Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

The Relative Financial Cost And Benefit Of An Ophthalmology Resident Compared To An Advanced Practice Provider, Optometrist, Or Faculty Ophthalmologist, Daniel B. Moore, William Barr

Ophthalmology and Visual Science Faculty Publications

Objective The main objective of the article is to determine the relative direct financial cost and benefit of an advanced practice provider (APP), optometrist, and faculty ophthalmologist compared with an ophthalmology resident.

Design Single center cost–benefit financial analysis.

Methods The direct total expenses, including mean salary and benefits; the cost/week, based upon calculated hours worked; and net revenue, based upon technical collections subtracted from total expenses were collected for all APPs, optometrists, faculty ophthalmologists, and ophthalmology residents at the University of Kentucky for the 2016 to 2017 academic year. Optometry and ophthalmology faculty collections were adjusted for clinical full-time equivalents. …

How America Permitted The Great Recession, Robert A. Moss Iii

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Many people have thrown out many ideas as to how the Great Recession happened. Some blame the banks, some blame the system, and others blame the lawmakers. The truth is much more complicated, and many different events lined up to make it happen. The essential fact is that there would likely have been a recession in the 2000s as a result of the commodities price recession of the 90s. What made the recession bad enough to be called the Great Recession was the gradual de-regulation that occurred after Glass-Steagal. Primarily, this paper will deal with the laws surrounding the banking …

The Impact Of Taxes On Foreign Direct Investments, James Mohs, Robert Wnek, Arthur Galloway

Finance Faculty Publications

The role of taxation in the area of foreign direct investment and economic growth has been the topic of many studies. With the effect of newly enacted corporate tax reform in the United States the impact will become the topic of many future studies. This paper will review the common factors used to correlate the impact of corporate taxation on Foreign Direct Investment decision making. The purpose of this research is to review and outline the sensitivity to taxation based on a multiplicity of economic factors that will include taxation on the return on investment and global profits. For the …

Sensation Seeking And Hedge Funds, Stephen Brown, Yan Lu, Sugata Ray, Song Wee Melvyn Teo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We show that motivated by sensation seeking, hedge fund managers who own powerful sports cars take on more investment risk but do not deliver higher returns, resulting in lower Sharpe ratios, information ratios, and alphas. Moreover, sensation-seeking managers trade more frequently, actively, and unconventionally, and prefer lottery-like stocks. We show further that some investors are themselves susceptible to sensation seeking and that sensation-seeking investors fuel the demand for sensation-seeking managers. While investors perceive sensation seekers to be less competent, they do not fully appreciate the superior investment skills of sensation-avoiding fund managers.

Commonality: A Longitudinal Study, Raja Velu, Zhaoque Zhou, Chyng Wen Tee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The commonality in the asset characteristics such as returns, liquidity and other non-trade parameters attracted intense research interest in the literature. In this paper, we investigate the longitudinal trend in commonality for the duration 2000-2016, an extensive that include years of boom and bust in the financial market. Our results show that while market has become more fragmented, commonality in returns has doubled over this period. This observation holds across all exchanges, with a clear trend of convergence in exchange-wide commonality over time due to increased information efficiency. We develop a unified methodology to systematically accommodate all explanatory factors for …

Executive Overconfidence And Securities Class Actions, Suman Banerjee, Mark Humphery-Jenner, Vikram Nanda, T. Mandy Tham

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Overconfident CEOs/senior executives tend to have excessively positive views of their own skills and their company’s future performance. We hypothesize that overconfident managers are more likely to engage in reckless or intentional actions/disclosures that give rise to securities class actions (SCAs). Empirical evidence is supportive: Overconfident CEOs/senior executives increase SCA likelihood, though litigation risk is ameliorated through improved governance, such as following the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002. Post-SCA, companies are less likely to hire an overconfident CEO. Following an SCA, overconfident CEOs appear to moderate behavior and to reduce their litigation risk.

Likely Trajectory Of Fed Policy Far From Settled, Thomas Lam, David Fernandez

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Markets seem to be assuming an almost pre-set path of Fed policy normalization in 2019, including hiking rates and shrinking the balance sheet. In contrast, we see many uncertainties ahead.

