Business Commons^™

Are Stock Prices Related To New York's Climatic Conditions?, Matthew M. Cullen

Honors Theses

The past five years has shown tremendous growth in a new wave and style of investing strategy. This new style, known as behavioral investing, attempts to analyze financial markets through the eye of a social scientist rather than a financial professional. Its followers try to see market movements as affected not necessarily by the business or economy but by the cognition and mood of buyers and seller. This paper analyzes the effect of climatic conditions on mood and the effect that has on market movements and volume. For the most part, it was found that there is no significant relationship …

Mass.Migration, Robert A. Nakosteen, Michael Goodman, Dana Ansel, Robert Lacey, Rebecca Loveland, James Palma, Alexandra Proshina, Rachel Deyette Werkema

Robert A Nakosteen

Examining the flow of people moving into and out of Massachusetts over the last decade reveals a state in transition. Our analysis of the Census 2000 data shows that native-born middle-class families are migrating in increasing numbers to other New England states, while smaller numbers of highly educated, highly mobile professionals are arriving in Massachusetts. But, with many choices about where to work and live, there is no guarantee that these workers will make the Bay State their permanent home.

In this respect, Massachusetts is no different from other states with knowledge economies. It is increasingly dependent upon a supply …

Faculty Profile: Carleton Donchess

Bridgewater Review

No abstract provided.

Front Matter, Journal Of Microfinance

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

No abstract provided.

Balancing Supply And Demand: The Emerging Agenda For Microfinance Institutions, Thankom Arun, David Hulme

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

No abstract provided.

Beyond Micro-Credit: Putting Development Back Into Micro-Finance By Thomas Fisher And M. S. Sriram, James R. Bradshaw

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

No abstract provided.

Rural Finance, Poverty Alleviation, And Sustainable Land Use: The Role Of Credit For The Adoption Of Agroforestry Systems In Occidental Honduras, Ruerd Ruben, Luud Clercx

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

This paper analyzes the relationship between financial services provided by different agents, the adoption of agroforestry systems, and the implications for food security and sustainable soil management. Attention is focussed on the role of rural finance in reducing risk and stabilizing household income and yields. We conclude that credit provision performs critical functions for reinforcing the resilience of rural livelihoods in less-favored areas. Rural development programs in the Occidental region of Honduras have been rather reluctant to provide rural financial services. Unfavorable agroclimatic conditions and the scarcity of infrastructure lead to extreme poverty. The local economy is fairly dynamic due …

Money Talks: Conversations With Poor Households In Bangladesh About Managing Money, Stuart Rutherford

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

This paper describes the money management behavior of 42 low-income Bangladeshi households, half of them rural and half living in urban slums. They were found to be active managers of their financial resources. Thirty-three varieties of financial instrument were found to be in use by the sample households during the research year. As well as using a wide variety of instruments, most households engaged in multiple uses of the instruments: on average each household initiated a new money management arrangement every two weeks. The sums of money involved are large, both absolutely and relative to incomes. The average “turnover” (the …

Announcements, Journal Of Microfinance

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

No abstract provided.

Implications Of Financial Innovations For The Poorest Of The Poor In The Rural Area: Experience From Northern Bangladesh, Mohammed Emrul Hasan

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

Providing microfinance to the poorest of the poor in rural areas remains a challenge. Grameen demonstrated that the poor are viable clients for loans and reached them on a massive scale. However, they reach only the upper level of the poor and provide narrow and limited financial services with rigid systems and procedures, which in many ways do not address the needs of the poorest. Despite earning signs of success with their SafeSave innovative approach to serving the poorest in the urban area, this rural adaptation and experiment has faced challenges because of the different social and economical structures of …

A Challenge To The Orthodoxy Concerning Microfinance And Poverty Reduction, Ana Marr

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

As a response to many partial and simplistic theoretical and empirical studies, this paper presents a more comprehensive analytical framework to assess the success of microfinance in achieving its dual objectives of financial sustainability and poverty reduction. By giving center stage to the study of group dynamics and using principles of imperfect information and social psychology, the paper argues that microfinance not only has failed to solve the original problems of information asymmetries between borrowers and lenders but also, in its pursuit of financial sustainability, is destroying the very foundations of these schemes by disrupting the social fabric of communities, …

Attitudes Of Rural Branch Manages In Madhya Pradesh, India, Toward Their Role As Providers Of Financial Services To The Poor, Howard Jones, Marylin Williams, Yashwant Thorat, Abba Thorat

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

Discussions on banking reforms to reduce financial exclusion have referred little to possible attitudinal constraints, on the part of staff at both branch and institutional levels, inhibiting the provision of financial services to the poor. The research project, funded by the ESCOR (now Social Science Research) Small Grants Committee, has focused on this aspect of financial exclusion. The research commenced in May 2001 and was completed in April 2002. Profiles of the rural bank branch managers, including personal background, professional background and workplace, are presented. Attitudes of managers toward aspects of their work environment and the rural poor are examined, …

Vol. 05 No. 2 Journal Of Microfinance, Journal Of Microfinance

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

No abstract provided.

