Business Commons^™

Innovation, Ownership And Ipo Underpricing, Roman Bohdan

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of two empirical essays. The first chapter titled: “Hedge Fund Activism and Dual Ownership of U.S. Multinationals”. Harford, Wang & Zhang (2017) conclude that holding high cash balances abroad to avoid US taxes causes internal capital markets and investments distortions. We posit that hedge funds target MNCs with more severe internal capital and agency problems. We demonstrate that upon acquiring dual ownership in these firms, hedge funds reduce internal capital problems and improve investment, especially innovation, efficiencies. To further reduce agency costs of foreign cash holdings, hedge funds engage dual firms in focused acquisitions. These improvements are …

Impact Of Labor Protection Laws On The Operating And Financial Risks Of Firms: The Case Of China, Yuxin Huang

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

A debate exists regarding the effect of labor protection laws on labor costs. Whether labor protection laws increase or decrease labor costs has implications for risk exposure of affected firms. If the labor costs go up, all else the same, the firm’s breakeven point goes up. Facing increased business risk, the firm must resort to strategies that inhibit the risk exposure, especially if the higher labor costs cannot be transferred, without adverse consequences, to consumers. The strategies include reigning in, if at all possible, operating leverage and financial leverage. Conversely, if the labor costs decrease, a firm’s business risk declines, …

Essays On Capital Structure Of Nations, Giovanni Perez

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Credit Supply, Price And Financial Stability In Markets And Institutions, Austin J. Dejan

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In Chapter 1, the staggered nature of the adoption of interstate bank branching deregulation in the United States is utilized as an exogeneous shock to investigate the managerial incentives involved in corporate socially responsible (CSR) activities. Using Kinder, Lydenberg, and Domini Research & Analytics, Inc. for our CSR measures, we find a significant negative relation between the extent of deregulation and CSR practices, which implies that deregulation-led rising competition in product market makes the non-financial firms more concerned about protecting interests of shareholders than other stakeholders. Specifically, firms with low pricing power tend to significantly reduce their CSR activities. Our …

Regulatory Repercussions In Finance, Jennifer L. Brodmann

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the impact of regulation and public policies on firm performance. Chapter 1, entitled “Political Contributions, Insider Trading, and CEO Compensation”, determines why CEOs from politically-connected firms receive higher pay compared to their non-politically connected peers. We investigate whether insider trading can explain high CEO pay. Using hand-collected firm-level lobbying data, we examine whether politically-connected CEOs engage in insider trading after sponsored bills are introduced and passed in the U.S. legislative bodies. Our results show that politically-connected CEOs commit insider trading, which yields higher compensation packages. In addition, we also find that lobbying benefits firm performance. Politically-connected firms …

Technological Diversity In Finance, Blake K. Rayfield

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation consists of two chapters on measuring firms technological profile. Patent data can be grouped into two primary generations. The first generation lead by the work of Schmookler (1966), Scherer (1982), and Griliches (1984), and the second generation led by Trajtenberg, Jaffe, and Henderson (1997) and Kogan et al. (2016). When combined, both generations data spans from nearly 1926-2010 and has made a meaningful impact on innovation research. In the first chapter, I propose a third generation of patent data. The third generation of patent data has two distinct contributions. First, it extends patent-firm ownership information beyond 2010 to …

The Impact Of Governance Mechanism On Performance And Survival Of Entrepreneurial Firms, Noura S. Metawa

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation consists of two essays.

The first essay studies governance structures and their effectiveness for start-up companies and their survival. We utilize data from the Kauffman Survey, which tracks a sample of firms from their inceptions through their first eight years of existence. We hypothesize and find evidence that a startup's governance system affects its survivability as well as its performance. We show that controlling for the firm size and the industry, cross-sectional variations in the performance of the start-up firms can be explained by governance variables; the presence of one or more independent board member on the board, …