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Finance and Financial Management Commons™

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Claremont Colleges

2019

Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Finance and Financial Management

What Drives Merger Waves? A Study Of The Seven Historical Merger Waves In The U.S., Katherine Ching Jan 2019

What Drives Merger Waves? A Study Of The Seven Historical Merger Waves In The U.S., Katherine Ching

Scripps Senior Theses

Historically, merger and acquisition (or M&A) activity has occurred in cyclical patterns, forming what are known as “merger waves.” To date, there have been a total of seven waves. Though it is widely acknowledged that merger waves exist, there is no consensus on what drives these waves. Through both qualitative and quantitative analysis, this paper aims to determine the causes of merger waves and looks at those causes through two different lenses: the neoclassical view, which states that economic shocks cause merger waves, and the behavioral view, which states that increases in merger activity are due to managerial behavior and …

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The Predictive Power Of The Vix Futures Prices On Future Realized Volatility, Siran Zhang Jan 2019

The Predictive Power Of The Vix Futures Prices On Future Realized Volatility, Siran Zhang

CMC Senior Theses

Many past literatures have examined the predictive power of implied volatility versus that of historical volatility, but they have showed divergent conclusions. One of the major differences among these studies is the methods that they used to obtain implied volatility. The VIX index, introduced in 1993, provides a model-free and directly observable source of implied volatility data. The VIX futures is an actively traded VIX derivative product, and its prices are believed to contain market’s expectation about future volatility. By analyzing the relationship between the VIX futures prices and the realized volatilities of the 30-day period that these VIX futures …

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Liquidity Risk And Mutual Fund Manager’S Stock Choice, Hannah Berg Jan 2019

Liquidity Risk And Mutual Fund Manager’S Stock Choice, Hannah Berg

CMC Senior Theses

Liquidity risk is a large issue faced by mutual funds. Large funds typically trade in size, and these large sizes often have a significant impact on prices. My hypothesis is that large funds will not invest in illiquid assets as much as smaller funds due to the price sensitivity of illiquid assets. While this seems obvious, the results from this study are not in agreement with this hypothesis. My paper finds that as the illiquidity of a stock increases, so does the probability that a large fund invests in the stock.

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Does Managerial Risk-Taking Incentive For R&D Investments Translate To Future Earnings?, Ha Yun Cho Jan 2019

Does Managerial Risk-Taking Incentive For R&D Investments Translate To Future Earnings?, Ha Yun Cho

CMC Senior Theses

The convex pay-off structure of executive stock options (ESO) incentivizes CEOs to increase their firm stock-return volatility, thereby increasing their wealth in option portfolio. In this paper, I address two research questions. I first test if this managerial incentive induces executives to take on more risky projects in R&D that increases stock- return volatility, hence, boosting their personal wealth. I derive vega to measure managerial incentive, and vega is a dollar change in ESO for a 0.01 change in stock- return volatility. I find that there is a positive and statistically significant relationship between vega and R&D investment, which suggests …

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Financing Method And Abnormal Returns In Corporate Mergers And Acquisitions, Patrick Thomas Jan 2019

Financing Method And Abnormal Returns In Corporate Mergers And Acquisitions, Patrick Thomas

CMC Senior Theses

This study analyzes the impact of merger and acquisition financing method on buyer cumulative abnormal returns. The model builds on findings in previous literature by including deal structure variables, company variables, industry variables, time variables, and post-acquisition announcement return data from 2000 to 2018. The analysis does not find a statistically significant relationship between cash plus debt/stock financing and cumulative abnormal returns. However, significant coefficients for buyer and target industry suggest that deal structure varies and ultimately effects cumulative abnormal returns within specific industries. Additionally, significant results for buyer profitability and time variables provide insight on how the financial market …

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Are Women Executives Hurting Firm Performance? An Examination Of Gender Diversity On Firm Risk, Performance, And Executive Compensation, Krystal Diane Sung Jan 2019

Are Women Executives Hurting Firm Performance? An Examination Of Gender Diversity On Firm Risk, Performance, And Executive Compensation, Krystal Diane Sung