Optimal Transaction Filters Under Transitory Trading Opportunities: Theory And Empirical Illustration, Ronald J. Balvers, Yangru Wu

CRIF Seminar series

If transitory profitable trading opportunities exist, filter rules are used in practice to mitigate transaction costs. The filter size is difficult to determine a priori. Our paper uses a dynamic programming framework to design a filter that is optimal in the sense of maximizing expected returns after transaction costs. The optimal filter size depends crucially on the degree of persistence of the profitable trading opportunities, on transaction cost, and on the standard deviation of shocks. We apply our theoretical results to foreign exchange trading by parameterizing the moving average strategy often employed in foreign exchange markets. The parameterization implies the …

Impact Of Firm Performance Expectations On Ceo Turnover And Replacement Decisions, Kathleen A. Farrell, David A. Whidbee

Department of Finance: Faculty Publications

Our analysis suggests that boards focus on deviation from expected performance, rather than performance alone, in making the CEO turnover decision, especially when there is agreement (less dispersion) among analysts about the firm’s earnings forecast or there are a large number of analysts following the firm. In addition, our results suggest that boards are more likely to appoint a CEO that will change firm policies and strategies (i.e., an outsider) when forecasted 5-year EPS growth is low and there is greater uncertainty (more dispersion) among analysts about the firm’s long-term forecasts.

Managers’ Incentives To Manipulate Earnings In Management Buyout Contests: An Examination Of How Corporate Governance And Market Mechanisms Mitigate Earnings Management, Joy Begley, Tim V. Eaton, Sarah Peck

Finance Faculty Research and Publications

In an MBO contest, managers offer to buy the firm from public shareholders at a premium to the current market price and thus have incentives to buy the firm “cheap.” Prior studies have found evidence that managers, on average, manipulate earnings downward prior to an MBO offer in an attempt to convince shareholders that their offer is fair. We extend this finding by attempting to explain the substantial cross sectional variation in the degree of manipulation across firms reported in these earlier studies. We find that boards with more independent directors and higher levels of incentive based compensation for the …

Term Default, Balloon Risk, And Credit Risk In Commercial Mortgages, Charles C. Tu, Mark Eppli

Finance Faculty Research and Publications

Term default and balloon risk play an interactive role in the pricing of credit risk in commercial mortgages. Most commercial mortgage pricing studies assume a borrower's default decision is based solely on the property value; the mortgage valuation model here also incorporates a property income trigger. The model considers both the risk of default during the term of the loan and the risk of loss at maturity (balloon risk). Monte Carlo simulation analyses reveal that pricing models based solely on property value overestimate the probability of term default and the resulting credit risk premium. Adding a property income default trigger …

Trust, Collaboration, And Financial Return In Conservation/Development Partnerships, New England Environmental Finance Center

Economics and Finance

In early 2002 the New England Environmental Finance Center hosted a series of roundtable discussions among municipal officials, residential developers, land trust representatives, and others about "Innovative Approaches to Land Conservation and Smart Growth". Among our observations was that for many of the over 20 conservation/development partnerships we discussed in the series, creation and maintenance of trust was central to success or failure of various stages of the partnership. This suggested a link between creation of trust and financial return for traditionally opposed project partners.

To further examine this matter, we interviewed 11 round table participants and asked questions about …

Inter-Center Retail Externalities, Luis C. Mejia, Mark Eppli

Finance Faculty Research and Publications

This paper empirically examines inter-center externalities in regional shopping centers. Specifically, we use a non-linear retail share model to measure the impact that department store size and image in subject and competitive centers have on subject center in-line retail sales. Our findings reveal that department store size and image attributes have a significant and non-linear impact on subject center sales. More importantly, the results show that the effect of department store fashion image dominates that of department store size.

Credit History And The Performance Of Prime And Nonprime Mortgages, Anthony Pennington-Cross

Finance Faculty Research and Publications

Although nonprime lending has experienced steady or even explosive growth over the last decade very little is known about the performance characteristics of these mortgages. Using data from national secondary market institutions, this paper estimates a competing risks proportional hazard model, which includes unobserved heterogeneity. The analysis examines the performance of 30-year fixed rate owner occupied home purchase mortgages from February 1995 to the end of 1999 and compares nonprime and prime loan default and prepayment behavior. Nonprime loans are identified by mortgage interest rates that are substantially higher than the prevailing prime rate. Results indicate that nonprime mortgages differ …

Prospect Theory And Institutional Investors, Melvyn Teo, Paul G. J. O'Connell

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

There is ample evidence that past performance affects the trading decisions of individual investors. This paper looks at this issue using a detailed database of currency trading decisions of institutional investors. Past performance manifestly affects currency risk-taking in this group, but the sign and magnitude of the effect runs counter to much of the existing theory and evidence. There is no evidence whatsoever of disposition effects; rather, the dominant characteristic is aggressive risk reduction in the wake of losses. This effect is more prominent later in the year, and among older and more experienced funds. A modified version of the …

