Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

The Greek Sovereign Debt Crisis And Potential Implications For Other Sovereign Nations, Gregory Gambill

Honors Scholar Theses

At least four countries in the Eurozone are in poor economic shape, and Greece has already defaulted on its loans, sending the country into a state of disarray while it works on implementing fiscal austerity measures. Meanwhile, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain are next in line for a possible default. Using Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain as examples of countries that are on the verge of economic collapse, this paper contains an analysis of what other countries need to do in order to avoid this situation.

The Role Of Emerging Market In Investment Portfolios, Kelly Hallinan

Honors Scholar Theses

This thesis explores the role of emerging markets in investment portfolios. Could an investment portfolio consisting of emerging market securities have outperformed similar portfolios that did not contain emerging markets over recent years? Gathering data from January 1, 2009 to December 31, 2010, mean-variance efficiency and the efficient frontier were used to compare the risk-return tradeoff for six constructed portfolios comprised of emerging markets, developed markets, and the risk-free asset. Brazil, Russia, India, and China were chosen to represent the emerging market allocation of the portfolios, accomplished by working with a BRIC Exchange Traded Fund (ETF). The S&P 500 was …

Examining Capm In Today's Markets, David R. Knox

Honors Scholar Theses

The purpose of this work is to empirically assess the validity of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) in terms of how can it model an equity’s return. The goal of this work is not to challenge the theory behind CAPM, nor compare it to alternatives, but simply to test whether or not it is applicable in the real world. This is an exploratory research study: rather than testing a specific hypothesis, my goal is to let the data speak for itself.

The main difficulty with assessing CAPM is that there is no consensus on how much data we ought …