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Hormonal Influence On Female Consumption Of Revealing And Sexy Fashion Products, Ngoc B. Pham

Theses and Dissertations

This doctoral dissertation addresses the biological and psychological components of consumers’ decision-making processes. Particularly, it investigates the impact of female sex hormones on women’s consumption behaviors regarding fashion products. These hormones reach peak level when women are near ovulation, and this research examines how these hormones, when at peak level, influence women’s attitudes and purchase intention towards sexy and revealing fashion products.

The research is based on two theoretical frameworks: ovulatory shift hypothesis (OSH) and theory of reasoned action (TRA). Specifically, the OSH, based on the female ovulatory cycle postulates that women change their sexual preferences for men with perceived …

Essays On Financial Decision Making, Corey A. Shank

Theses and Dissertations

Individuals make financial decisions daily, yet the literature on the mechanisms that drive financial decisions is limited. This dissertation looks to examine how physical characteristics, and personality subconsciously influence financial decision making by conducting an experiment. Furthermore, this dissertation examines biased decision making in the betting market by using data from covers.com. First, this dissertation finds that the cognitive impairments associated with having a higher body mass index is positively related to poor financial decision making and being more likely to commit the present bias, and distorting probabilities. Second, this dissertation finds that business students are more apt to fit …

Two Essays On International Capital Flows And Cross-Listings, Lu Sui

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores two interesting issues: international capital flows and cross-listings. With high volatility of capital flows and imbalance of capital flows between emerging and advanced economies, the topic of capital flow management is always attractive to researchers and policy makers. The first essay explore how capital flows in G20 countries are significantly impacted by pull and push factors. The results show that international capital flows are significantly associated with domestic financial development, which is measured by stock market liquidity and domestic credit. Moreover, international capital flows are affected by some push factors such as, the growth of world economy …

Regression-Discontinuity Analysis Of The Effects Of Government Housing Policies, Alejandro Rojas

Theses and Dissertations

An influential literature has applied regression-discontinuity (RD) analysis to investigate the effects of government housing policies. This literature has failed to identify substantial effects of these policies, but may also suffer from various biases and limitations. This dissertation carefully examines what, if any, issues face RD analysis in this context. Chapter II considers the Affordable Housing Goals (AHGs) and Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), affordable housing policies that compel Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (F&F) and depository institutions, respectively, to increase access to mortgage credit for borrowers perceived by some as “underserved” by the mortgage market. Chapter III considers the overall …

Essays On Non-Traditional Activities In The Banking Industry, Lijuan Sun

Theses and Dissertations

Starting in the 1980s, financial innovations and technology improvements led to important changes in corporate financing, primarily a significant decrease in the share of bank loans and an increased share of bonds and stocks. This change challenged the traditional banking business. The Gramm–Leach–Bliley (GLB) Act of 1999 allowed banks to engage more freely in non-traditional activities such as investment banking, venture capital, security brokerage, insurance underwriting, and asset securitization. Further, GLB encouraged changes in banks' business models and income mix that were already underway. Chapter I shows an introduction of non-traditional activities. Chapter II examines the relationship between non-traditional activities, …

Essays On Corporate Governance, Wonseok Choi

Theses and Dissertations

Corporate governance is one major research topic in financial economics. Studies in this area explore how much severe agency problems firms have and how to mitigate such agency problems to benefit the firms and their investors. In this dissertation, I investigate whether outside directors’ dissention has a monitoring role. The first essay tests whether outside directors’ dissention increases firm value through outside directors’ monitoring role. The second essay examines outside directors’ dissention on earnings management. I found supportive evidences that outside directors’ dissention can increase firm value and reduce earnings management. Also, only aggressive dissentions can lead higher firm value …

Essays On Stock Market Contagion: Evidence From The Americas, Juan Andres Rodriguez-Nieto

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation we examine the financial contagion from the U.S. to the Americas during the U.S. financial crisis.

First, we examine the relationship between the U.S. perceived market volatility (VIX), perceived credit risk (TED spread), and the U.S. financial crisis, on the stock returns of these countries. Our findings suggest that VIX has negatively effects on the stock returns of all these countries and that this relationship increases significantly during the U.S. financial crisis. We also identify that increases in the TED spread, have negative effects on the stock market returns of Canada and Latin America, and this increases …

Essays On The Unintended Consequences Of Banking Regulation, John Patrick Ned

Theses and Dissertations

Ned, John Patrick, Essays on the Unintended Consequences of Banking Regulation. Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), August 18, 2017, 77 pp., 11 tables, references, 34 titles. The introduction of new financial regulatory reforms are designed to usually provide a positive impact for the firms in the banking system. However, there are some unintended consequences to the firms in the banking industry after the introduction of new banking regulations. In the two essays, I examine the impact of introducing new banking regulation on the different firms in the financial services industry and the impact of the new banking regulation on the commercial …

Three Essays On Shareholder Activism, Khoa Huu Nguyen

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation includes three separate studies related to shareholder activism campaigns. The first study, presented in Chapter II, examines the question whether shareholder activism creates value for the targets’ shareholder. I find positive and significant abnormal returns on a day of the targeting announcement, 1.55%, and one day after, 1.33%. For Buy-and-Hold return analysis, I find that stock prices of the targets start to decrease 24 months before activism campaign announcements. Further results indicate that the targets are also underperforming to the market and to their matchings at pre-announcement periods. For post-announcement periods, however, targets’ stock returns recover and outperform …

Equity Mispricing, Firms' Innovation And Institutional Investors, Hamid Sakaki

Theses and Dissertations

First essay has two primary objectives. First, I investigate the relation between institutional investors and firms’ innovation activities and second, the impact of different types of institutional investors on firms’ innovation by classifying institutional investors into five groups. After controlling for other determinants of innovation, the results show that higher institutional ownership stability boosts innovation activities measured by the number of patents and citations. The results also indicate that banks, insurance, and investment companies have a positive and significant effect on firms’ innovation, while investment advisors could affect innovation activities negatively. Moreover, when I classify the institutional investors based on …

Antecedents And Outcomes Of Customer Engagement: Bridging Customer Value Co-Creation Behavior And Customer Psychological State Engagement, Samaneh Torkzadeh

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation draws on service-dominant logic and reviews the engagement literature to explore the antecedents and outcomes of two multi-dimensional customer engagement constructs: psychological state engagement (PSEngagement) and value co-creation behavior. PSEngagement is a precursor to value co-creation behavior, with the latter also known as behavioral engagement in prior research.

The model proposed in this dissertation was tested in two service contexts: higher education, with a sample size of 454, and fitness, with a sample size of 122. To minimize the common method variance typical of survey research (Podsakoff, et al. 2003), the model was tested twice per context, once …