Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

The Cost Of Big Data: Evaluating The Effects Of The European Union’S General Data Protection Regulation, Kara Rebecca White

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Does Political Giving Impact Shareholder Wealth? Evidence From State Campaign Finance Reforms, Douglas Brian Blank Ii

Doctoral Dissertations

Does corporate political giving actually affect shareholder wealth? While firms value political participation, some lawmakers oppose corporate involvement in politics. Yet, the existing literature has established a correlation between campaign finance and corporate outcomes without fully documenting a causal relation. I use an innovative database of political giving to exploit changes in state campaign finance laws as an exogenous shock to political giving. Specifically, I use the staggered adoption of externally imposed legal limits to political giving across U.S. states to expose how shareholder wealth responds. I find shareholder wealth declines following legally imposed reductions in political giving. The causal …

Role Of Inside Directors In Mitigating Negative Effects Of Outside Directors’ Busyness, Syed Mainuddin Kamal

Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, I investigate the effect of outside directors’ busyness on firm performance, and how the presence of a certified inside director (CID) on the board alters the busyness effect. Busy outside directors are over-stretched to provide adequate monitoring. Certified inside directors (CIDs), inside directors holding a directorship at an unaffiliated firm, have director labor market incentives to focus on their own firm’s performance and share firm-specific information to outside directors for effective monitoring. I find that the negative effect of outside directors’ busyness on firm performance is mitigated when a firm’s board includes a certified inside director (CID). …

Theory And Experiments Exploring Behavioral, Financial, And Public Economics, Matthew John Mcmahon

Doctoral Dissertations

I study three questions which relate to one another only in that each explores facets of economics. First, I theoretically examine the conditions under which introducing an impure public good decreases total public provision. I introduce a central planner who can tax the private good to correct this and identify the market characteristics that typify this scenario. Second, I test the two standard competing dividend puzzle hypotheses using a laboratory experiment. Evidence from the lab, including variables unobservable in the field, reinforces empirical work supporting the outcome model over the substitute. Last, I obscure from dictators information regarding recipients' income …

The Importance Of Executive Effort, Lee Edward Biggerstaff

Doctoral Dissertations

Agency theory stipulates that managerial effort is important to shareholders and costly for managers to provide. Executives may provide sub-optimal levels of effort because shareholders cannot easily observe the day-to-day actions of managers and therefore have difficulties properly monitoring the effort provided by firm management. Researchers also face the challenge of measuring executive effort. In this dissertation, I use an observable measure of leisure consumption to proxy for the effort provided by executives to study the impact of executive effort on firm outcomes.

In the first essay, I focus on Chief Executive Officers (“CEOs”) and the impact of their effort …

Corporate Headquarters Relocations Announcements: Their Incidence Ratios, Industry Distribution, And Shareholder Wealth Effects, Bartholomew H. Rhoades

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Designated Directors In The Boardroom: Their Impact On Governance And Performance And Shareholder Wealth Effects, Laura Seery Cole

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the appointment of designated directors on boards of directors. Designated director appointments are uncontested board appointments by activist investors, whereby normal nominating and voting election procedures are circumvented. Instances such as these, where directors are appointed rather than elected, are a form of shareholder access to the proxy. In this dissertation, new evidence is provided that is relevant to the proxy access debate by investigating the hypothesis that firms with appointed designated directors have different firm and governance characteristics than firms with elected directors. In particular, the following questions are asked: what are the shareholder wealth effects …