Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Long-Term Orientation And Tax Avoidance Regulations, Katarzyna Bilicka, Danjue Clancey-Shang, Yaxuan Qi

Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

In this paper, we explore the relationship between the culture of the country where a multinational corporation (MNC) is headquartered and the MNC's stock market reaction to tax avoidance regulations. Specifically, we examine the different responses of MNCs following the implementation of the 2010 UK reform that restricted profit shifting for a specific group of firms. We find that, in countries with short-term-oriented cultures, MNCs affected by this reform experienced positive stock market responses relative to their unaffected counterparts. This is not found in long-term-oriented cultures. This difference in response can partly be explained by the differing perceptions of the …

Responding To Financial Stress For Agricultural Producers And Couples, Jacob D. Gossner, Elizabeth B. Fauth, Tasha Howard

All Current Publications

Finances are a necessary component of running an agricultural production and with an uncertain economy, drought conditions, and rising costs, financial stress is increasingly common. Although financial stress is linked with poor individual and relationship outcomes, research suggests that there are effective ways to manage financial stress so that it does not reduce personal or relationship well-being. We review the body's response to stressors and how to respond rather than react to stress. We present specific strategies couples can use to navigate financial stress together. We include ideas for practical application for individuals seeking to improve the way they manage …

Who Is More Likely To Be Delinquent In Their Mortgage Payments Among Homeowners? The Role Of Financial Literacy, Ellie Donne Hansen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Homeownership is a way for families to build wealth and marks status attainment. Despite the many benefits of homeownership, homeowners who are delinquent on their mortgages lose the effective means of wealth accumulation and may trigger the beginning of the foreclosure process. There is evidence that homeowners with appropriate levels of financial literacy have a lower likelihood of mortgage delinquency.

Using data from the 2018 National Financial Capability Study (NFCS), the main purpose of this study was to examine what factors are associated with mortgage delinquency among homeowners. This study also examined to what extent financial literacy plays a role …

Do Board Diversity And Gender Quotas Affect Firm Value? Evidence From California Assembly Bill No. 979, Emily Kelleen Blake, Sepideh Raei, Katarzyna A. Bilicka, Todd Griffith

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

We analyze the stock market reaction and returns for California-headquartered companies following the announcement of AB 979 (California Assembly Bill 979) that was signed into effect on September 30th, 2020. AB 979 requires public firms headquartered in California to meet board gender and diversity quotas by December 31st, 2021. Cumulative abnormal returns in a [-1, +1] event window average a 0.98% abnormal return as benchmarked against all publicly traded firms and a 1.29% abnormal return when benchmarked against our control group (of firms headquartered outside of California). California headquartered firms with exclusively male boards had a larger cumulative abnormal return …

Only 7.8% Of Eligible Vehicles In Utah Enroll In The Utah Road Usage Charge (Ruc) Program, Tyson Bomsta, Joe Davis

Research on Capitol Hill

Senior Tyson and sophomore Joe are Center for Growth Opportunity Research Fellows studying economics and finance at USU. The duo focused their research on their native Utah. The increase in fuel-efficient and electric cars has begun to impact Utah’s ability to fund roadwork, and this is likely to become a more serious problem as time goes on. Taxing gas is no longer a viable way to raise the funds necessary, and Joe and Tyson are looking at ways to reform our tax structure to keep Utahns on the road. Both students agree that research is the best way to learn. …

The Volatility Implications Of The Chinese Cryptocurrency Ban, Keaton Manwaring

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

In this paper, I examine the effect of the May 18^th, 2021 Chinese ban of cryptocurrency transactions on the overall volatility of the cryptocurrency market. To do this, I analyze, in both univariate and multivariate settings, range-based volatility in various event windows surrounding the event. I find clear economic and statistical change in volatility in the five days after the ban. In the ten-day period after the ban, there is a moderate economic change in volatility. In the forty-day period after the ban, there is little economic change in volatility. I conclude that the Chinese ban had a …

A Reexamination Of The Illiquidity Premium In Cryptocurrencies, Wyatt Fitz

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

In this study, I examine the illiquidity premium amongst the 372 most actively traded cryptocurrencies from September 2014 to May 2021. I find that the average returns on the most illiquid cryptocurrencies are larger than those on the most liquid cryptocurrencies. My results are robust to different weighting mechanisms for the market index and to various asset pricing model specifications. These results suggest that an investor might be able to go long a portfolio of illiquid cryptocurrencies while simultaneously shorting a portfolio of liquid cryptocurrencies to effectively generate a positive risk-adjusted return.

