Business Commons^™

Evaluating The Returns Of Emerging Market Mutual Funds, Constantinos (Dean) Athanailos

Business/Business Administration

In this paper, the returns of mutual funds invested in emerging markets and the returns of emerging market ETFs are measured. The rates of returns of 133 emerging market mutual funds are taken from the PSN network and the return, risk, and diversification are evaluated for the emerging market mutual funds. The findings are that Southeast Asian countries dominate the proportion of investments for emerging markets. Of the countries invested in, China is the primary country invested in by a large margin. The highest rate of returns was for funds who had invested in India primarily followed by Taiwan and …

A Risk & Return Analysis Of Esg Focused Etfs, Annamarie Khandji

Business/Business Administration

Use of environmental, social and governance (ESG) data about a company or fund in the investment decision making process has increased significantly in the last 15 years. As a result, interest in understanding and analyzing the return potential that funds with high rated ESG scored holdings has grown. This paper examines the return potential ESG focused electronically traded funds (ETF) have, when compared to a conventional ETF and a benchmark. Three funds, including a conventional United States based fund, an ESG focused United States based fund and an ESG focused European based fund as well as the S&P 1500, as …

The Challenge Of Competing In The Retail Domain: A Review Of The Complexities, Strategies, And Results Of Capri Holdings Limited, Jenna Terc

Business/Business Administration

The key to competing in the luxury market is adopting a "differentiation strategy." Since the luxury fashion segment is saturated, standing out from the crowd of other luxury retailers can be the key to organizational survival. In this work, I compare and contrast the strategies and qualitative and quantitative performance of Capri Holdings Limited with those of the Ralph Lauren Corp. The strategy to performance evaluation is based on a 5-point Likert Scale and includes more than 40 points of assessment. At the opposite ends of the scale, 1 represented very poor performance and 5 represented that which was very …

Pandemic Pivot: An Analysis Of How Retail Pharmacies Diversified Their Offerings During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Juliana Hybner

Business/Business Administration

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the operating strategy of nearly all businesses open in 2020. Businesses were split into two groups, essential and nonessential. Nonessential business, like gyms, shopping malls, and movie theaters, had little choice in their strategy in the beginning of the pandemic. They had to close. As they reopened, they found creative ways to attract customers without amassing large crowds in their storefronts. Essential businesses, on the other hand were faced with a unique challenge. Serving the U.S. population during their most vulnerable time. Retail pharmacies took on key responsibilities, administering COVID-19 tests and vaccines, while also …

Information Management For Ualbany Honors College, Katelyn Almon

Business/Business Administration

Once you attract the best students to your campus, how do you keep them? University honors programs, a common means of attracting students in the competition for excellent students, have had difficulty retaining students in completing their honors education. Given the investment into honors students, strategies to improve outcomes would focus scholarship and teaching resources on some combination of students most likely to complete the program and assist those most likely to drop out. Additionally, by identifying predictors of retention and completion, the Honors College will be able to improve its admissions process to better select students most likely to …

The 2020 Impact: Rethinking Brand Approach To Sustainability Through A Postcolonial And Environmental Justice Framework, Simone Hassan-Bey

Business/Business Administration

Social unrest as a result of a pandemic and the movement for Black lives created a greater demand for big brands to increase their involvement in social responsibility. In this work, I examine the relationship between big brands to their colonial and environmental legacies to analyze how they have historically responded to social justice issues and how it has helped or hindered their journey towards sustainability. My research suggests that these brands may be failing to live up to their social responsibility claims because they struggle to see how the two actors are interconnected, as a result, I offer a …

Development Of An Experimental C2 Utilizing Network Sockets, Jonathan Matza

Business/Business Administration

Cybersecurity attacks and software used to perpetrate them are constantly evolving in the face of improved methods for detection and mitigation. An important element of cyber-attacks is use of Command & Control (C2) infrastructure to send commands and receive data from targets. A major issue with C2s is how to establish a persistent communication channel from compromised hosts to their server while avoiding detection. This work focuses on the development of a Proof- of-Concept (PoC) for a relatively novel raw-socket based C2 “JT” and includes a discussion of relevant C2 technologies/trends along with their corresponding techniques. The C2 development was …