Robo-Advisors And Wealth Management, Kok Fai Phoon, Cher Chiew Francis Koh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The recent rise of robo-advisors (RAs) has threatened the traditional fund and wealth management industry. RAs' assets under management (AUM) have risen manyfold through competitiveness on pricing, transparency and services and better expected returns linked to the use of quantitative finance and technology with less subjective human intervention. This article examines the postulation that RAs have an edge over traditional wealth managers. RAs can combine the judgement and computing resources of both human and machine, or bionic power, to provide alternative wealth management services to meet the diverse needs of private wealth clients. However, the authors expect traditional wealth managers …

Online Learning Tool On External Financing Needs, Yuanto Kusnadi

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In collaboration with colleagues at the Centre ofTeaching Excellence (CTE), I have developed an innovative online learningobject on External Financing Needs. This tool is designed to introduce a noveland refreshing way in teaching accounting and finance concepts to students andto create a more interactive learning experience in the classroom. The online learning tool is used in the two courses:Accounting for Entrepreneurs and Financial Management, to explain the relevantconcepts related to financial forecasting and financial planning. One unique feature about the learning object is that itprovides instantaneousfeedback to students as they can learn whether the numbers theyprovide are correct/wrong (as indicated …

Managing Swaption Portfolio Risk Under Different Interest Rate Regimes, Poh Ling Neo, Chyng Wen Tee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Efficient risk managing of swaption portfolios is crucial in the hedging of interest rate exposure. This paper formulates a portfolio risk management framework under stochastic volatility models. The implication of using the right volatility backbone in the stochastic-alpha-beta-rho (SABR) model is analyzed. In order to handle negative interest rates, we derive a displaced-diffusion stochastic volatility (DDSV) model with closed-form analytical expression for swaption pricing. We demonstrate that the dynamics naturally allow for negative rates, and is also able to fit the market well. Finally, we show that choosing the right backbone in the DDSV model results in optimal hedging performance …

Commodity Return Predictability: Evidence From Implied Variance, Skewness And Their Risk Premia, Marinela Adriana Finta, Jose Renato Haas Ornelas

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper investigates the role of realized and implied and their risk premia (variance and skewness) for commodities’ future returns. We estimate these moments from high frequency and commodity futures option data that results in forward-looking measures. Risk premia are computed as the difference between implied and realized moments. We highlight, from a cross-sectional and time series perspective, the strong positive relation between commodity returns and implied skewness. Moreover, we emphasize the high performance of skewness risk premium. Additionally, we show that their portfolios exhibit the best risk-return tradeoff. Most of our results are robust to other factors such as …

Simulations Illustrate Flaw In Inflation Models, Peter L. D'Antonio Ph.D.

Faculty Works: Business (1973-2022)

This study questions the basic assumption of standard inflation models that there are only two forces driving price changes - underlying inflation and short-term noise. Specifically, the paper analyzes the distributions of individual price changes to shed light on an apparent contradiction: individual price changes are extremely dispersed, while measured inflation, the aggregate of individual price changes, remains relatively steady. Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate that the standard inflation model is inconsistent with this observation. The author reintroduces a new inflation model that explicitly accounts for the possibility of a third price-change driver - long-term sector-specific forces. Simulations show that the …

A Global Analysis Of Corporate Litigation Risk And Costs, Matteo P. Arena, Stephen P. Ferris

Finance Faculty Research and Publications

We analyze a unique hand-collected international sample of 475 corporate lawsuits involving 361 publicly-traded defendant firms headquartered in 16 developed countries to explore how country factors influence litigation risk, equity market value, lawsuit outcomes, and settlement costs. Unlike U.S.-focused studies, we do not find a significant relation between stock turnover, equity performance, and the probability of litigation. Defendant firms headquartered in civil law countries or countries with less efficient judiciary systems face lower litigation risk and costs as well as less share price decline at filing. Countries whose courts are less independent demonstrate a significant bias against foreign defendant firms.

Ursinus College Student-Managed Investment Fund Prospectus, Fall 2018, Paul Cottam, Shelby Boyle, Tim Carroll, Samantha Crossan, Joseph Heasley, Jake Kang, Thomas Kelly, Chris Moreno, Johnathan Myers, Steve Palis, Daan Slaats, Parker Wolf, Chenyu Yin

Ursinus Student-Managed Investment Fund Prospectus

This prospectus contains a performance summary for previous stocks and endowment funds as well as strategy and analysis for the following new stocks in the managed fund: American Woodmark Corporation, Comtech Telecommunications Corp. and LGL Group, Inc.

Ursinus College Student-Managed Investment Fund Newsletter, Fall 2018, Isaac Abrams, Liam Close, Thomas Reinhart, Daan Slaats

Investment Management Company Newsletter

Inside this issue:

What's New?

Brief History of Ursinus

What our Newest Students are Saying

What are "They" Saying?

