Business Commons^™

Demand Uncertainty And Investment In The Restaurant Industry, Jayoung Sohn

Open Access Dissertations

Since the collapse of the housing market, the prolonged economic uncertainty lingering in the U.S. economy has dampened restaurant performance. Economic uncertainty affects consumer sentiment and spending, turning into demand uncertainty. Nevertheless, the highly competitive nature of the restaurant industry does not allow much room for restaurants to actively control prices, leaving most food service firms exposed to demand uncertainty. To investigate the impact of demand uncertainty in the restaurant industry, this study focused on the implications of demand uncertainty for investment.

The first essay in chapter 3 examined the impact of demand uncertainty on investment and how the impact …

Responsible Microfinance Bundling: Experimental Evidence On Separating Insurance And Credit Offers, Vance J. Larsen

Open Access Theses

In recent years combining multiple financial products into one package in a process known as bundling has become more common among microfinance institutions (MFIs). While bundling can be beneficial to MFIs by cutting costs and providing protection from client default, the implications for MFI customers are less clear. Bundling the products may take advantage of the existing relationship between the financial institution and the client to expand microinsurance access and take-up, but alternatively offering too many products could lead to low client understanding and thus low take-up of the product. We conducted a randomized field experiment to determine if separating …

Evaluating The Impacts Of Respondent Errors In Arms: A Case Of Farm Service Agency Loans, Louise Nicole Mcminn

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Many studies have used the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS) to research various aspects involving the agricultural sector in the United States. Since nonresponse and inaccurate reporting may cause significant bias in statistical analysis, research was conducted to determine the magnitude of response error on the farm debt section of the ARMS Phase III. A multinomial logit model identified demographic, structural, and financial characteristics of FSA Farm Loan Program (FLP) borrowers who refused to indicate if they had end of year farm debt, or who accurately or inaccurately classified their farm operations as having end …

Estimating Truncated Hotel Demand: A Comparison Of Low Computational Cost Forecasting Methods, Yue Ding

Open Access Theses

The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the effectiveness of six selected low computational cost hotel demand forecasting methods (SA, SMA, EMA, DEMA, BP and PU) in terms of restoring truncated demand data, and then identify a low-cost and easy to follow demand forecasting method that can be used by U.S. independent hotels. Obtaining revenue gains by applying demand forecasting techniques have been proved by many studies in hospitality and other related industries. However, few studies have focused on low computational forecasting methods' comparison in hospitality field. For this reason, the author decided to test the performance of six …

Two Essays On Insider Trading And Option Grants Around The Filing Of Influential Patents, Liu Pan

Doctoral Dissertations

Research documents that insiders, who have access to private information, appear to trade with profits before major corporate events like mergers, bankruptcy, dividend announcements, and future cash flow news (see, e.g., Seyhun, 1990; Seyhun and Bradley, 1997; John and Lang, 1991; Jiang and Zaman, 2010). Another recent stream of studies find that the size and quality of a firm's patent portfolio are positively related to the firm's future stock returns (Hirshleifer, Hsu, and Li, 2012; Pandit, Wasley, and Zach, 2011). However, there is little systematic evidence on whether insiders act opportunistically when they possess private information about the firm's patent …

Two Essays On Insider Trading And Option Grants Around The Filing Of Influential Patents, Liu Pan

Doctoral Dissertations

Research documents that insiders, who have access to private information, appear to trade with profits before major corporate events like mergers, bankruptcy, dividend announcements, and future cash flow news (see, e.g., Seyhun, 1990; Seyhun and Bradley, 1997; John and Lang, 1991; Jiang and Zaman, 2010). Another recent stream of studies find that the size and quality of a firm's patent portfolio are positively related to the firm's future stock returns (Hirshleifer, Hsu, and Li, 2012; Pandit, Wasley, and Zach, 2011). However, there is little systematic evidence on whether insiders act opportunistically when they possess private information about the firm's patent …

Private Debt Syndicates: Governance, Networks, And Syndicate Structure, William R. Mccumber

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I examine the primary market for syndicated private credit agreements to U.S. firms within the context of contract theory with information asymmetries between contracting parties in a repeated game. Specific governance mechanisms determine a firm's cost of borrowing in syndicated credit agreements. Firms with governance mitigating agency risk between stakeholders, i.e. independent boards, strong shareholder monitoring, and greater CEO pay-performance sensitivity, enjoy lower borrowing costs. The interests of creditors and shareholders diverge with regard to external governance. Lenders charge higher spreads to firms at greater risk of acquisition and reward stronger firms with price concessions when they possess staunch anti-takeover …

