Business Commons^™

What Bitcoin Is, And How It Can Change Commerce, Jeffrey Bukhari

Capstones

The use of the digital currency Bitcoin has spiked dramatically over the last several years. Spurred by interest from investors and those excited about its commercial and banking potential, the value of the cryptocurrency has seen its value greatly increase since its beginning in 2009.

This project explains the underlying technology behind Bitcoin, how Bitcoin is and will change commerce, and what potential lies ahead for the digital currency.

A Study Of Undergraduate Personal Finance Courses At Public Universities In The Pacific Northwest Using An Action Research Approach, Melody Bell

CUP Ed.D. Dissertations

The purpose of this action research study was to examine undergraduate personal finance course instruction with a specific focus on student loan debt instruction at public universities in Oregon. This study focused on the central research question: What is the scope, sequence, and emphasis on the curriculum in undergraduate financial education courses and how could it be improved? Four personal finance professors from four public universities in Oregon participated in the study; with one of the universities serving as the focus. The first stage after the proposed study was to audit the personal finance course at the focus university. The …

The Market At Work, Patrick Flynn

Honors Projects

I believe my project will be the best project for me using both of my majors. It is a great way for me to take some of the knowledge I learned here at BGSU and apply it to a real life scenario I could pursue in future years. Investing at a young age is very important to help raise a lot of money for my retirement, something that I am learning right now in class. People coming out of college usually aren’t very concerned with investing at such a young age. I want to take advantage of this opportunity that …

The Impact Of Culture On Hispanic Entrepreneurs As Mediated By Motivation, Challenge, And Success, Valerie V. Ballesteros

Theses & Dissertations

In the modern economic environment, demographic shifts in U.S. population resulting from changing immigration, changing economic policies and environments, and growing socioeconomic disparity, scholarly research examining the business behavior of specific groups and the impact of behavior on the broader marketplace is valuable and necessary. Hispanic entrepreneurs, when compared to both minority and non-minority business-owners, started and flourished in successful business ownership at a greater growth rate than any other group (Davila, Mora, & Zeitlin, 2014). Since the beginning of the 21st century, Hispanic entrepreneurs have become a measurable economic force. The cultural experience of the Hispanic entrepreneur is important …

Bank Lending Channel And Changing Credit Standards In The Residential Mortgage Market, Salman Tahsin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation examines the relationship between bank conditions and the residential mortgage market. The first essay investigates the effect of bank distress on the residential mortgage market during the 2007-09 financial crisis. We use the county-aggregated change in the ratio of jumbo to nonjumbo mortgage acceptance rate as an instrumental variable to control for endogeneity between bank distress and county economic conditions. The median decrease in the instrumental variable explains an additional 1.5 percentage point decline in county home prices and a 20 basis point rise in the county unemployment rate, which represent 15% and 5%, respectively, of their median …

Implementing The Heston Option Pricing Model In Object-Oriented Cython, Brandon Hardin

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

The 1973 Black-Scholes model, a revolutionary option pricing formula whose price is 'relatively close to observed prices, makes an assumption that the volatility is constant and thus, deterministic. This causes some inefficiencies and patterns in the pricing of options due to the model providing evidence of the volatility smile' of the volatility. Many scholars have suggested that the volatility should be modelled by a stochastic process and the (1993) Heston Model is one of many proposed solutions to remedy this problem. The Heston Model allows for the 'smile' by defining the volatility as a stochastic process. This thesis considers a …

Assessing The Current Efficiencies Of Farm Credit Of Western Arkansas, Hailey Paulsen

Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness Undergraduate Honors Theses

Farm Credit is a unique banking structure, as it is a cooperative which pays patronage dividends to its members. As such, the rates for loans (nominal interest rates) that Farm Credit offers can be slightly higher than larger commercial banks because the patronage payment can offset some, all or more of interest rate difference, which results in an effective rate. Farm Credit, like other globally evolving industries, must continuously look for ways to differentiate themselves to compete for new customers and retain existing ones. Thus, this study sets out to survey the members of Western Farm Credit of Arkansas to …

Application: Solving For A Local Companys Optimal Storage Strategy, Dakota Ferrin

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

This project used historical spot and futures price data of two fairly closely correlated commodities to simulate many possible spot and futures price paths that could have occurred over a given time frame. These simulated prices were then used to test various commodity storage strategies available through futures contracts. This paper explains how results, including values such as the mean terminal cumulative profit and the standard deviation of the mean terminal cumulative profits for each strategy, can be interpreted to help determine a local company’s optimal storage strategy.