Political Barriers And The Transmission Of Monetary Policy Across States: The New England Antebellum Banking Market, Andrew J. Economopoulos

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

The New England antebellum banking market was examined to understand the interaction of political ideology and economic forces. With each state controlling bank entry, hence the money supply, political ideology could impede the supply of money within a state. However, the monetary forces from neighboring states may have influenced the degree to which parties held true to their political ideology. The results indicate that political ideology was an effective barrier in two of the six states, while three states were responsive to neighbor states' monetary policy regardless of political ideology. These states responded by creating new banks, raising existing capital …

Stock Market Liberalization And The Information Environment, Kee-Hong Bae, Warren Bailey, Connie X. Mao

CRIF Seminar series

We study the associations between openness to foreign equity investors and the information environment facing emerging market firms. Changes in openness are reflected in legal, regulatory, and cross-listing events, the fraction of stock available to foreign investors, and the size of U.S. portfolio capital flows. The information environment is reflected in firm-specific return volatility and in indicators of information production, uncertainty, and disagreement related to earnings announcements. We find that information measures typically increase with openness to foreign equity investment, particularly in the form of security cross-listings and aggregate portfolio flows.

A Comparative Analysis Of The Rationality Of Consensus Forecasts Of U. S. Economic Indicators, David C. Schirm

Economics & Finance

The purpose of this article is to investigate the rationality of two survey forecasts of selective U. S. macroeconomic performance measures that were widely followed in the financial markets during the 1990-2000 period. The research compares the rationality of survey forecast data from Money Market Services, Inc., and Thomson Financial. This article extends prior research that has evaluated the rationality of Money Market Services data for earlier time periods while also evaluating similar consensus forecast data from Thomson Financial that were widely reported in both Barron's and the Wall Street Journal during the 1990s.

Incorporating Diversification Into Risk Management, Mitchell Craig Warachka, A. Purnanandam, Y. Zhao, W.T. Ziemba

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of The Costs Of Subscription On Measured Ipo Returns: The Case Of Asia, Joseph K.W. Fung, Louis T. W. Cheng, Kam C. Chan

GFCB Working Paper Series

Asian initial public offerings (IPOs) require investors to pay subscription funds up-front upon submission of applications, and these funds are locked-up for one to three weeks without interest. Hence, the IPO process entails an explicit financing cost (opportunity cost) whether investors borrow funds or use their own funds to apply for IPO shares. The IPO subscription costs are not trivial, especially in a high interest rate environment or when an IPO is highly oversubscribed. These costs should be considered in any comparison of IPO returns across countries.

The Economics Of International Monies, Gerald P. Dwyer Jr., James R. Lothian

CRIF Working Paper series

The purpose of this paper is to examine the history of international monies and the theory related to their adoption and use. We summarize the history of international monies, beginning with a discussion of the gold solidus introduced in the fourth century by the Emperor Constantine, continuing with the currencies of the Italian city states and ending with the currencies that have functioned as international monies from the early modern period to the present. We identify four key characteristics of these currencies: high unitary value; relatively low inflation rates for long periods; issuance by major economic and trading powers; and …

The Value-Relevance Of Asset Write-Down Regulations In China : The Roles Of Information Relevance And Measurement Reliability, Ziyun Yang

Lingnan Theses and Dissertations

At the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century, China implemented several new asset write-down regulations. This study addresses the claim that these regulations significantly enhanced the usefulness of financial statements for investors in China. The effect of the regulations on usefulness of financial statements has implications for financial accountants, standard-setters, educators, and auditors. This study derives and tests some of the empirical implications of the claim.

I operationalize usefulness of accounting information in terms of the valuerelevance framework, in which information usefulness is construed as a tradeoff between relevance and reliability. These two dimensions are …

Stock Exchange Governance And Market Quality, Chandrasekhar Krishnamurti, John M. Sequeira, Fangjian Fu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We show that organization structure of a stock exchange matters by utilizing the unique setting prevailing in India. India has two major stock markets, the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE). These two exchanges adopt similar trading systems, trade essentially identical stocks, and follow the same trading hours. However, these exchanges have different organizational structures: BSE is mutualized whereas NSE is demutualized. Using the Hasbrouck [Review of Financial Studies 6 (1993) 191] measure of market quality we show that NSE provides a better quality market than BSE. This result is consistent with the work of Domowitz …

Trading Your Neighbor's Etfs: Competition Or Fragmentation?, Beatrice Boehmer, Ekkehart Boehmer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

On July 31, 2001, for the first time in its history, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) began trading three unlisted securities. The DIA, SPY, and QQQ are the most actively traded Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and are listed on the American Stock Exchange. On April 15, 2002 another 27 ETFs followed. These two events provide a unique experiment for studying the impact of a new entrant on market quality. In contrast to recently revived concerns about the adverse impact of market fragmentation, we document that the NYSE entry leads to a dramatic improvement in liquidity that we attribute to …