2018 Fund Performance

Allianz Field Trip

Looking Forward

Market Share Growth And Stock Returns, Jaideep Chowdhury, Gokhan Sonaer, Umut Celiker

Business Faculty Publications

We find a negative relationship between market share growth and subsequent stock returns, three- and four-factor alphas. We report the potential explanatory role of market share growth in explaining subsequent average monthly stock returns. High (Low) market share growth firms report good (poor) operating performance and positive (negative) SUEs in the quarter in which market share growth is measured and investors overact to that good (bad) news. However, high (low) market share growth firms experience decrease (increase) in operating performance and SUEs in the subsequent quarters resulting in corrections in investors’ expectations and subsequent lower (higher) stock returns.

Partisan Conflict And Stock Price, Dashan Huang, Wang Liyao

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Partisan conflict has been one dominant theme in U.S. politics in recent years. By using the textual index of Azzimonti (2018), this paper shows that partisan conflict positively predicts market returns, controlling for economic predictors and proxies for uncertainty, disagreement, geopolitical risk, and political sentiment. A one standard-deviation increase in partisan conflict is associated with a 0.58% increase in next month market return. The forecasting power concentrates in periods when the president is from the Republican Party or the majority of House is Republicans. Partisan conflict is positively related to downside risk, and makes investors more conservative when its value …

Assessing The Effects Of Post-Crisis Regulatory Reforms On Liquidity In The Singapore Government Securities And Mas Bills Market, John M. Sequeira

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The FSB initiated in 2017 an evaluation of the effects of post-crisis regulatory reforms, by developing a framework to assess whether the reforms are achieving their intended outcomes and identify any material unintended consequences. In tandem, MAS established an evaluation framework, which covers four broad impact areas, comprising FIs, financial markets, financial end-users and the broader financial landscape. Internationally, there have been particular concerns over whether post-crisis reforms may have impaired liquidity conditions in specific financial markets. We provide an assessment of the effects of the reforms on liquidity in a key market in Singapore, the SGS and MAS bills …

Bounded Rationality And The Choice Of Jury Selection Procedures, Martin Van Der Linden

Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

A peremptory-challenge procedure allows the parties to a jury trial to dismiss some prospective jurors without justification. Complex challenge procedures offer an unfair advantage to parties who are better able to strategize. I introduce a new measure of strategic complexity based on level-k thinking and use this measure to compare challenge procedures often used in practice. In applying this measure, I overturn some commonly held beliefs about which jury selection procedures are strategically simple.

News Co-Occurrence, Attention Spillover, And Return Predictability, Li Guo, Lin Peng, Yubo Tao, Jun Tu

Research Collection School Of Economics

We examine the effect of investor attention spillover on stock return predictability. Using a novel measure, the News Network Triggered Attention index (NNTA), we find that NNTA negatively predicts market returns with a monthly in(out)-of-sample R-square of 5.97% (5.80%). In the cross-section, a long-short portfolio based on news co-occurrence generates a significant monthly alpha of 68 basis points. The results are robust to the inclusion of alternative attention proxies, sentiment measures, other news- and information-based predictors, across recession and expansion periods. We further validate the attention spillover effect by showing that news co-mentioning leads to greater increases in Google and …

Ceo Compensation After Harvester Director Departure, Victor Jarosiewicz

Finance Department Faculty Journal Articles

I examine the effects of board member departures on CEO compensation using a sample of high growth IPO firms. Agency theory predicts that a reduction in board monitoring by harvester directors (VCs and private equity investors) will result in an increase in CEO pay. I find that departures of the last harvester director on a board result in an immediate and lasting increase in CEO equity compensation, while prior departures by other harvester directors are not significant. The results hold even when controlling for other governance mechanisms such as CEO wealth, CEO turnover, board composition, and external blockholder ownership.

2018 Q4 Private Capital Access Index Report, Craig R. Everett

Pepperdine Private Capital Access Report

The Pepperdine Private Capital Access Index (PCA) is a quarterly indicator produced by the Pepperdine Graziadio Business School, in partnership with Dun & Bradstreet. The index is designed to measure the demand for, activity, and health of the private capital markets. The purpose of the PCA Index is to gauge the demand of small and medium sized businesses for financing needs, the level of accessibility of private capital, and the transparency and efficiency of private financing markets.