CMC Senior Theses

In order to assess the continuing imbalance of top executives between genders, I examine the effects of gender diversity within top management teams on firm risk, performance, and executive compensation. Capitalizing on previous analysis, I apply three unique differentiators. First, I utilize current data from 2012 to 2017 from Compustat, CRSP, and ExecuComp. Second, I provide a unique subset view on a firm and individual performance of female CEOs to examine executive compensation. Third, my scope of analysis expands to S&P Composite 1500 companies. I use separate models to estimate the effect of gender diversity on firm risk by examining …

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M&A Performance: Market’S Initial Reaction As An Unbiased Indicator Of Post-Acquisition Performance, Nikolaos Papageorgiou Jan 2019

M&A Performance: Market’S Initial Reaction As An Unbiased Indicator Of Post-Acquisition Performance, Nikolaos Papageorgiou

CMC Senior Theses

This paper investigates the reliability of the stock market’s initial reaction to M&A announcements as a predictor of actual post-acquisition performance. The two prevailing methods for evaluating M&A performance are event studies (stock market-based measures) and accounting-based measures. The present study combines these two performance evaluation approaches in a single empirical examination. Both the post-merger buy-and-hold abnormal returns and changes in ROA are used as actual post-acquisition performance variables. The acquirer’s cumulative abnormal return (CAR) around the announcement is used as the market predictor variable. An econometric model is employed to test the predictive power of the announcement-period CAR on …

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Are Cds Auctions The Tail Wagging The Dog? An Empirical Study Of Corporate Bond Return Volatility At The Time Of Default, Jennifer Mace Jan 2019

Are Cds Auctions The Tail Wagging The Dog? An Empirical Study Of Corporate Bond Return Volatility At The Time Of Default, Jennifer Mace

CMC Senior Theses

Over the past decade, numerous engineered credit events and cases of market participants manipulating bond prices to influence Credit Default Swap (CDS) auction payouts have occurred. These cases have become increasingly common, and the CFTC has stated they may constitute market manipulation and undermine not only the CDS market but also the credit derivative and default markets. Although there is a plethora of news and media coverage on publicized cases, there is no previous empirical research on evidence of these practices. This paper is motivated by the desire to determine if there is indirect evidence of bond price manipulation around …

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The Nature Of Latin American Markets In The Presence Of Credit Events, Patricio Aguilar Jan 2019

The Nature Of Latin American Markets In The Presence Of Credit Events, Patricio Aguilar

CMC Senior Theses

In the past two decades the Latin American region has experienced a number of credit crises stemming from large sovereign debt levels and sharp currency devaluations. This study aims to discover whether or not the sovereign credit default swaps (CDS) in the Latin American region lead equity markets prior to these sovereign credit events. Through a sample of the seven largest Latin American economies and daily return data from 2001 to 2018, I try to empirically test this question through a Generalized Least Squared model. The paper finds little significant evidence of CDS leading equity markets in price discovery prior …

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Are The Public Subsidies Of Professional Sports Stadiums Worth The Cost Of Building Them?, Spencer Abraham Jan 2019

Are The Public Subsidies Of Professional Sports Stadiums Worth The Cost Of Building Them?, Spencer Abraham

CMC Senior Theses

The results generated by this research argue that, in the future, communities should take into account crime and other social costs as they analyze the merits of investing in new sports complexes and that a failure to consider these factors could constitute a serious dereliction on the parts of the public officials who are ultimately responsible for new facility investment decision making. Moreover, both this research and previous studies of the economic effects of new sports facilities, strongly indicate that public entities considering funding new facilities do a more in depth independent study of the likely economic consequences of their …

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Deal Or No Deal: The Relationship Between Firm Determinants & Venture-Capital Financing Decisions, Raghav Prasad Jan 2019

Deal Or No Deal: The Relationship Between Firm Determinants & Venture-Capital Financing Decisions, Raghav Prasad

CMC Senior Theses

In this paper, I analyze how firm attributes such as their age, industry, nature of industry, spinoff status and debt ratio influence venture-capital financing decision. I look at a sample of 280 firms that went public in the United States between 2015- 2019. This paper finds that firm age and debt are negatively related to the likelihood of being venture-capital backed. It also finds that firms in technology and biotechnology industries are more likely to be backed by a venture-capitalist.

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