Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Six Sigma, Firm Performance And Returns Predictability In Emerging Real Estate Market, Bora Ozkan

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of two essays. First essay investigates Fortune 500 companies that implemented Six Sigma. Since the 1980s, industrial organizations have adopted practices such as Six Sigma to maintain and enhance competitiveness. The purpose of this study is to look at the long run stock price and the operating performance of Fortune 500 companies that were identified to have implemented Six Sigma compared to the overall market performance as well as the performance of industry and size matched firms. Even though our sample firms improved several variables after implementing Six Sigma, their operating performances were not quite close to …

Financial Reporting Quality Of Chinese Reverse Merger Firms: The Reverse Merger Effect Or The China Effect?, Kun-Chih Chen, Qiang Cheng, Ying Chou Lin, Yu-Chen Lin, Xing Xiao

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In this paper, we examine why Chinese reverse merger (RM) firms have lower financial reporting quality. We find that while U.S. RM firms have similar financial reporting quality as matched U.S. IPO firms, Chinese RM firms exhibit lower financial reporting quality than Chinese ADR firms. We further find that Chinese RM firms exhibit lower financial reporting quality than U.S. RM firms. These results indicate that the use of RM process is associated with poor financial reporting quality only in firms from China, where the legal enforcement is weaker than U.S. In addition, we find that compared to Chinese ADR firms, …

Women In The Workforce: An In-Depth Analysis Of Gender Roles And Compensation Inequity In The Modern Workplace, Rebecca L. Ziman

Honors Theses and Capstones

This paper explores the increase in participation and education of American women in the workforce with a special focus on women in business and accounting roles. The paper then goes on to discuss the wage gap between genders, how to remedy inequality in the workplace, and highlights several reasons why pursing a solution to gender inequality is beneficial for both the employee and the company.

A Survey Of Executive Compensation Contracts In China’S Listed Companies, Yubo Li, Fang Lou, Jiwei Wang, Hongqi Yuan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We analyze 228 executive compensation contracts voluntarily disclosed by Chinese listed firms and find that central-government-controlled companies disclose more information in executive compensation contracts than local-government-controlled and non-government-controlled companies. Cash-based payments are the main form of executive compensation, whereas equity-based payments are seldom used by Chinese listed companies. On average, there are no significant differences in the value of basic salaries and performance-based compensation in executive compensation contracts. But, compared with their counterparts in non-government-controlled companies, executives in government-controlled companies are given more incentive compensation. Accounting earnings are typically used in executive compensation contracts, with few firms using stock returns …

Assessing Revenue Managers' Level Of Trust In Information Systems: An Exploratory Study Of Las Vegas Casino Resorts, Landon Taylor Shores

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study examined revenue managers' level of trust in their revenue management system (RMS) at Las Vegas casino resorts. The study utilized an e-mail interview to measure revenue managers' attitudes about their RMS's degree of reliability and dependability, the degree to which they trust their RMS's pricing recommendations, and if a revenue manager's level of trust in technology had any effect on their likelihood of trusting their RMS.

The study invited 11 property and corporate revenue managers from Las Vegas casino resorts to participate in an e-mail interview, with nine revenue managers agreeing to participate. The main findings of the …

Private Debt Syndicates: Governance, Networks, And Syndicate Structure, William R. Mccumber

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I examine the primary market for syndicated private credit agreements to U.S. firms within the context of contract theory with information asymmetries between contracting parties in a repeated game. Specific governance mechanisms determine a firm's cost of borrowing in syndicated credit agreements. Firms with governance mitigating agency risk between stakeholders, i.e. independent boards, strong shareholder monitoring, and greater CEO pay-performance sensitivity, enjoy lower borrowing costs. The interests of creditors and shareholders diverge with regard to external governance. Lenders charge higher spreads to firms at greater risk of acquisition and reward stronger firms with price concessions when they possess staunch anti-takeover …

Political Connection And Firm Value, James S. Ang, David K. Ding, Tiong Yang Thong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study the effect of political connection (PC) on company value in an environment where low PC is due to better institutions and not confounded by favorable social/cultural factors. We find that in Singapore, the only country that fits this description, PC in general adds little to the value of a company. However, in industries that are subject to more stringent government regulations, PC appears to be somewhat important. Robustness checks show that alternative PC variables give rise to similar results, and the addition of control variables do not drastically change the findings. Politically connected firms have higher managerial ownership …

Exogenous Or Endogenous Money Supply: Evidence From Australia, Zatul Badarudin, Ahmed Khalid, Mohamed Ariff

Ahmed Khalid

This paper investigates the nature of money supply in Australia over two separate monetary policy regimes: monetary and inflation targeting. The post-Keynesian theory on endogenous money was tested with the aim of investigating whether endogenous money supply, if it did exist, followed the accomodationist, structuralist or liquidity preference viewpoints. Data used are quarterly series from 1977 to 2007 and we used vector error-correction model for long-run and short-run causality tests. We found that money supply is endogenous in Australia even when the central bank targeted monetary aggregates during the period 1977 to 1993.

Relationship Between Interest Rate And Bank Common Stock Return: Evidence From The Top 10 United States Banks And Financial Sector Index, Hieu Trung Tran

Honors Projects in Finance

This research paper investigates the effect of changes in long-term interest rates on the returns of the top 10 US banks included in the Financial Sector Index. There are three main parts of this paper.

