Business Commons^™

Political Connections And The Value Of Cash Holdings, Yuanto Kusnadi

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This study examines how political connections influence the value of cash holdings in an international setting. The main finding reveals that political connections are not associated with the value of cash holdings in the overall sample. However, further analysis demonstrates that political connections are negatively associated with the value of cash holdings for firms inemerging markets and in countries with high levels of corruption. Moreover, the negative valuation of cash holdings is driven by firms that are connected through large shareholders. Overall, the findings provide new insights into the value relevance of cash holdings, especially for politically connected firms.

Venezuela's Collapsed Economy And The Resulting Effect On International Business With The United States, Sarah Caldwell

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis explores the current economic and political state of Venezuela, as well as the factors that contributed to the nation’s present challenges. By evaluating current information regarding international relations and international business affiliations, this study investigates and summarizes how Venezuela’s current instability has affected the country’s trade relations with the United States. The research found in this thesis demonstrates that the actions of Venezuela’s government have severely injured international business relations with multi-national firms operating out of the United States.

Bribery And Export Intensity: The Role Of Formal Institutional Constraint Susceptibility, Randika Eramudugoda Gamage

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study explores the influence of home country formal institutional constraints on firm bribery payments and export intensity. Distinguishing between forms of formal institutional constraints based on their susceptibility to bribery, this study highlights the different mechanisms through which formal institutional constraints impact export intensity. I propose that highly susceptible formal institutional constraints will behave as incentives leading to increased bribery payments. In contrast, less-susceptible formal institutional constraints will act as an added cost, ex-post to bribery payments, in the bribery-export intensity relationship. These less-susceptible formal institutional constraints will further decrease export intensity. Utilizing a firm-level dataset from 25 countries, …

East Chicago Politics: A Cornucopia Of Corruption, Tina Ebenger, Tracey Mccabe

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

Despite the comical title, there is a lot of corruption in East Chicago (IN) politics. One mayoral election had to have a “do-over” because of fraudulent absentee ballots, and a former mayor is doing time in jail for using public monies to remodel his home. This cornucopia of corruption extended to the indictment of six public officials (the so-called Sidewalk Six) in East Chicago for misusing public funds for political gain, specifically vote-buying, in the 1999 mayoral reelection of Robert Pastrick. These officials, ranging from a parks superintendent to a city engineer to several city council members, bought votes by …

Corruption And Doing Business In Emerging Markets, Nicholas A. Lash, Bala Batavia

School of Business: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Corruption is a serious international problem with many damaging effects particularly in emerging market countries. We investigated to what degree overregulation and inadequate legal institutions contributed to corruption of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in emerging markets. Unlike other studies, we used data from the World Bank?s Doing Business annual series which provides indicators of the regulatory and legal environments facing SME. We had three major research questions. (1) Which government obstacles to conducting business in the form of overregulation and inadequate legal institutions contribute most to corruption? (2) Which are more closely linked to corruption, excessive regulations or weak …

"Gatekeepers" Are Vital Participants In Anti-Money-Laundering Laws And Enforcement Regimes As Permission-Less Blockchain-Based Transactions Pose Challenges To Current Means To "Follow The Money", Sarah Jane Hughes

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Two phenomena dominate reports about blockchain-based transactions—that they will disrupt and displace legacy banking, securities, and trade intermediaries, and that they present new or greater opportunities for hiding proceeds of crimes or corruption. This essay does not deal with the former topic. Rather, the organizers of the symposium at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia School of Law asks me to consider the latter question. It proved to be a tough assignment.

This essay looks at the separate questions of (1) the degree to which permission-less blockchain transactions will disrupt current anti-money laundering (AML) regimes and enforcement efforts, and (2) what …