An Examination Of The Financial Sensitivity Of The Defense Industry To Spending Strategies Of The United States Government, Ryan Carr

Business/Business Administration

Knowledge of the relationship between the financial performance of firms within the U.S. defense industry and the defense spending decisions by the United States Government is an important domain of research. Greater understanding can enable investors, communities, and employees to make more informed decisions about investments and/or career choices. In this work, I examined the financial statements of five major American defense contractors from 1993-1995, 2003-2005, and 2011-2013. Financial performance of these firms was then correlated with spending actions by the United States Defense Department. Although the financial sensitivity of these firms on spending decisions by the United States Defense …

Smart Speaker Forensics, Steven Engelhardt

Business/Business Administration

Devices such as the Google Home and Amazon Echo are great sources of digital evidence and artifacts due to the fact that much of the data these devices generate are stored both locally and in the cloud. For this reason, law enforcement and forensic investigators are not forced to rely on companies such as Google and Amazon to retrieve useful information. In this paper, techniques used to retrieve this information are discussed. Although some of these techniques require an analyst to have an individual’s login credentials, other techniques that focus on the data stored in a user’s phone can be …

You Might Just Surprise Yourself: When Will Consumers Purchase A Surprise Product As A Self-Gift?, Kelly Morrow

Business/Business Administration

Consumers are becoming increasingly self-oriented in their purchase and consumption behaviors. Self-gifts have proliferated on the market, especially self-gifts that contain an element of surprise, which can be seen with the rise in popularity of subscription boxes. Surprise has been found to enhance the function of self-gifts, but it can also result in post-purchase regret if the surprise did not meet consumer expectations. Typically, individuals consume self-gifts as forms of indulgences, rewards, and as mood-regulatory devices. Based on these findings, this paper examines the relationship between three mood conditions (positive, neutral, and negative) and consumers’ likeliness to purchase a surprise …

Removing Prejudice From Online Job Applications, Ilene Rothman

Business/Business Administration

Currently, there are no laws limiting an employer from viewing a candidate’s social media presence. The United States Equal Opportunity Employment Commission prohibits discrimination based on race, color, sex, religion, national origin, age, disability, political affiliation, sexual orientation, and genetic information. If a candidate is active on professional social media websites such as the largest online professional network, LinkedIn, some of this information can easily be gathered by an employer. To stop discrimination in the hiring process, recommendations for a blind hiring process will be provided. This process will ensure that a candidate is initially judged solely based on the …

Alzheimer’S: The Right To Nothing?, Heather Marie Forster

Business/Business Administration

The purpose of this thesis is to shine light on the inequalities in the types of options Alzheimer’s patients are afforded and the different decisions they can or cannot make in comparison to other terminal patients. The main argument of this thesis is to include Alzheimer’s patients in current Right-to-Die laws by allowing them to consent to this choice of action before they are diagnosed, or in the early stages while they still have the competence to do so. Another aspect of this thesis is to increase the general public’s knowledge about Alzheimer’s and other dementias in order to generate …

The Implementation Of A Cybersecurity Testbed For Education And Research, Elisabeth Dubois

Business/Business Administration

The Cyber Innovation Lab brings with it the understanding and collection of the threats, vulnerabilities, and risks that one’s IT resources present. Due to the increasing complexity and degree of cyber threats, innovation regarding current attack vectors and defense mechanisms are needed. The lack of realistic threat landscapes and the need for accurate security analysis and defense strategies prompted the implementation of a cyber physical system for defensive research. The project depicts the processes to establish the testbed, the methodology used in classifying the architecture, threat and attack analysis, as well as preliminary results. The paper presents the testbed architecture …

The Relationship Between Defense Expenditures And Economic Growth: A Granger Causality Approach, Colin Manchester

Business/Business Administration

This paper examines the relationship between defense spending and economic growth in the United States of America between 1947 and 2016. Using quarterly data from the Federal Reserve of St. Louis Economic Data and the Granger Causality methodology, this study examines the potential two-way causality between defense spending and economic growth. The results suggest that over the longer time span of 6-7 years, Granger Causality was not seen between defense spending and economic growth. However, while analyzing incremental periods in smaller sections, there were differing findings about the nature of causality.