Factors Associated With Financial Stressors, Financial Stress, And Financial Behaviors, Paula Andrea Lopez Alvarado

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

As of the end of the first quarter of 2021, overall consumer debt reached $14.64 trillion. The more debt a family has, the higher the reported levels of financial stress the family reports. Using data from the 2018 National Financial Capability Study (NFCS), the purpose of this study was to examine the associations among financial stressors, financial stress, and positive and negative financial behaviors. The findings of this study suggested that Black individuals had the highest levels of financial stressors, financial stress, and negative and positive financial behaviors among four racial/ethnic groups. The findings also suggested that high financial stress …

Association Between Financial Education, Affective And Cognitive Financial Knowledge, And Financial Behaviors, Lucy M. Delgadillo, Yoon Lee

Applied Sciences, Technology and Education Faculty Publications

Using data from the 2018 National Financial Capability Study, this paper examined the relationship between financial education participation and affective and cognitive financial knowledge. Involvement in financial education yielded statistically significant associations between affective and cognitive domains. The results showed that participation in financial education was associated with both cognitive and affective financial knowledge as well as long-term financial behaviors. The findings supported the case for life-long learning of financial education for young adults, Blacks and Hispanics, and women. One important implication was the need to include both the affective and cognitive domains when teaching or researching financial education.

Short Selling Around Reverse Stock Splits, Ryan Voges

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

I examine whether short selling increases around reverse stock splits using 2019 daily short selling data instead of bimonthly short interest data required by FINRA. In my difference-in-difference analysis, I find that average short selling increases significantly for firms that reverse split their stock, relative to matched control firms that do not, around the split dates. I also find that firms that reverse split their stock experience negative cumulative abnormal returns in the 20-day period after the reverse stock splits, particularly for those firms that are heavily shorted. These results are in agreeance with existent literature and suggest that short …

The Effects Of Bank Lobbying And Elections Surprises, Gregory Logan Tarbet

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This paper examines the stock market reaction to banks that lobby relative to banks that did not lobby in the period around the November 9, 2016, U.S. presidential election. Using three different methods of event studies to calculate the cumulative average return, we find that lobbying in banks has a meaningful relationship to an abnormal increase in those firm’s stock prices. Then we attempt to control for both the systemic importance and size of these institutions by performing cross-sectional regressions that include matched size, and the systemic nature of the banks. The results suggest that a heavily regulated industry such …

Retail Trading And Stock Volatility: The Case Of Robinhood, Cooper Jones

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

We examine the relation between Robinhood usership and stock market volatility. We show that daily fluctuations in Robinhood usership, which is used to proxy retail trading, significantly influence various measures of volatility. These results might suggest that Robinhood users contribute to noise trading as they are generally individuals trading on name recognition, media coverage, popularity, and familiarity of products, rather than on fundamental values. In our empirical approach, we find that the percentage increase in Robinhood usership Granger causes increases in daily stock volatility.

Pharmaceutical Stock Prices Around Medicare Part D Expansion, Spencer Powell

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

On January 1, 2006 Medicare part D expanded, giving prescription coverage to many Americans. This event offers an interesting question regarding market efficiency, specifically because Medicare expansion was introduced into congress as far back as 1999. Because Medicare part D affected pharmaceutical drug coverage, this study focuses specifically on securities in the pharmaceutical industry. Following an efficient market hypothesis, we would expect to see significant abnormal returns in the post event window, anticipating the legislations effect on demand within the industry. Results showed significant abnormal returns in post-event window, but not in the pre-event window. The returns in the post-event …

Corporate Venture Capital And Its Effects On Company Valuation - An Analysis Of The Additions Of Cvc Arms, Joshua Lyman

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This paper examines the stock price reaction to the addition of corporate venture capital arms to publicly traded companies. Referencing venture capital resources, corporate press release announcements of the addition of CVC arms were hand collected. I calculate the cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) surrounding press release announcement dates and find immediate stock market reactions, positively increasing stock prices compared to the overall market. I further perform placebo event studies at random dates and with direct competitors using the same announcement dates and find no significant results. These findings suggest that corporate venture capital increases company valuation and that financial markets …

