the effects of various organizational changes on the performance of a regulatory agency in standard setting. I apply this framework to examine whether numerous Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) modifications influence the performance of the Board during the standard setting process. These modifications include changes in FASB funding, voting, and Board member characteristics, particularly professional backgrounds and political affiliations. To analyze the performance of the Board, I follow the operations management literature to construct a set of variables that capture team effectiveness and managerial performance. A factor analysis on these variables produces three …

Firms' Decisions To Enter A Market Of Highly Differentiated Products: Apparel Industry And New York Fashion Week, Yoko Katagiri

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation deals with economic aspects of the fashion industry. It begins with a discussion of the complex industrial organization aspects of the industry. A wealth of information in this area has been assembled and is presented for the first time. The focus is on the high-end fashion market: how it started, how it works, New York Fashion Week, and its significance for the industry. Then a comprehensive review of the economics literature as it pertains to the industry is presented, also for the first time. The empirical sections of the dissertation contain estimates of demand functions for apparel and …

Two Essays: Changes In The Implementation Flexibility And Financial Statement Location Of Mandated Accounting Standards; And Does The Financial Statement Location Of Transition Adjustments Matter To Investors?, Ethan Kinory

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Essay 1: In the 20 years since Balsam et al. (1995b) found evidence that mandated accounting standards provide significant implementation flexibility, numerous structural and environmental changes have occurred to the accounting standards setting process. Using a more recent sample of 13 significant mandated accounting promulgations, I reexamine whether implementation flexibility continues to characterize accounting standards. I find that standards continue to avail firms with adoption timing options. However, it appears that the FASB’s previously documented proclivity to direct equity increasing (decreasing) adjustments to the income statement (balance sheet) temporarily abated in the early years of my study, but this behavior …