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Finance and Financial Management Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

University of Massachusetts Amherst

2018

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Finance and Financial Management

Essays In Financial Economics: Announcement Effects In Fixed Income Markets, James J. Forest Oct 2018

Essays In Financial Economics: Announcement Effects In Fixed Income Markets, James J. Forest

Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT ESSAYS IN FINANCIAL ECONOMICS: ANNOUNCEMENT EFFECTS IN FIXED INCOME MARKETS PHD IN FINANCE MAY 2018 JAMES J FOREST B.A., FRAMINGHAM STATE UNIVERSITY M.S., NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS – AMHERST Directed by: Professor Hossein B. Kazemi This dissertation demonstrates the use of empirical techniques for dealing with modeling issues that arise when analyzing announcement effects in fixed income markets. It describes empirical challenges in achieving unbiased and efficient parameter estimates and shows the importance of modelling a wide range of macroeconomic announcement effects to avoid omitted variable bias. Employing techniques common in Macroeconomics, financial market researchers are better …

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Essays On The Asset Pricing Anomalies, Kyungyeon (Rachel) Koh Jul 2018

Essays On The Asset Pricing Anomalies, Kyungyeon (Rachel) Koh

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation aims to shed light on the source of the asset pricing anomalies by investigating behavioral and rational explanations. The first essay, “Asset Efficiency and the Asset Growth Anomaly,” examines the source of the asset growth anomaly. I present findings that the anomaly is driven by inefficient firms, which support the behavioral hypothesis that investors on average underreact to some firms’ overexpansion. Firms with past records of high asset efficiency relative to their industry peers do not suffer lower stock performance following high growth. The overarching impact of asset efficiency shows that firm skill is highly relevant, for effective …

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When Doing Good Backfires: The Effects Of Corporate Social Responsibility Fit On The Decisions Of Long And Short-Term Investors, Chezham Sealy Jul 2018

When Doing Good Backfires: The Effects Of Corporate Social Responsibility Fit On The Decisions Of Long And Short-Term Investors, Chezham Sealy

Doctoral Dissertations

Investors, analysts, and news outlets have expressed concerns that corporate social responsibility (CSR) has deviated from its original altruistic purpose of improving society to a marketing ploy aimed at managing perceptions of shareholders and improving the bottom line of companies. In this study, I analyze how the fit of a company’s business operations to their CSR activities affects the investment willingness of long and short-term investors. While prior research shows numerous positive outcomes associated with CSR, I predict and find that low fit CSR activities can decrease the investment willingness of long-term investors when companies are involved in controversial “sin” …

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Essays On The Term Structure Of Volatility And Option Returns, Vincent Campasano Jul 2018

Essays On The Term Structure Of Volatility And Option Returns, Vincent Campasano

Doctoral Dissertations

The first essay studies the dynamics of equity option implied volatility and shows that they depend both upon the option’s time to maturity (horizon) and slope of the implied volatility term structure for the underlying asset (term struc ture). We propose a simple, illustrative framework which intuitively captures these dynamics. Guided by our framework, we examine a number of volatility trading strategies across horizon, and the extent to which profitability of trading strategies is due to an interaction between term structure and realized volatility. While profitable trading strategies based upon term structure exist for both long and short horizon options, …

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