Testing Investment Strategies For Superior Predictive Ability, Jack K. Baldwin

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

When different models are tested on one data sample and repeatedly altered in order to be found significant, the results are likely spurious. This is data-snooping – an ever-growing problem in the finance industry likely due to fierce competition and developments in data processing capacity. In academia, although recognized as a deplorable practice, data-snooping is likewise pervasive perhaps as a result of poor incentive structures at both the university and publisher levels. I manifest the problem of data-snooping through multiple academic and industry examples and then summarize Halbert White and Peter Hansen’s offered solutions, White’s Reality Check and Hansen’s Test …

Industry Stock Prices Around Covid-19, Daniel Cardall

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

In this study, I examine how market participants respond to global uncertainty around the Covid-19 pandemic. More specifically, I analyze the industries most affected by the outbreak. The pandemic has created events never before seen at such a global level. Governments closed their country’s borders and quarantined their residents. Business owners closed their doors. These unforeseen events put the world economy at a standstill. I find that these decisions caused the U.S. stock markets to crash by more than 30%. The industries that experienced the most negative value-weighted abnormal returns were Carry, Meals, and Books. The industries that exhibited the …

Reexamining Metallgesellschaft’S Hedging Policy: Does Anything Beat A One-For-One Hedge Ratio?, Christopher Haddock

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

There has been significant debate surrounding Metallgesellschaft's derivatives based fixed-price marketing strategy. Most of this debate relates to Metallgesellschaft's choice to use a one-for-one hedge ratio instead of an alternative hedge ratio optimized for risk management. I contribute to this discussion by reexamining the hedging strategy of Metallgesellschaft and use the Test for Superior Predictive Ability to determine whether any hedge ratio less than one outperforms the one-for-one hedge utilized by Metallgesellschaft.

The Relative Industry Specific Effects Of Covid-19 On Market Volatility And Liquidity, Callin Christensen

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Understanding how historical events affect market volatility and liquidity can provide crucial information to financial analysts, investment professionals, and managers in the event that similar circumstances resurface. In this study, I look at how a global pandemic (COVID-19) can introduce frictions into the market and cause disrupt the generation or flow of available information, this could cause prices to deviate significantly from their equilibrium values. I also hypothesize that these inefficiencies may have a greater effect on some industries than others. My analysis seems to confirm this hypothesis. I observe that the global COVID-19 pandemic leads to statistically significant increases …

Reinforcement Learning For Dynamic Futures Hedging, Evan Bullard

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This paper focuses on oil hedging using near month crude oil futures. Hedging may allow a firm to reduce risks and focus on areas of comparative advantage. Hedging requires a firm to estimate ex-ante the correct hedge ratio. The portfolio optimization framework allows for OLS to be applied to the estimation of a hedge ratio. Reinforcement Learning is another method available to hedgers to estimate a hedge ratio. Three strategies using econometric tools and one using Reinforcement Learning are estimated and tested against 2019 oil price data.

Mass Shootings And The Performance Of Tourism Stocks, Marshall Deem

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This study investigates the effects of mass shooting events on the performance of the tourism industry within the United States. The results of the study show that outside of the market-wide returns, the performance of tourism stocks is negatively impacted after a large-scale mass shooting event. Furthermore, when separating extreme outliers in the data such as the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay shooting, the results of the study find that tourism stocks surrounding other large-scale mass shootings are significantly negative. Overall, the results of the study demonstrate a negative response in the tourism industry to large-scale mass shootings.

Black-Scholes And Neural Networks, Gabriel Adams

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Neural networks have been proven to be universal approximators. We use neural networks to investigate the relationship between the quality of input data and the quality of outputted predictions from a neural network. We show that neural networks perform better on option pricing data with quality data and perform worse with lower quality data.