This paper specifically provides a way for a local company to find …

Performance Of Statistical Arbitrage In Future Markets, Shijie Sheng

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

This paper is the replication of Alizadeh and Nomikos (2008) Performance of Statistical Arbitrage in Petroleum Futures Markets. Cited methodology from the original paper, this paper investigates the linkages between commodities in the future markets and apply trading strategy based on statistical analysis. The trading strategy is established based on cointegration relationships between commodities and execute trading rules to determine long-short positions. The robustness of trading result will be implemented by using stationary bootstrap approach. From the result, we can see the trading strategy based on cointegration relationship analysis is efficient to set up trading strategies in given datasets.

Financial Engineering: Negative Interest Rate Policy And Quantitative Easing As Forms Of Alternative Monetary Policy, Calli A. Farrell

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Factors Driving Financial Inclusion And Financial Performance In Fintech New Ventures: An Empirical Study, Miguel Angel Soriano

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Financial inclusion, or providing access to and active use of affordable financial products to the 2 billion unbanked adults globally, can facilitate individual prosperity, reduce poverty and increase economic development. Digital technologies such as mobile phones, cloud computing, data analytics and blockchain are one of the biggest enablers of financial inclusion by making it economically possible to serve these individuals. This dissertation examined the role of digital technologies in financial inclusion from the perspective of new financial technology (Fintech) ventures serving the unbanked and underbanked. Supported by strategy management theories, I identified key factors that impact the success of these …

Performance Evaluation And Risk Management: Time Series Bootstrap Analysis Of The Mutual Funds And Banking Sectors, Lifa Huang

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, also known as the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (“Act”), repealed a regulatory proscription in the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 that prohibited commercial bank holding companies (BHCs) from underwriting most bonds, equities, and insurance policies. After the passage of the Act in November 1999, BHCs that converted to financial holding companies (FHCs) were allowed to engage in securities underwriting without restrictions. The first paper examines whether the removal of barriers to securities underwriting had an adverse impact on the overall stability of the financial sector, and thereby, contributed indirectly to the financial crisis of 2008. The …

Multi-Step Tokenization Of Automated Clearing House Payment Transactions, Privin Alexander

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since its beginnings in 1974, the Automated Clearing House (ACH) network has grown into one of the largest, safest, and most efficient payment systems in the world. An ACH transaction is an electronic funds transfer between bank accounts using a batch processing system.

Currently, the ACH Network moves almost $43 trillion and 25 billion electronic financial transactions each year. With the increasing movement toward an electronic, interconnected and mobile infrastructure, it is critical that electronic payments work safely and efficiently for all users. ACH transactions carry sensitive data, such as a consumer's name, account number, tax identification number, account holder …

Evaluating Volatility Forecasts In Various Equity Market Regimes, John P. Felletter

Doctoral Dissertations (DBA)

Forecasting volatility is a critical component of asset allocation, risk management, and option pricing. Many different methods and models are used to predict volatility, and many studies have examined the efficacy of one method or another. This study investigates whether the abilities of historical volatility, GARCH models, and VIX to forecast volatility vary in different market conditions, as distinguished by levels of volatility and returns. It is found that market conditions do impact the abilities of the variables to forecast volatility. Overall, the forecasts implied by the GARCH models perform best according to the various metrics, while the VIX forecast …

Vital Signs Of U.S. Osteopathic Medical Residency Programs Pivoting To Single Accreditation Standards, Timothy S. Novak

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Osteopathic physician (D.O.) residency programs that do not achieve accreditation under the new Single Accreditation System (SAS) standards by June 30, 2020 will lose access to their share of more than $9,000,000,000 of public tax dollars. This U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) funding helps sponsoring institutions cover direct and indirect resident physician training expenses. A significant financial burden would then be shifted to marginal costs of the residency program’s sponsoring institution in the absence of CMS funding. The sponsoring institution’s ability or willingness to bare these costs occurs during a time when hospital operating margins are at …

Essays On The El Niño Anomaly And Stock Return Predictability, Zhijun Yang

Finance Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation is to examine the impact of the El Niño phenomenon on the international stock market, both at the aggregate level and the portfolio level.

