Digital Commons Network^™

The Potential Of Ivf, Jae Anderson

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

As in-vitro fertilization (IVF) has become more available and more affordable, it has become one of the top breeding technologies in the beef and dairy industry. Intermountain Embryonics of Twin Falls, Idaho has made it an available technology for producers in Idaho and parts of surrounding states. Intermountain Embryonics has struggled to show potential clients the financial potential IVF has to offer. This study shows the revenues, expenses, and risks involved in IVF. This study looks at the comparison of breeding natural service with a bull, artificial insemination, and in-vitro fertilization. The comparison shows that natural service comes with the …

Testing Investment Strategies For Superior Predictive Ability, Jack K. Baldwin

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

When different models are tested on one data sample and repeatedly altered in order to be found significant, the results are likely spurious. This is data-snooping – an ever-growing problem in the finance industry likely due to fierce competition and developments in data processing capacity. In academia, although recognized as a deplorable practice, data-snooping is likewise pervasive perhaps as a result of poor incentive structures at both the university and publisher levels. I manifest the problem of data-snooping through multiple academic and industry examples and then summarize Halbert White and Peter Hansen’s offered solutions, White’s Reality Check and Hansen’s Test …

Retaining Ownership Of Calves- Obendorf Farms, Gabrielle Bishop

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Retaining Ownership is when a producer chooses to obtain ownership of their calves until they have reached a finished weight and are ready to be sent to slaughter. Cow-calf producers generally sell their calves at weaning time or within a few months of weaning. Every operation as their own way of doing things and sometimes change is hard to come by. Obendorf Farms wanted to evaluate, at what point in time would it be best to sell their 2020 calf crop? Four different scenarios were analyzed. The first scenario involved no change from previous years which, is selling their calves …

Economic Analysis Of Backgrounding Calves, Jayden Gunnell

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The purpose of this thesis is to allow beef producers a better insight into the costs and benefits associated with carrying over fall calves to yearling weight and selling them the following spring. Producers are usually seen as risk-averse when it comes to selling their livestock. (Feuz, Fausti 1995) Cattle producers face several decisions during the year when it comes to calf input costs and the premium to be received for fall calves, with the final decision coming at the last minute, when making the decision to keep or sell calves. Said calves might be sold in the fall or …

Nato And The Ifrc: A Comparative Case Study, Abigail Kosiak

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This research analyzes the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) Multinational Telemedicine System (MnTS) Project and works to answer five main questions:

1) What challenges did the NATO MnTS Project face that are directly related to the fact that the project included members from different countries and worked to create a system that operates across national borders?

2) How do these challenges compare to those faced by a non-governmental organization (NGO) like the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)?

3) What successes has the IFRC had with its current operational model?

4) In what ways could …

Executive Compensation Incentives Impact On The Tone And Readability Of Financial Reports, Xiaoyan Mi

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Financial disclosures do not only influence the future reaction of customers, they also imply the financial strategies of the managers of corporations. Through analysis, we find a strong causal relationship between tone and readability of financial disclosures and incentive methods of managers. Controlling executives’ pay-performance sensitivity (delta) and other variables, executives with higher sensitivity of executives’ wealth to stock volatility (vega) (Coles, Daniel, Naveen, 2004) tend to announce reports with more negative tone and low readability.

Industry Stock Prices Around Covid-19, Daniel Cardall

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

In this study, I examine how market participants respond to global uncertainty around the Covid-19 pandemic. More specifically, I analyze the industries most affected by the outbreak. The pandemic has created events never before seen at such a global level. Governments closed their country’s borders and quarantined their residents. Business owners closed their doors. These unforeseen events put the world economy at a standstill. I find that these decisions caused the U.S. stock markets to crash by more than 30%. The industries that experienced the most negative value-weighted abnormal returns were Carry, Meals, and Books. The industries that exhibited the …

The Relative Industry Specific Effects Of Covid-19 On Market Volatility And Liquidity, Callin Christensen