The first part uses the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test to test the “Random Walk” of banks’ common stock returns. Based on the test’s results, returns of banks’ common stock do not solely follow the “Random Walk”.

In the second part, the Two-Factor Arbitrage Pricing Theory is employed to test the effect of changes in long-term interest rate on the return of banks’ common stocks. The …

Social Capital, Informal Governance, And Post-Ipo Firm Performance: A Study Of Chinese Entrepreneurial Firms, Jerry X. Cao, Yuan Ding, Hua Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper explores the links between entrepreneurs' social capital and post-IPO firm performance in China's unique capital market and regulatory setting. Using hand-collected data on entrepreneurs' political connections and firm financial information, we construct original measures for various types of social capital and examine their roles in determining the accounting and financial performance of entrepreneurial firms after an IPO. On one hand, firm accounting performance is enhanced by entrepreneurs' bridging social capital, such as political connections or a willingness to share power with external investors. On the other hand, bonding social capital such as intra-group related party transactions causes performance …

A Statistical Analysis Of Public Sector Corruption And Economic Growth, Kaycea Campbell

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

This study reports on the results of a statistical analysis in which the relationship between the independent variable of corruption, as measured by the World Bank, and the dependent variable of economic growth, as measured by percentage of GDP growth per year, was examined. The purpose of this study is to apply empirical methods to the debate on corruption and growth, in which neoclassical theory predicts that corruption retards growth but in which other models, such as Lewis growth and the Kuznets Curve, suggest that corruption may actually speed up growth in underdeveloped countries. The main finding of the study …

Common Sense And Civic Virtue: Institutional Investors, Responsible Ownership, And The Democratic Ideal, Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

On matters of governance, the people’s good is the highest law, as Cicero said two millennia ago. Unfortunately, these days personal greed has trumped the people’s good, enflaming the current governance crisis affecting our public, nonprofit, and private spheres. The spate of corporate governance scandals over the past several years jeopardizes equity investments, harms beneficiaries, and weakens global capital markets. The remedy is not just more laws and regulation but revitalization of the system of corporate checks and balances that already exists. To get better corporate governance, corporate shareowners, especially institutional investors, need to assert their rights and responsibilities more …

Impact Of Affect Heuristic, Fear And Anger On Decision Making Of Individual Investor: A Conceptual Study, Ehsan Ul Hassan, Fahad Shahzeb, Maryum Shaheen, Qamar Abbas, Zahid Hameed, Ahmed Imran Hunjra

Ahmed Imran Hunjra (PhD)

Financial theories support the efficient market hypothesis, which assumes that prices are fair in the market and investors behave rationally while taking any investment decision. Individual Investors of the stock market are therefore thought to take rational decisions while making judgments and investment decisions. However, a lot of studies on behavioral finance have criticized the phenomenon of market efficiency and investor’s rationality. The empirical evidences of these studies conclude the involvement of behavioral biases and psychological impacts on investor’s judgments and decision making. Keeping this in mind the present study has focused on studying the impact of affect heuristic, fear …

Neoliberalism And The Law: How Historical Materialism Can Illuminate Recent Governmental And Judicial Decision Making, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Neoliberalism can be understood as the deregulation of the economy from political control by deliberate action or inaction of the state. As such it is both constituted by the law and deeply affects it. I show how the methods of historical materialism can illuminate this phenomenon in all three branches of the the U.S. government. Considering the example the global financial crisis of 2007-08 that began with the housing bubble developing from trade in unregulated and overvalued mortgage backed securities, I show how the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which established a firewall between commercial and investment banking, allowed this …

Corporate Governance: The Role Of Independent Directors, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Companies in Singapore may now have to spend more time and resources to look for independent directors for their firms after the recent revised Corporate Governance Code, but the efforts will be worth it, said Jeremy Goh, associate professor of finance at SMU at a panel discussion during the 3rd Singapore Corporate Governance Week.

Shareholders And Social Welfare, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter

All Faculty Scholarship

This article addresses the question whether (and how) the shareholders matter for social welfare. Answers to the question have changed over time. Observers in the mid-twentieth century believed that the socio-economic characteristics of real world shareholders were highly pertinent to social welfare inquiries. But they went on to conclude that there followed no justification for catering to shareholder interest, for shareholders occupied elite social strata. The answer changed during the twentieth century’s closing decades, when observers came to accord the shareholder interest a key structural role in the enhancement of economic efficiency even as they also deemed irrelevant the characteristics …

How Does Culture Influence Corporate Risk-Taking?, Kai Li, Dale Griffin, Heng Yue, Longkai Zhao

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We investigate the role of national culture in corporate risk-taking. We postulate that culture influencescorporate risk-taking both through its effect on managerial decision-making and through its effect on acountry’s formal institutions. Further, we postulate that the influence of culture is conditioned on theextent of managerial discretion as measured by earnings discretion and firm size. Using firm-level datafrom 35 countries and employing a hierarchical linear modeling approach to isolate the effects of firmleveland country-level variables, we show that individualism has a positive and significant association,whereas uncertainty avoidance and harmony have negative and significant associations, with corporaterisk-taking. Greater earnings discretion strengthens and …

A Theory Of Preferred Stock, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.