Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Essays On Corporate Debt Structure, Kyuyoung Oh

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

The dissertation consists of three chapters exploring three different facets of corporate debt structure choice. In the first chapter, “Risk Management and the Choice between Secured and Unsecured Debt: Evidence from Natural Experiment,” I study whether and how corporate hedging affects firms’ choice between secured and unsecured debt. Exploiting the introduction of steel futures as a natural experiment, I provide causal evidence that risk management enables firms to switch from secured to unsecured debt without sacrificing debt capacity. Cross-sectional evidence supports the interpretation that risk management drives the results. The effects are stronger for firms that are more likely to …

Essays In Household Finance, Morteza Momeni

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

In my first chapter, I use new granular loan-level data and a novel instrumental variable to estimate the effect of competition among auto dealerships on the joint pricing of cars and car loans. I find that increased competition causes auto dealers to decrease vehicle prices to attract consumers. They, however, offset a large portion of their loss on vehicle prices through charging higher prices on a less transparent margin (i.e., loan markups). Consistent with the monthly payment targeting channel, I find that increased competition does not change consumers' monthly payments. My findings suggest that sophisticated sellers such as auto dealers …

Harmonizing The Disjointed: Economic Integration And Risk Sharing, Samuel Acheampong

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

This dissertation consists of three essays examining the role of risk diversification in European markets. At the economy level the first two essays seek to identify whether economic integration efforts among European countries result in sharing risks to consumption with regional neighbors, as opposed to global partners. At the firm level, the third essay seeks to understand whether managers of large companies in the United Kingdom choose less financial leverage if they are specifically compensated with more cash bonus as opposed to other forms of performance incentives.

In Essay 1, I assess the extent to which European countries diversify consumption …

Essays On Financial Institutions And Advisors, Joseph D. Farizo

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

In my first chapter, I examine how index funds vote their proxies on firms in its index that their family does not hold in its actively managed funds. For a given proxy proposal at a given point in time, I find that an index fund is more likely to oppose management on shares its family does not hold in its active funds than on shares its family does hold in its active funds. I further demonstrate that index fund governance has positive effects on the probability a proposal passes and on shareholder value. In my second chapter coauthored with Will …

Essays On Corporate Finance And Institutional Investors, Ang Li

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

The dissertation consists of three chapters spanning two areas of finance: corporate finance and institutional investors. In the first chapter, “Board Gender Diversity, Firm Culture, and Female Inventors”, I study how employee's Research and Development (R&D) activity is affected by firm culture. Using board gender diversity as a proxy for female-friendly culture, I find that a greater representation of women in the boardroom is associated with increased productivity and innovation output by female inventors relative to male inventors. Female inventors file more highly cited patents and less uncited patents. The effect is driven by female directors with R&D or high-tech …

Essays On Financial Incentives, Tyson D. Van Alfen

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

In my first chapter, I use a novel dataset of customer reviews from Amazon.com to study the impact of managerial myopia on product market reputation. Using exogenous variation due to the timing of CEO equity vesting events, I show that short-term incentive shocks predict declines in reputation. A changing product market lineup and a deterioration of existing products are two mechanisms through which reputation is affected. The effect is larger when the CEO has other short-term concerns and when the firm has a low reputation in the product market. However, higher advertising expenses mitigate the negative reputational effect among consumers. …

An Examination Of Corporate Agribusiness Financial Performance: How Agribusinesses Perform Over Time And Under Various Conditions, Sierra J. Enlow

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

While several studies examine the managerial structure of privately owned agribusinesses, few studies take a comprehensive look at publically traded agribusiness firms. Our study examines the historical position of agribusiness compared to the market, and then studies the impact of the global economic and financial crisis. The objective of this study is to pinpoint effects of corporate financial management strategies, commonly researched in financial literature on agribusiness firms’ performance. Through utilizing a quantile regression we find that agribusiness position in times of financial crisis is directly related to firm performance. As we examine internal factors, several interesting impacts of managerial …