Business Commons^™

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 …

International Venture Capital Firms Syndication And Performance: A Social Network Perspective, Amir Pezeshkan

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Despite a growing body of research on venture capital firms, the process by which venture capital firms invest across borders remains unclear. This three-essay dissertation integrates the literature on venture capital firms, social network theory, and international alliances to examine following research questions: 1) How do network characteristics (i.e., structure and composition) of the international venture capital firms and their potential partners impact their syndication behavior? 2) What configurations of the ventures' and the international venture capital firms' attributes is associated with syndication in emerging markets? and 3) Does the host country influence the international venture capital firms' syndication behavior …

Two Essays On Managerial Horizon, Cash Holdings And Earnings Management, Sanjib Guha

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

U.S. corporations are now sitting on an enormous stockpile of cash. Academicians and practitioners alike have tried to understand the reasons why companies are holding on to so much cash. Numerous studies have explored the various motives for holding cash. Many researchers have tried to correlate excess cash holding with particular firm characteristics. This dissertation analyzes the correlations that exist between excess cash holding and some measurable managerial characteristics. This dissertation examines if managerial horizon has any impact on excess cash holding. It also examines if managerial horizon and excess cash has any impact on firm value. Four different measures …

A Study Of Risk-Taking Behavior In Investment Banking, Elzotbek Rustambekov

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

This dissertation examines corporate risk-taking behavior by investment banks in the United States. This study was sparked by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, one of the largest bankruptcy filings in U.S. history. This dissertation examines the specific factors that drove investment banks such as Lehman Brothers to take excessive risks, and how the deregulation of the US financial services industry towards the end of the 1990s contributed to risk-taking behavior.

I use four theoretical perspectives to examine corporate risk-taking behavior among investment banks. These perspectives include: institutional theory, behavioral theory of the firm, knowledge based view (KBV) of the firm, …

Two Essays On Executive Pay And Firm Performance, Thuong Quang Nguyen

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Two essays of this dissertation study the relationship between executive compensation and firm performance. These essays analyze both compensation level and compensation structure, and focus not only on CEO compensation but also on Top Management Team (TMT) compensation as well as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) compensation. Methodologically, these essays use different regression techniques to explore the nature of time series over cross sections of executive compensation data in order to find a reliable relationship between executive compensation and firm performance.

The first essay investigates the TMT compensation - firm performance relationship and finds that the compensation dispersion among TMT members …

Ex Post Valuation Correction And Motives Of Merger And Acquisition Decisions, Hien T. Nguyen

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

This study seeks to decipher the motives of mergers and acquisitions and identify the source of value creation or destruction. The existing literature on corporate mergers and acquisitions generally agrees on four primary motives of merger and acquisition decisions: (1) market timing, (2) response to industry shocks, (3) agency cost and hubris, and (4) synergy. In studying the motives behind acquisition decisions, prior studies have used incomparable methodologies and measures, which often lead to inconclusive debates. In this study, we address the possibility that there could be multiple motives behind a merger. Instead of using a multitude of methodologies to …

Two Essays On Corporate Spin-Offs, Yingchou Lin

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

This dissertation investigates two possible sources that contribute to the gains of corporate spin-offs. In the first essay, I investigate the relation between the value created by corporate spin-offs and the misvaluations of the parent firms and their spun-off divisions. I argue that spin-offs could create value even though the efficiency of the firm remains unchanged. Corporate spin-offs could be driven by the desire to correct the undervaluation of the parent firm or the spun-off unit. Thus, the gains of spin-offs should be highly correlated with the degree of misvaluation. By examining a 263 corporate spinoffs sample in the period …

Essays On Currency Risk Management, Nehad Elsawaf

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

In recent years a growing number of corporations have committed considerable resources to risk management, indicating the potential for risk management to protect and increase firm value. One can argue that most prior attempts to directly link the value of the firm to its hedging strategies are rather scant. Moreover, several questions with regards to firms' risk management activities remain unanswered. This study consists of two essays dealing with a series of questions regarding corporate risk management in modern U.S. multinational corporations.

