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Full-Text Articles in Finance and Financial Management

Earnings Asymmetric Timeliness And Shareholder Distributions, Richard M. Frankel, Yan Sun, Rong Wang Jul 2008

Earnings Asymmetric Timeliness And Shareholder Distributions, Richard M. Frankel, Yan Sun, Rong Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study whether more asymmetrically timely earnings constrain payouts to shareholders in the presence of bad news. Our goal is to provide evidence on the ex post contracting benefits of accounting conservatism. We distinguish between cash flow asymmetric timeliness and accrual asymmetric timeliness to examine how each relates to asymmetric sensitivity of shareholder payouts. We find that only the asymmetric timeliness of cash flows is significantly related to the asymmetric sensitivity of shareholder payouts. Other measures of conservatism (earnings skewness and accumulated nonoperating accruals) are also not significantly related to the sensitivity of shareholder payouts given bad news. These results …


Pre-Test Assessment, Thomas Berry Jun 2008

Pre-Test Assessment, Thomas Berry

Publications – Dreihaus College of Business

Pre-tests are a non-graded assessment tool used to determine pre-existing subject knowledge. Typically pre-tests are administered prior to a course to determine knowledge baseline, but here they are used to test students prior to topical material coverage throughout the course. While counterintuitive, the pre-tests cover material the student is not expected to know, but serve as a motivational tool and a road map for the students, resulting in improved course performance.


Evaluating Long Term Political Consequences Of Economic Restructuring Programs, James Mcgee May 2008

Evaluating Long Term Political Consequences Of Economic Restructuring Programs, James Mcgee

Senior Honors Projects

Development assistance loans provided by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are accompanied by structural adjustment programs that must be implemented as a condition of receiving the loan. These economic reforms often include currency devaluation, inflation control, increased taxation, market liberalization, decreased expenditure, and a decrease in the size of government. Populations within countries are drastically effected by these structural economic reforms as social welfare programs are often cut, government workers laid off, and the domestic economy struggles to compete in the global marketplace. The implementation of restructuring programs also constrains the policy options that are available to the …


Portland Me: Affordable Housing V. Open Space, Patrick Wright, Brett Richardson, Richard Barringer May 2008

Portland Me: Affordable Housing V. Open Space, Patrick Wright, Brett Richardson, Richard Barringer

Planning

Amid an acknowledged “affordable housing crisis”, a first-time developer approaches the City to release part of a tax-acquired property, promising a smart-growth development that would provide sorely needed starter homes for working families. The case highlights the complications of balancing competing interests in Portland ME. It shows where rational planning fails in the presence of strong neighborhood opposition, a disjointed city staff structure, and the absence of political will among City Councilors. It highlights the need for champions within local government when a project evokes competing interests. It demonstrates the extent to which “words matter” to policy outcomes, and who …


The Argentine Financial Crisis: State Liability Under Bits And The Legitimacy Of The Icsid System, William W. Burke-White Jan 2008

The Argentine Financial Crisis: State Liability Under Bits And The Legitimacy Of The Icsid System, William W. Burke-White

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay examines the jurisprudence of the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) arbitral tribunals in a series of cases brought against the Republic of Argentina in the wake of the 2001-2002 Argentine financial collapse. The essay considers the ICSID tribunals' treatment of non-precluded measures provisions in Argentina's bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and the customary law defense of necessity and argues that the ICSID tribunals have sought to radically narrow the opportunities available to states to craft policy responses to emergency situations while strengthening investor protections beyond the intent of the states parties to the BITs under …


The State Of New England: Economic Slowdown And Recovery After The Dotcom Bust, Arindam Bandopadhyaya, College Of Management, University Of Massachusetts Boston Jan 2008

The State Of New England: Economic Slowdown And Recovery After The Dotcom Bust, Arindam Bandopadhyaya, College Of Management, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Financial Services Forum Publications

What follows is an analysis of the key macroeconomic trends in the six New England states. Using data publicly available in 2007, we examine trends in GDP growth, population, personal income and unemployment rate in each state. We provide a breakdown of each state by GDP category and provide an overall weighting by super sectors.


Estimating The Dynamics Of Mutual Fund Alphas And Betas, Harry Mamaysky, Matthew Spiegel, Hong Zhang Jan 2008

Estimating The Dynamics Of Mutual Fund Alphas And Betas, Harry Mamaysky, Matthew Spiegel, Hong Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This article develops a Kalman filter model to track dynamic mutual fund factor loadings. It then uses the estimates to analyze whether managers with market-timing ability can be identified ex ante. The primary findings are as follows: (i) Ordinary least squares (OLS) timing models produce false positives (nonzero alphas) at too high a rate with either daily or monthly data. In contrast, the Kalman filter model produces them at approximately the correct rate with monthly data; (ii) In monthly data, though the OLS models fail to detect any timing among fund managers, the Kalman filter does; (iii) The alpha and …


The Ancient Roots Of Modern Financial Innovation: The Early History Of Regulatory Arbitrage, Michael S. Knoll Jan 2008

The Ancient Roots Of Modern Financial Innovation: The Early History Of Regulatory Arbitrage, Michael S. Knoll

All Faculty Scholarship

Recent years have seen an explosion of financial innovation. Much of this innovation seeks to exploit inconsistencies in the regulatory environment, and one of the most popular techniques for doing so uses put-call parity. Nonetheless, regulatory arbitrage using put-call parity is not a new phenomenon, as is frequently suggested. This Essay traces the use of put-call parity to avoid the usury prohibition back to Ancient Israel. It also describes the important role that put-call parity played in developing the equity of redemption, the defining characteristic of a modern mortgage, in Medieval England. In addition, this Essay describes how Muslims living …


Investment Protection In Extraordinary Times: The Interpretation And Application Of Non-Precluded Measures Provisions In Bilateral Investment Treaties, William W. Burke-White, Andreas Von Staden Jan 2008

Investment Protection In Extraordinary Times: The Interpretation And Application Of Non-Precluded Measures Provisions In Bilateral Investment Treaties, William W. Burke-White, Andreas Von Staden

All Faculty Scholarship

When threatened by crises such as global terrorism, financial collapse, pandemic diseases, and natural disasters, states may resort to measures that harm the interests of foreign investors protected under the bilateral investment treaty (BIT) regime. Many such BITs, however, contain heretofore under-studied clauses that preclude liability for state actions taken in response to exceptional circumstances. These non-precluded measures (NPM) clauses effectively transfer the risk of and costs associated with state action in exceptional circumstances from the host-states of international investments to the investors. In two recent cases brought against Argentina in response to the Argentine financial crisis, ICSID tribunals have …