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Understanding how historical events affect market volatility and liquidity can provide crucial information to financial analysts, investment professionals, and managers in the event that similar circumstances resurface. In this study, I look at how a global pandemic (COVID-19) can introduce frictions into the market and cause disrupt the generation or flow of available information, this could cause prices to deviate significantly from their equilibrium values. I also hypothesize that these inefficiencies may have a greater effect on some industries than others. My analysis seems to confirm this hypothesis. I observe that the global COVID-19 pandemic leads to statistically significant increases …

Reexamining Metallgesellschaft’S Hedging Policy: Does Anything Beat A One-For-One Hedge Ratio?, Christopher Haddock

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

There has been significant debate surrounding Metallgesellschaft's derivatives based fixed-price marketing strategy. Most of this debate relates to Metallgesellschaft's choice to use a one-for-one hedge ratio instead of an alternative hedge ratio optimized for risk management. I contribute to this discussion by reexamining the hedging strategy of Metallgesellschaft and use the Test for Superior Predictive Ability to determine whether any hedge ratio less than one outperforms the one-for-one hedge utilized by Metallgesellschaft.

Reinforcement Learning For Dynamic Futures Hedging, Evan Bullard

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This paper focuses on oil hedging using near month crude oil futures. Hedging may allow a firm to reduce risks and focus on areas of comparative advantage. Hedging requires a firm to estimate ex-ante the correct hedge ratio. The portfolio optimization framework allows for OLS to be applied to the estimation of a hedge ratio. Reinforcement Learning is another method available to hedgers to estimate a hedge ratio. Three strategies using econometric tools and one using Reinforcement Learning are estimated and tested against 2019 oil price data.

Mass Shootings And The Performance Of Tourism Stocks, Marshall Deem

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This study investigates the effects of mass shooting events on the performance of the tourism industry within the United States. The results of the study show that outside of the market-wide returns, the performance of tourism stocks is negatively impacted after a large-scale mass shooting event. Furthermore, when separating extreme outliers in the data such as the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay shooting, the results of the study find that tourism stocks surrounding other large-scale mass shootings are significantly negative. Overall, the results of the study demonstrate a negative response in the tourism industry to large-scale mass shootings.

Black-Scholes And Neural Networks, Gabriel Adams

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Neural networks have been proven to be universal approximators. We use neural networks to investigate the relationship between the quality of input data and the quality of outputted predictions from a neural network. We show that neural networks perform better on option pricing data with quality data and perform worse with lower quality data.

Implementing Option Pricing Model, Zhao Ming

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

In this paper I replicate Clewlow and Strickland's control variates methods based on Greek letters method to test if it can improve the simulation efficiency. First, I use Black Scholes Merton formula for option pricing as a benchmark, to compare with the European call option price from Monte Carlo methods. Then I use Greek letters as control variates to reduce sample standard deviation and improve the efficiency of the Monte Carlo simulation. The whole process is programming in C++. C++ is a compiled language which can generate machine code from source code and provide a shorter running time. This paper …

Maximizing Returns For Investors Using Modern Portfolio Theory And The Efficient Frontier, Charity Smith Parkinson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

There exists an efficient frontier upon which there is an optimal point of allocation of an investor’s assets among different types of investment vehicles. Identifying this point and allocating a portfolio accordingly allow an investor to capture the highest market return with the least amount of risk. This research study offers a model which can be used to find this optimal investment allocation and discusses the challenges and assumptions associated with using it. Using techniques discussed in Markowitz (1952), we obtain the optimal allocation of wealth for two portfolios of 13 and 12 assets, respectively. Such a model is not …

The Impact Of Robotic Milking Systems: The Case Of The Rocky Mountain Region, Garret Nelson

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The increasing adoption of automatic milking systems (AMS) in the U.S. has caused interest in determining if they are truly beneficial to the farmers who install them. The focus in this study is to identify the monetary value of AMS for dairies in the Rocky Mountain region and the estimated value of the non-monetary benefits. Using a mixed methods approach to create a survey; information was gathered from farmers in the Rocky Mountain region who are using AMS. The results reveal that monetary benefits from production and labor savings are lacking in themselves to provide positive net present values (NPVs) …