Business Commons^™

Two Essays On Momentum, Seung-Chan Park

Doctoral Dissertations

One of the most controversial topics in recent investment literature has been stock return momentum. If an investor buys past winners and sells past losers, he will earn positive profits in the intermediate-term horizon (3 to 12 months). While behavioral theories seem to dominate as an explanation for the momentum phenomenon since momentum has been regarded as direct counter evidence for the efficient market hypothesis, Chordia and Shivakumar (2002) find that momentum can be explained by a set of macroeconomic variables. Chordia and Shivakumar argue that momentum is caused by time-varying expected returns that can be predicted by a set …

New Approaches To Risk Management And Scenario Approximation In Financial Optimization, Maksym Bychkov

Doctoral Dissertations

The first part of the thesis addresses the problem of risk management in financial optimization modeling. Motivation for constructing a new concept of risk measurement is given through the history of development: utility theory, risk/return tradeoff, and coherent risk measures. The process of describing investor's preferences is presented through the proposed collection of Rational Level Sets (RLS). Based on RLS, a new concept termed Rational Risk Measures (RRM) for nancial optimization models is defined. The advantages of RRM over coherent risk measures are discussed. Approximation of a given set of scenarios using tail information is addressed in the second part …

Designs For Stated Preference Experiments, Jennifer Lynn Golek

Doctoral Dissertations

We explore the use of different strategies for the construction of optimal choice experiments and their impact on the overall efficiency of the resulting design. We then evaluate how these choice designs meet the desired characteristics of optimal choice designs (orthogonality, level balance, utility balance and minimum level overlap). We further explore the feasibility of using entropy as a secondary measure of design optimality. We find that current algorithms afford little flexibility for using this secondary measure. We further study the impact of misspecification of the assumed parameter values used in creation of optimal choice designs. We find that the …

Sas 99 & Fraud Detection, Shunlan Lu

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Pb1754-Agritourism In Focus - A Guide For Tennessee Farmers, The University Of Tennessee Agricultural Extension Service

Marketing, Finances and Value-Added Agriculture

This guide has been developed to assist Tennessee farmers and agri-entrepreneurs in evaluating agritourism enterprise opportunities, planning agritourism enterprises, and dealing with issues and obstacles faced by existing agritourism enterprises. It also serves as a resource for professionals working with existing or potential agritourism entrepreneurs. While this guide cannot guarantee success in planning and managing an agritourism enterprise, the concepts it contains are important in enhancing the potential for success.

This guide contains 10 chapters and an appendix dealing with topics critical to the success of agritourism operations. It is designed to be interactive, allowing users to work through exercises …

Inter-Firm Knowledge Sharing And Its Effect On Relationship Value: A Global Supply Chain Perspective, Mee-Shew Cheung

Doctoral Dissertations

Learning theories playa prominent role in new theories of competitive advantage. Despite the recent progress in understanding interorganizationallearning (inter-firm knowledge sharing), gaps and shortcomings remain. Inter-firm knowledge sharing involves risks and dilemma. Little is known about the charactetistics of global supply chain design that would encourage inter-firm knowledge sharing, and how these collaborative activities could lead to improving the long-term performance ofthe individual companies and the supply chain as a whole. Furthermore, previous studies on inter-firm collaboration mainly looked at operational efficiency as the key performance measurement. Relationship value should be taken as a more critical criterion variable when firms …

The Comparative Ordered Influence Of Brand Equity’S Experiential And Functional Antecedents And Dimensions, And Its Consequences On U.S. And Mainland Chinese Consumers, Samuel Allen Broyles

Doctoral Dissertations

Drawing from various social science literatures, this dissertation put forth and examined a theoretical model addressing the question of whether brand equity’s functional and experiential elements (antecedents, dimensions, consequences) have differential influence on Americans and Chinese. The significance of this study is reflected in the fact that variousU.S.firms have attempted, often unsuccessfully, to market their brands inChinaand other countries. This effort at internationalization reflects mounting pressure from ever-increasing competition, and thus the need to find new markets for their brands. A number of researchers have suggested this lack of success is the result ofU.S.firms not understanding the cultural differences that …