Leadership And Performance In Various Group Dynamics, Jonathan Fedczuk

Business/Business Administration

This thesis will begin by providing a summary of the differences between flat and tall organizations. The bulk of the research will aim to explore leadership styles and demands that are effective in flatter organizations. More specifically, it will examine several aspects of autocratic and participative leadership in relation to managerial success. It will also assess certain need satisfactions of managers in flat organizations and the extent to which they have achieved success. The second portion of this thesis is intended to explore whether structural differences influence performance. A number of laboratory studies are evaluated to measure performance in tall …

Are Government-Sponsored Pension Privatization Efforts Leading To Better Beneficiary Outcomes?, Dylan Iadanza

Business/Business Administration

This paper seeks to inform readers on the history and the performance of tying state-sponsored retirement plans to the market. In the late 1970’s and 1980’s, many Latin American university students participated in an exchange program affiliated with the University of Chicago. After completing their studies under notable free-market economists such as Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger, these students returned home and took prominent positions in governments- mainly in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. In Chile, the students developed a plan known as el ladrillo (“the brick”). In 1981, their retirement system was completely privatized. Mutual funds, called Administradoras de Fondos …

The Relation Between Social Responsibility And Exit Performance Of Vc-Backed Entrepreneurial Firms, Kaita Albanese

Business/Business Administration

This study analyzes the probability of successful exit by venture capital (VC)-backed en-trepreneurial firms that focus on “clean energy” initiatives. Such initiatives include generation from renewable sources as well as conservation. The empirical analysis, for ventures between 1990 and 2014, documents that clean energy investments have a higher probability of successful exit than do non-clean energy ventures. In addition, the results show that both solar and alternative energy VC-backed entrepreneurial firms allow their investors a shorter duration to exit.

A Conceptual Assessment Of The Uncertain Future Of The Personal Computer, Patrick J. Mccann

Business/Business Administration

In this thesis, I investigate the chances that the personal computer (PC) becomes a thing of the past in the near future. PC sales have seen quite the downturn, while smartphones have thrived in the technology space. I also consider how affects not only firms in the technology sector, but in almost all fields. Since the world today revolves around technology, specifically computers, it goes without saying that a change in the way we depend on PCs would change how we do almost everything. After diligently analyzing various sources on the matter, as well as consulting my own experiences, I …

Integrating Roadway Dynamics Into A Systems Model Of Urban Decay, Michael Winning

Business/Business Administration

No abstract provided.

Increasing User Engagement On Social Media, Emily Grasso

Business/Business Administration

For my thesis, I explored the question of what type of content will increase user engagement on social media. I’ve had the opportunity to work on a live project, for a New York-based recruiting agency, Careers on the Move, founded by University at Albany graduate, Richelle Konian.

The goal of the project was to establish, through research, what engages users on social media and then test my findings.

I established, through baseline analytics reports using LinkedIn Analytics, Facebook Insights, and Hootsuite reports that the most appropriate dependent variables will be on LinkedIn, Engagement and Reach; on Facebook, Page Likes and …

Domination: The Consequence Of A Modern Day Monopoly, Matthew Haimson

Business/Business Administration

The objective of this study is to find out what constitutes a company as a monopoly. There are various indicators which establish a monopoly from other dominating businesses; however, it is difficult to pin-point how one company controls the market over its competitors. With financial and quantitative data, there are ways `to determine how a company may be heading towards that direction. In this study, there were two organizations selected and compared; one which has displayed monopolistic features, while the other is slowly being dominated by its competitor. After carefully analyzing and comparing the two well-known corporations, various inferences were …

Performance Sports: An Excuse For Doping?, Vladislav V. Loenko

Business/Business Administration

The objective of this study is to determine what characteristics in high performance athletes are likely to create a desire to use a doping substance. After reviewing the works of notable scholars addressing similar concerns, research has helped to identify some of the prominent factors liable for this manifesto. This paper focuses on psychological determinants within highly competitive individuals, specifically those who have a predisposed desire for achievement, which correspond with a higher propensity to use performance-enhancing drugs. In order to effectively assess the findings for this hypothesis, its application is strictly devoted to performance sports.