Redefining 'Useful Life'--An Energy Consumption Method Emerges From The Cc/Ds Environment, James Scott Magruder, Dena S. Mitchell, Carl Smolinski, Eddy J. Burks

Faculty Publications

A redefining of the underlying concept of "useful life" in the depreciation and costing is a result of the changes driven by advancements in the application of technology emerging from the Cloud Computing and data storage environment. Cloud Computing has found success in being an integral structural improvement used in business to improve efficiency and effectiveness as well as to manage costs. Data Storage has proven an equally successful tool in managing the expanding data captured and used in data analytics by companies. Beyond these influences a new approach to existing accounting methods can become a fundamental change which will …

A New Method Of Measuring Financial Risk Aversion Using Hypothetical Investment Preferences: What Does It Say In The Case Of Gender Differences?, A. Seddik Meziani, Elliot Noma

Department of Accounting and Finance Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Aversion to risk is one of the main factors driving investment decisions. Studies have been based on either simple decisions in a laboratory setting or real-life decisions viewed in retrospect. The study's main contribution to the literature consists of a new and elaborate method of measuring risk combined with a real-world investment task brought into a laboratory setting and show that in this controlled environment on average women are more risk averse than men. Unlike previous studies, the authors measure risk tolerance in units that naturally map into the risk-return space used by investors, giving them the missing tool to …

Research Project In Finance: Jnj Johnson And Johnson Corporation, Tsend Togtokhsuren

Student Scholarship

Johnson and Johnson ($JNJ) is a Multinational Corporation that was founded in 1886. It currently operates in the medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and consumer packaged goods industries. The company is a part of the DOW jones industrial average. The corporation has over 250 subsidiaries and brands that serve to improve everyday life through their products. JNJ’s credo is “ We believe our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses and patients, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services” as well as stating “ We are responsible for our employees, the men and women who work …

What Matters Most In Ceo Compensation?, Randy Beavers

SPU Works

Components of compensation have been analysed in previous studies of corporate financial variables of interest but never together to get a sense of the complete picture of what truly matters. This paper includes variable interactions using the difference-in-differences methodology for panel regressions. Data is collected from Capital IQ, Compustat, CRSP, and ExecuComp for S&P 1500 firms from 2006 to 2013. Inside debt is negatively related to a firm’s total risk, idiosyncratic risk, and CEO turnover. Inside debt is positively related to diversification, liquidity, firm value, and return. Overconfidence is negatively related to total risk, liquidity, investment, and firm value. The …

Delineating Operating And Support Costs In Aircraft Platforms, Garrett B. O'Hanlon, Jonathan D. Ritschel, Edward D. White, Gregory E. Brown

Faculty Publications

As the costs of Department of Defense (DoD) Weapon Systems increase, the ability to estimate the Operating and Support (O&S) costs accurately for the various weapon systems has become vital to long-term affordability. This research focuses on the O&S costs of the Air Force fixed-wing arsenal (i.e., platforms) for 1996–2016. First, the Cost Element Structure (CES) for 52 aircraft platforms and seven operational mission categories is analyzed to derive the descriptive statistics per aircraft category through examination of actual historical costs. Second, testing to identify statistical differences within the O&S CES construct across various Air Force aircraft categories is conducted. …

The Creation And Destruction Of The Great American Middle Class (1930-2010), Stanley F. Stasch

School of Business: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This course is an economic history of what happened to ordinary American people and families from about 1930 to 2010.

From the late 1940s to about 1980 ordinary people and families in the United States enjoyed a tremendous increase in their prosperity and quality of life, especially when compared with the conditions that existed during World War II, the 1930s, and before. That prosperity was undoubtedly the highest the world had ever experienced. Because of that, those people are referred to as the great American middle class, and that 30-40 year period witnessed the creation of the great American middle …

Could An Alternative Policy Design Have Produced A Stronger Mortgage Modification Outcome For Hamp?, Sean Macdonald

Publications and Research

This paper conducts a study of the relative effectiveness of the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) - the primary federal mortgage loan modification program - from early 2009 through 2016. It evaluates U.S. Treasury Department and other data sources, and reviews the recent literature on the relative success of the program. The analysis suggests that HAMP’s success rate in modifying mortgage loans was likely constrained by its voluntary design, a structure that enabled lenders and servicers to prioritize the interests of investors in assessing the risks of modification. It then considers the economic issues surrounding the foreclosure issue and presents …

Coordination Of Inpatient And Outpatient Care For Neurology Patients Undergoing Epilepsy Monitoring, Sara Schrock, Michelle Beane, Kathryn Cope, Mark Parker, Suneela Nayak, Ruth Hanselman, Stephen Tyzik, Amy Sparks, Brendan Lilley

Operational Transformation

ORGANIZING A SYSTEM TO CONSOLIDATE EPILEPSY REFERRALS TO AN OUTPATIENT NEUROLOGY PRACTICE

An outpatient neurology practice was experiencing delayed or lost referrals for epilepsy monitoring. This delay was leading many patients to suffer unnecessary and unmanaged seizures and, in some cases, frequent trips to the emergency department.

As a result, a team consisting of the neurology practice and neuro-navigators used baseline metrics to demonstrate the current state of the problem and conducted a root cause analysis that outlined several causes. A number of countermeasures were initiated with the goal of decreasing referral misses.

Post the initiation of two KPIs, a …