Institutional Distance And Entry Mode: How Do Emerging-Market Multinational Companies Overcome Competitive Disadvantages In A Developed Market?, Ru-Shiun Liou

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As latecomers to global business competition, emerging-market multinational companies (EMNCs) utilize cross-border merger and acquisitions to swiftly acquire strategic assets, such as brands and distribution channels, compensating for their competency deficiency. Developed markets with well-established firms and well-developed market-supporting institutions become important destinations for EMNCs' strategic asset-seeking investments. Institutional distance, national differences in the institutional environment, constitutes a major source of competitive disadvantage for foreign firms competing with indigenous firms. Foreign firms need to overcome the challenges of unfamiliarity, relational, and discriminatory hazards to establish legitimacy in the host market. Compared to established multinationals that originate from other advanced markets …

Essays On The Digital Divide - Explorations Through Global, National And Individual Lenses, Maria Skaletsky

2013

The Digital Divide has emerged as an important research and policy issue during the past thirty years. The divide exists at different levels, such as global, regional and individual levels. While extensive research already exists on this subject, the complexity of the issue presents opportunities for further research. In particular, there is ample scope for significantly contributing to the literature by leveraging recent analytics techniques, all the more since most of the literature on the Digital Divide relies on descriptive methods or on simple or multiple regression models. Therefore, the motivation for this study is two-fold. First, the Digital Divide …

Ties That Bind: A Network Perspective On University Spinouts, Patrick Mchugh

2013

Research universities execute technology transfer initiatives to transition university inventions to marketplace innovations. This process requires ties to bridge the gap between two disparate networks: a university's research community and a licensing corporate entity. One type of licensing corporate entity, and the focus of this research, is a newly formed university spinout. Utilizing a network lens, this study focuses on the ties between university inventors and spinout licensees and on the impact of various inter-organizational relationships on a spinout's success. This thesis investigates the following research questions: 1. How, if at all, does variation in the nature of the tie …

Too Big Not To Fail: United States Corporate Media And The 2008 Financial Crisis, Justin Lars Bergh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates United States newspaper coverage of the 2008 financial crisis, with a particular focus on the debate that took place in press coverage surrounding the proposed 700 billion dollar Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Specifically, this study aims to understand how, when faced with a crisis that threatened hegemony, the state and economic elites, working in and through media, were able to effectively convince the subordinate classes to consent to state intervention aimed at perpetuating a financial system that has historically profited from the relative financial insecurity of the subordinate classes. In order to understand media's role in …

The Long-Term Impact Of A Loyalty Program: An Evaluation From A Las Vegas Casino Hotel, Myongjee Yoo

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Loyalty programs are popular marketing strategies intended to attract, maintain, and enhance customer relationships. Despite the widespread usage of loyalty programs across various businesses, its effectiveness has not been well validated. Few empirical studies attempted to evaluate the value of loyalty programs but the findings have been conflicting with each other. Given the competitive climate of such a highly saturated competitive market of the hospitality industry, it is meaningful for hospitality marketers to evaluate the effectiveness of loyalty programs to increase customer retention and profitability. Therefore, the main purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a hospitality …

Examining Revenue Management Practices In Las Vegas Casino Resorts, Arun Tanpanuwat

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The overall goal of this study was to examine Revenue Management (RM) practices in Las Vegas casino resorts. A great deal of research has been done on RM in the hospitality industry. The academic research has examined RM in hospitality in general, but not specifically in casino resorts, which gain their revenue from both rooms and resort amenities. Moreover, the academic literature often show high-level mathematic-based solutions or statistical applications, but not necessarily pragmatic techniques for practitioners. This qualitative study investigates the extent to which the essential fundamentals of any RM system are implemented successfully by casino RM professionals and …

Three Essays On Opacity, Corporate Governance, And Credit Ratings, Yiwen Gu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the first essay, utilizing a more recent and expanded 20-year sample 1991-2010 of dual-rated bonds issued, I confirm Morgan's (2002) finding that banks are relatively more opaque than nonbanks. The likelihood of a rating split is higher, and the magnitude of the rating gap is larger, for banks than nonnbanks. Moreover, rating agency disagreements are more significant for banks with relatively higher loan and trading securities holdings and maintain lower capital, and for banks engaged in mortgage securitization. Importantly, I find that rating agency disagreements reflect market proxies of information uncertainty. Further, opacity makes external financing more costly. Equity …