In first essay, I study the predictive relation between the El Niño phenomenon and international stock market aggregate returns. I find that the El Niño anomaly can predict all 14 countries’ stock returns. Specifically, the El Niño unconditional effect can predict stock return negatively in Japan, Malaysia, and South Africa, while the El Niño conditional on winter season can predict positively stock returns in 13 countries’ stock markets except for Japan. This conditional effect …

Informed Institutional Shareholding : Evidence From Political Promotion, Chi Zhang

Theses & Dissertations

Are institutional investors informed to the political promotion events? This paper examines the informed trading of institutional investors in the context of political promotion. Institutional investors have superior information environment compared to retail investors. It can establish private information channel with firm management, financial analysts, regulatory bodies and other types of institutions. Since contemporary economic activities are more or less influenced by politics, promotion of important officials can bring favorable local economic development opportunities to companies. If institutional investors are informed to the political promotion events, they are supposed to react in advance of the occurrence of promotion events. We …

Geographic Distance And The Impact Of Investor Sentiment On Stock Prices, Yan Yang

Theses & Dissertations

Based on China’s stock market, this study investigates how firms’ geographic distance from a financial center affects the sensitivity of stock prices to investor sentiment. I find that firms located closer to a financial center are more affected by investor sentiment than firms located far from a financial center. This distance effect holds for different geographic cutting boundaries and after excluding firms located in financial centers. Besides, using China’s High Speed Railway (HSR) as an exogenous shock, I find that HSR connection significantly decreases the effect of geographic distance on the sentiment-driven stock price relationship. In addition, firms with shorter …

Surplus Consumption, Habit Utility And Moody Investors, Jun Lou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The thesis examines a blend of Asset Pricing topics: joint stock-bond pricing, consumption-based asset pricing puzzles, time variation in risk preference, among others. In chapter one, I first review the literature on respective topics in search of a consolidated framework of resolution. I then propose one, a consumption-based affine model that jointly prices bond and stock in closed form. The tractable feature of the price solutions remains standard as in affine termstructure of interest rates, but presents novelty for the stock prices. In chapter two, I discuss the GMM based procedures for model estimation. In chapter three, I interpret the …

Effects Of The Basel Iii Liquidity Risk Metrics On U.S. Bank Performance And Stability, Cecelia Mundt

Doctoral Dissertations (DBA)

This paper investigates the effects of Basel III’s liquidity metrics on profitability and stability on a subset of U.S banks from 2002 to 2014. The profitability and stability of each of these banks were calculated under the scenario of shifting 1% of its overall assets from illiquid to liquid. The empirical findings demonstrate a negative relationship between holding higher liquidity and bank profitability. It finds that this negative relationship is disproportionate across the bank classes with savings banks losing profitability at almost twice the rate as national banks. Additionally, stability of savings banks is more adversely affected than of national …

Insurance And Self-Protection For Increased Risk Aversion, Jian Zhang

Theses & Dissertations

We re-examine the classic problem of risk aversion and self-protection in this paper. In the beginning of this paper, we conduct comparative statics of risk aversion and prevention efforts based on the mono-periodic two states model of choice under risk. We show this new condition is effective with self-insurance-cum-protection model (Lee, 1998), in which the decision maker's activities to prevent the risk can sever both as self-insurance and self-protection. We suggest a new condition that increased risk aversion induces more prevention activities. This new condition requires only one assumption concerning fear of ruin coefficient, marginal effect of SICP activity on …

Social Norms And Stock Trading, Asem Alhomaidi

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation consists of two essays. In the first essay we compare the performance of Islamic and conventional stock returns in Saudi Arabia in order to determine whether the Saudi market exhibits characteristics that are consistent with segmented markets and investor recognition effects. We sample the daily stock returns of all Saudi firms from September 2002 to 2015 and calculate important measures, including idiosyncratic volatility (Ang et al, 2006), market integration (Pukthuanthong and Roll, 2009), systematic turnover (Loughran and Schultz, 2005), and stock turnover and liquidity (Amihud, 2002). Integration tests report that Islamic stocks are more sensitive to changes in …

Dividend Policy In A Frontier Market And Sector Equity Traded Funds In The United States, Abdulrahman Alharbi