In the first essay we first, test the valuation effects of currency hedging policies of firms around extraordinary …

Corporate Diversification And Stock Returns, Tatiana Isakovski

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

There are considerable empirical evidences in favor of and against the corporate diversification. A number of previous studies have found that industrial and geographic diversification have a negative effect on the value of the firm and the stock returns. In contrast, a growing stream of literature provides evidence in support of the diversification premium. There is no consensus on whether the documented discount can be attributed to corporate diversification per se or to the firms' characteristics other than diversification. In this study, we re-examine the impact of industrial and/or geographic diversification on the stock returns.

The investigation of the comprehensive …

Market Valuation Of Corporate Diversification In The Presence Of Internal Capital Markets In Emerging Countries, Supannee Buasook

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

This study examines the valuation of corporate diversification in three emerging countries: Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. Over the period of study (1992–2001 for Thailand and 1994–2001 for Indonesia and the Philippines), it is found that there is evidence of diversification discount in all three countries. The largest amount of discount exists in the Philippines (60.1%), followed by Indonesia (25.5%) and Thailand (15.1%).

Then, the sample is divided into two sub-periods: before the crisis (1992–1996) and after the crisis (1997–2001). Before the crisis, the diversification discount existed only in the Philippines, with the average of 49%. There is not enough …

Corporate Investment Activity, Industrial And Global Diversification And Internal Capital Markets, Ozgur Berk Kan

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Recent empirical studies document the average industrially diversified firm trades at a discount than a portfolio of comparable single-segment firms while geographically diversified firms are shown to face similar, if not higher, discounts. They attribute the diversification discount to inefficient allocation of capital in diversified firms. Most of this literature uses aggregate capital expenditures and cash flows data across divisions obtained from Compustat industry-segment and geographic-segment data tapes. In our first paper, we employ firm-specific data to examine the pre- and post-acquisition performance of firms engaging in diversifying and non-diversifying investments in order to determine whether the diversification discount may …

The Long-Term Performance Of Initial Public Offerings (Ipos): Venture Capitalists, Reputation Of Investment Bankers, And Corporate Structure, Halit Gonenc

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

The Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) literature has uncovered the underpricing, hot issue markets, and long-term underperformance anomalies. The long-term underperformance of IPO firms has gained the focus of recent academic attention. Recent studies document that venture capitalists, and the reputation of investment bankers are associated with the long-term performance of firms going public. The lack of venture capitalists has been shown to relate with the long-term underperformance of IPO firms. On the other hand, IPO firms underwritten by less reputable underwriters have been found to experience more negative long-term market adjusted returns. Unlike previous studies, this study examines the interactive …

Market Reaction To Seasoned Equity Offerings: The Relevance Of Leverage, Growth Opportunities, And Corporate Structure, Mojib U. Ahmed

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Empirical work on the market's reaction to seasoned equity offerings has rarely considered the impact of the issuing firm's leverage level or its corporate structure. This work is an attempt to include these parameters in order to better understand the market's reaction to such issue announcements.

The current finance literature recognizes the fact that leverage plays an important role in assessing the value of the firm. Leverage has both negative and positive impacts on the value of a firm (McConnell and Servaes, 1995), and thus, has both negative and positive impacts on the market's reaction to seasoned equity offerings. This …

The Valuation Effects Of Corporate Investment Decisions: Evidence From Domestic And Foreign Plant Announcements, Bum Suk Kim

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

This study examines the effects of corporate investment decisions--announcements of plants--on the value of the firm, using event-study methodology. This paper consists of two parts. Essay I discusses the valuation effects of domestic investments, while Essay II analyses the valuation effects of foreign investments undertaken by U.S. firms and compares the valuation effects between the two investments. Specifically, this study examines the validity of the overinvestment hypothesis and whether focus-increasing investments enhance the value of the firm.

First, the evidence shows that the valuation effects of the investment decision depend on the firm's investment opportunities, proxied by Tobin's q. That …