Implementing Option Pricing Model, Zhao Ming

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

In this paper I replicate Clewlow and Strickland's control variates methods based on Greek letters method to test if it can improve the simulation efficiency. First, I use Black Scholes Merton formula for option pricing as a benchmark, to compare with the European call option price from Monte Carlo methods. Then I use Greek letters as control variates to reduce sample standard deviation and improve the efficiency of the Monte Carlo simulation. The whole process is programming in C++. C++ is a compiled language which can generate machine code from source code and provide a shorter running time. This paper …

Deep Reinforcement Learning Pairs Trading, Andrew Brim

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This research applies a deep reinforcement learning technique, Deep Q-network, to a stock market pairs trading strategy for profit. Artificial intelligent methods have long since been applied to optimize trading strategies. This work trains and tests a DQN to trade co-integrated stock market prices, in a pairs trading strategy. The results demonstrate the DQN is able to consistently produce positive returns when executing a pairs trading strategy.

The Introduction Of Bitcoin Futures: An Examination Of Volatility And Potential Spillover Effects, Benjamin M. Blau, Ryan J. Whitby

Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

Theory in Stein (1987) suggests that introducing derivative contracts, such as futures, can destabilize underlying asset prices if the contracts attract enough speculative traders. This paper examines how the introduction of Bitcoin futures influences the underlying Bitcoin market. Consistent with Stein (1987), we find that that Bitcoin's volatility increases significantly during the post-introduction period. Perhaps more importantly, however, we observe significant spillover effects into related markets. For instance, in other cryptocurrencies, the increase in volatility in these markets is greater than the post-introduction increase in Bitcoin.

The Performance Of Military Defense Contracted Companies After September 11th, 2001: The Case Of Politically Connected Companies, Derek J. Larsen

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This paper examines the effect that the terrorist attacks on September 11^th, 2001 had on the stock prices of companies within the military defense industry. In addition, this paper studies the effect of the defense firms’ political engagement (through lobbying activities) and how this affected the stock price response to the terrorist attacks. Our study finds that the cumulative abnormal returns of these companies are positively significant and that companies who lobbied experienced higher returns relative to those who did not lobby.

Predictive Distributions Via Filtered Historical Simulation For Financial Risk Management, Tyson Clark

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Filtered historical simulation with an underlying GARCH process can be used as a valuable tool in VaR analysis, as it derives risk estimates that are sensitive to the distributional properties of the historical data of the produced predictive density. I examine the applications to risk analysis that filtered historical simulation can provide, as well as an interpretation of the predictive density as a poor man’s Bayesian posterior distribution. The predictive density allows us to make associated probabilistic statements regarding the results for VaR analysis, giving greater measurement of risk and the ability to maintain the optimal level of risk per …

The Stock Return Changes Of Chinese Adr Before And After Trump's Election And Imposed Tariff On Chinese Goods, Suyao Liu

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This study examines the stock return changes of Chinese ADR company likely be affected by Trump’s election on November 9, 2016, the signing of tariff Chinese goods bill on March 8, 2018, and the tariff bill takes into act on March 23, 2018. The results show that, relative to the entire market, the stock prices of Chinese ADR companies underperform. Our analysis provides evidence that it’s hard to find that these three events would affect a particular industry of Chinese ADR the most.

Exploiting Wall Street: An Algorithmic Approach To Investing, Sterling Lemon

Student Research Symposium

Technology has advanced dramatically over the years, yet the old investment strategy of "buy and hold" has remained prevalent. While this strategy performed well historically, it serves as a stark contrast to modern investing which, by utilizing machine learning and advanced data analytics, is generating unprecedented returns This research project will demonstrate the strength behind algorithmic investing and how the investment strategy of "buy and hold" will become a thing of the past.

The Effect Of Dental Therapists On Access To Dental Care, Jacob Caldwell

Research on Capitol Hill

Oral health is an important indicator of overall individual health and general well-being. Unfortunately, there is a lack of dental care availability and access in many parts of the United States. According to the Health Resources and Services Administration, as of December 31, 2018 there were nearly 6,000 Dental Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs) in the US. Around 58 million people live in these shortage areas and it is estimated that over 10,000 practitioners are necessary to meet the needs of these populations.

Financial Outcomes From Selection Of Insurance Intervals, Shana Anderson Stewart

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the potential value of enrolling in rainfall-index for pasture, rangeland, and forage insurance for Utah producers. A stochastic optimization model is used to identify the optimal selection of insurance intervals that will provide the maximum indemnity payments less premiums. Four Utah counties were selected for analysis. Results indicate that positive returns will occur greater than 60% of the time in all counties with the selected insurance intervals. The optimal months to insure varied in each county.