Analysis Into The Effect The Sarbanes-Oxley Act Of 2002 Has Had On Investor Confidence In Audited Financial Statements, Richard F. Pino Iii

Business/Business Administration

This paper studies the impact that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) has had on investor confidence in audited financial statements. Most studies of SOX examined its effect on audit quality, but the principal goal that government officials wanted to accomplish was to restore investor confidence in audited financial information following the frauds at Enron, WorldCom, and other public companies. The main method used in gathering data is a small survey to investors, where they answered questions regarding certain parts of SOX to gain insights into investors’ perspectives. After analyzing the survey results as well as researching scholarly works on …

Data Anonymization And Its Effect On Personal Privacy, Nicole Ganz

Business/Business Administration

Everyone’s personal privacy is extremely vital and people go through great lengths to ensure that their information is secure. Corporations who collect or utilize data do realize this and strive to protect their customer’s information. But can data be released to research companies without jeopardizing the privacy of the people? The more sensitive the released data is, the more companies have to mitigate the probability of being able to link the data together. Companies collect big data because it can be examined to predict patterns and be used for marketing, thus increasing their chances of becoming successful. To replicate the …

Social Media: How The Most Influential Marketing Tool In Today’S Society Can Benefit And Enhance Developing Companies, Morgan Ariel Rosh

Business/Business Administration

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of social media and the great impact it can have on small to medium sized companies. Social media has proven itself to be an strong channel for marketing due to its capabilities to see what consumers are talking about as well as allowing companies to directly communicate with said consumers in the blink of an eye. This study was conducted alongside Careers on the Move, a boutique job placement firm located in Midtown Manhattan. Over the span of seven months, I tested out a variety of different social media techniques …

Cyber Attacked: Could You Be Next?, Sarah Desjardins

Business/Business Administration

In today’s modern world, companies store the majority of their business information on computer systems. If not properly protected, private data such as customer financial records, trade secrets, and company financials, can be easily compromised. Major data breaches are becoming more frequent, as hackers are becoming more sophisticated. Cyber-attacks have a negative impact on customers, shareholders, employees, and of course the company itself. This paper examines several recent cyber-attacks and explores the reaction to these by the corporations. It examines the potential and verifiable consequences of these attacks and identifies a range of shareholders who can be injured by the …

Cruise Industry: Size Matters, Christina Antoinette Wedderburn

Business/Business Administration

This study investigates the relationships between several measures of market share and specific levels of financial performance. The study focuses directly on the cruise line industry and pairs two significant firms to test the hypothesis. The two firms are Carnival Corporation and Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd. When correlating higher market share with the return on assets, operating margin and book-to-market aspect of performance it was discovered that higher market share produces higher productivity and efficiency.

Theoretical Consequence Of Social Media And Retail Marketing, Jessica Wald

Business/Business Administration

Social media has become a focus of marketing within the past few years. Companies have changed their advertising approach to adapt to the new audience utilizing social media. Social media itself is such a vague phrase, but it encompasses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Google+, Tumblr, and countless more websites. Throughout the course of this thesis, I look at two well-known companies, Starbucks and McDonald’s, and compare them, focusing on their social media usage. My focus is looking at how these two worldwide companies use their Facebook pages, Twitter pages, and Instagram accounts to promote their own brand image and …

The Cost Of Corporate Carelessness, Genesis Tejeda

Business/Business Administration

In this thesis, I will be discussing the financial ramifications of the parties affected by BP’s carelessness in the days preceding the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010. Before the Deepwater Horizon oil spill occurred, there were a series of strategic decisions that BP and its executives made that caused the Macondo well to explode approximately 48 miles off the coast of Louisiana at 9:56 pm on April 20, 2010. After the explosion of the well and the subsequent 5 million gallons of oil that spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, there were …

What Effect Do Rumors Have On Publicly Traded Sports Teams?, Paul Karasaridis

Business/Business Administration

This paper explores the effects of rumors on stock prices. It targets publicly traded soccer teams to see what impact rumors of players transferring, in and out of teams, has on their respective stock returns. A total of 56 rumors are being used in the analysis. An event study is conducted around the dates of each transfer rumor in order to examine what types of abnormalities exist in the returns of the stock. To further investigate this study, a cross sectional analysis is being performed to see whether player reputation, player status, and future validity of the rumors had more …