Supplier Contracts With Profit Sharing, Open-Book Costing And Associated Audit Rights, Hui Chen

Doctoral Dissertations

Due to the growing trends in outsourcing and supply chain initiatives, inter-organizational control has become an increasingly important issue in today’s business world. Many businesses set up the so-called "partnering" relationship with their key suppliers. The biggest challenge for this relationship is to find the best mechanisms that align the supplier’s incentive with that of the buyer’s and still maximize each individual firm’s payoff. The purpose of this paper is to present a stylized profit-sharing contract, which is a type of contract commonly adopted to mitigate buyer-supplier incentive problems, and contrast several different types of supplier audit associated with it. …

Design, Analysis, And Applications Of Failure Amplification Experiments, Oksoun Yee

Doctoral Dissertations

The main focus of this study is related to the Failure Amplification Method (FAMe) proposed by Joseph and Wu (2004). They suggested the use of an “amplification factor” to increase the information from experiments with a binary response variable. In addition to the amplification factor having a known effect, Joseph and Wu recommended that, for convenience of experimentation, this factor be taken as an easy to change, split unit factor. In such cases, the analysis ought to take into account the possibility of both whole unit and split unit error variation. I present such an analysis here, where the Bayesian …

Analysis Of Town Center Mixed-Use Developments To Determine Key Retailer Success Factors, Kelly G. Atkins

Masters Theses

The socio-economic changes and the population growth concentrated in cities in the U.S. have resulted in increasing interest in urban life that combines living, shopping and work in one centralized location. This type of area, called a mixed-use development, meets the needs of changing American lifestyles. To build successful retail businesses in the mixed-use developments, more information must be identified concerning key retail success factors. Based upon this need, this study examined the town center mixed-use development through case studies. The scope ofthe study included identifying successful town center mixed-use developments in the U.S., identifying locations for each case study …

Technology-Based Self-Service: From Customer Productivity Toward Customer Value, İsmet Anıtsal

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the
concept of customer productivity in a technology-based
self-service context (e.g., self-checkouts in grocery
stores) to understand how customer productivity and
customer value are related to each other. A preliminary
qualitative study initially explored the meaning of
customer productivity and the labor provided by customers
in self-service shopping and TBSS environments. Based on
these exploratory insights and the extant literature, a
conceptual framework was developed to identify the
relationships between customer inputs into a TBSS option
and customer outputs from that option influenced by
customer perceptions of self-service technology (SST) and
contact …

Essays On The Behavioral Effects Of Tax Policy, John Allen Deskins

Doctoral Dissertations

Provided herein is policy relevant empirical evidence on the effects of tax policy on three different areas of behavior: business tax planning, entrepreneurship, and personal income tax compliance. A study of business tax planning is meritorious in light of the recent erosion of state corporate income tax bases and the corresponding search for solutions. The effect of tax policy on entrepreneurship is especially important given the attention that policymakers devote to development policies and the potential social benefits that entrepreneurship can generate. A consideration of income tax compliance behavior among self-employed individuals is warranted due to the costly distortions that …

Sp641-Tennessee Farm-Level Economic Implications Of Soybean Rust, The University Of Tennessee Agricultural Extension Service

Marketing, Finances and Value-Added Agriculture

Asian Soybean Rust (here after referred to as “rust”) is a potentially devastating crop disease. It now afflicts soybean production in the Eastern Hemisphere and in the Western Hemisphere south of the equator. The first case of rust in the continental United States was confirmed on November 10, 2004. While the extent of the outbreak is not known, concern over the long-range impact of rust on U.S. soybeans has grown as a result of the confirmation.

Many federal and state agricultural agencies have begun preparations for such an outbreak. Defined protocols have been developed in some states for better agency …