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In chapter 1, we examine the nature and scale of the relationship between returns on sector Equity Traded Funds (ETFs) and their volatility. We discuss the source and direction of the effect between returns and risk and whether behavioral biases are prominent among sector ETFs. The study has implications for financial sector practitioners and investors, as it provides more information about the risk in sector ETF and whether that risk differs from that of other investment instruments. To this end, we test three hypotheses based on the relevant literature on volatility and returns: the leverage effect hypothesis, feedback hypothesis, and …

Global Market Liquidity And Corporate Investments, Abdulrahman Alhassan

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation consists of two essays. The first essay investigates how oil market factors impact on liquidity commonality in global equity markets. I identify two transmitting channels of the effect on liquidity commonality, namely oil price return and volatility. Using a sample of firms drawn from 50 countries spanning from Jan 1995 to Dec 2015, I find that both effects in oil explain the liquidity commonality in countries with higher integration to oil market. In addition, I show that oil volatility effect is more pronounced in net oil exporters compared to net oil importers after controlling for oil sensitivity. My …

Financial Crises And Investment Behavior: The Impact Of Institutional Investors, Kathleen Lindsay

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The following dissertation contains two related essays. The first essay explores how institutional investor presence impacts investments during the global financial crisis. Using OLS, industry fixed effects, and Heckman 2SLS regression approaches, I explore two ways through which institutional investors could impact investments: liquidity and monitoring. My findings best support monitoring theory. I find that institutional investors monitor capital and R&D levels to maximize crisis period firm value.

The second essay is a direct fallout from my first essay. In it, I investigate how institutional investor types influence investments. I ask, do certain types of investors improve liquidity or monitor …

Three Essays On Financial Intermediary And Insider Trading, Xiaoqiong Wang

Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation explores several asset pricing and corporate finance related issues including mutual funds, insider trading and institutional investors. My first essay examines risk taking and performance of bond mutual funds. The second essay investigates insider trading, informativeness and price efficiency around the world. The third essay explores whether firms benefit from scale of their nearby institutions in terms of stock prices and corporate policies.

In the first essay, we investigates the risk exposures of bond mutual funds and how risk-taking behavior affects bond fund performance. Bond mutual funds often outperform their respective benchmark bond indexes, but underperform after adjusting …

Debt/Equity Ratio And Asset Pricing Analysis, Nicholas Lyle

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

A firm’s value can be manipulated by altering how much debt a firm takes on relative to its equity called the Debt/Equity ratio. The positive aspects of debt are tax shields and the perception that the firm is trying to expand their current operations while the negative effects are increased bankruptcy risk. The optimal ratio is where the negative aspects begin to outweigh the positive. Since bankruptcy risk is hard to value there are many opinions on what the optimal Debt/Equity ratio for a specific firm is.

This study looks to historic data to determine how the market perceives debt …

The Efficiency Of Liquidity Resiliency, Nathan Burton

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

Using a VECM to estimate the dynamics of liquidity, in this case bid-ask spread, I run simulations for stocks of varying market capitalizations and find that lower market cap stocks require more orders to return to equilibrium spread following a shock, suggesting less efficiency of price discovery in lower cap stocks. Despite the greater number of order necessary for lower cap stocks, the return to equilibrium spread is still very fast, suggesting a relatively efficient market for NYSE and NASDAQ stocks in the upper three market cap quartiles.

Gambling With Momentum: How Gambling Cultures Shape Financial Markets, Daniel Mosman

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

Do people who gamble carry such preferences into their investments? This study looks at various factors which are used to identify countries with a significant gambling population, and seeks to find a relationship with those gambling tendencies and premiums associated with momentum. From historical market data from financial markets in 45 different countries I found stronger evidence of a momentum premium in those countries which have those identifying factors for gambling, than those that do not. Results of the regression analysis suggest weak evidence that it is possible that the momentum premium could be associated with gambling preferences and culture …

Hedge Fund Performance And Derivative Hedging, Yongjia Li

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is comprised of three essays which focus on hedge fund performance and derivative hedging. The first essay uses ETF returns as proxies for tradable risk factors in hedge fund performance evaluation and identifies contemporaneously relevant risk factors from the entire universe of ETFs. The model provides more informative estimates of alpha and beta coefficients for predicting hedge fund out-of-sample performance compared with other widely used hedge fund factor models. Portfolios of top alpha hedge funds selected by the model generate statistically significant out-of-sample performance that is substantially higher compared with portfolios selected by other models. In addition, the …