Finance Commons^™

Us Financial Expansions And Exchange Rate Determination, Matthew Brill

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to explore how US financial activity influences the exchange rates of foreign nations. Starting off by building on Currency Hierarchy and Minskyan dynamics, I look at how financial cycles generated in the US, the key economy, transmit liquidity towards economies on the periphery. Additionally, I use the increase in shadow banking asset accumulation relative to commercial banking asset accumulation as indicative of financial expansions in the US, and the driving force of financial cycles. Using vector autoregression (VAR) analysis I test the relationships between the ratio of US shadow banking assets relative to commercial …

Pulling Back The Curtain: A Student Collaborative Case Study Of Equity Issues In Colorado’S School Finance System, Amy Jo Schwartz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

After the Great Recession, a seven percent decrease in funding ended decades of academic growth and further widened the achievement gap between White and Black students (Jackson et al., 2020). Colorado’s school-finance system is particularly distorted and inequitable because of a series of tax-limiting policies which, combined, have led Colorado to become one of the lowest-funded per pupil states in the country (Resnick et al., 2015). The purpose of this study is to describe the policymaking context, as it relates to equity within Colorado’s school-finance system and explore policy alternatives to improve equity within the system. The study was designed …

The Hotelling Valuation Principle: Does User Cost And Reserve Differentials Improve Validity?, Brian K. Hicks

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Hotelling Valuation Principal (HVP) implies that the value per unit of an in-ground exhaustible natural resource is equal to the current price less the cost of production. The assumptions required for this principle include a certain and homogenous reserve stock, unconstrained extraction, and constant costs. Extensive research has empirically investigated the HVP. This paper expands the HVP framework and relaxes the theory’s assumptions to account for reserve differentials. The results show that the original net price model is more closely aligned with developed reserve value, than total reserve value. In addition, this paper develops two- and three-factor net price …

Airbnb Release Of Latent Economic Value And Return To Equilibrium, Daniel Joseph Trujillo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

We empirically consider Airbnb’s effect on a new variable in Short Term Rental (STR) research, second homes, employing a model pre-Airbnb diffusion (2009), and post-Airbnb diffusion (2019). In doing so we test our hypothesis that second home use will be converted to short-term rentals with the advent of Airbnb. We do so through a natural experiment examining housing stock. We create a schema to segregate tourist and non-tourist counties based on economic variables and deploy these in our research framework observing a shock to housing supply. Notably, we observe a structural change in the use of second homes resulting in …

The Viability Of Profit-Loss Sharing Models To Finance Small And Medium Enterprises: The Case Of Saudi Arabia, Alhanoof Alghamdi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study aims to explore the role of profit-loss sharing (PLS) models to alleviate access to finance for small and medium enterprises in Saudi Arabia, in the light of the stringent requirements of traditional financial institutions, to ensure the growth and development of the SME sector. A central question of this study is the extent to which Islamic banks can adopt profit-loss sharing modes to finance SMEs. The main results present the barriers preventing Islamic banks from the application of profit-loss sharing that increase incidence of agency problems for such institutions. High asymmetry of information and the nature of Islamic …

The Evolution Of The Federal Reserve's Mandate In Response To The Global Financial Crisis: The Case For Financial Stability, Laurel Celastine Mazur

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis looks at the evolution of the Federal Reserve’s mandate and regulatory responsibilities as a result of the Global Financial Crisis. The onset of the crisis exposed the financial system to risks that had yet to be identified by the traditional microprudential regulatory framework, necessitating a rapid and unconventional response in order to prevent widespread financial collapse. Now, in 2015, as most of the scourges of the crisis are in the recent past, practitioners are beginning to not only pick up the pieces but attempting to reform the system to increase resilience in the future. One of the proposals …

Mortgage Crisis: Exploring Incentives Prevalent During The Boom And Bust Of The 2001–2007 Mortgage Market, Justin P. Nowicki

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to explain the mortgage market's behavior from 2001 through the first quarter of 2007 by discussing the economic incentives key market participants faced. By exploring incentives faced by key participants, a multifaceted yet logical explanation for the aggressive economic expansion and contraction appears. Throughout this paper I argue that the simultaneous acting upon of such incentives was fundamental to the market behavior and that the actions of each participant are, for the most part, understandable given the incentives that each faced. The paper will describe the monetary and cultural incentives underlying this behavior and …

Debtor's Empowerment: Muhammad Yunus And The Rhetoric Of Microfinance, Kaleb W. Brooks

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the rhetoric of Muhammad Yunus as an articulation of a new governing logic, one that reconstitutes the concept of poverty and binds the poor to the apparatus of global capitalism through a new logic of micro-enterprise. Working within a Foucauldian critical framework informed by the rhetorical scholarship of Ronald W. Greene and Joshua Hanan, the argument proceeds by first paying careful attention to Yunus' work as constitutive of a new grid of intelligibility through which to view the poor and then demonstrating the application of this reformed discourse on "creditworthiness" in articulating a novel regime of commensuration. …

Bankruptcy Stigma: A Socio-Legal Study, Michael D. Sousa

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For as long as the institution of bankruptcy has existed, legal commentators have debated whether it is appropriate for debtors to experience some social stigma upon filing for personal bankruptcy--that is, whether it serves the goals of bankruptcy law for debtors to feel shame. While this issue has been extensively discussed as a theoretical matter, to date no legal commentator or scholar has examined the question as an empirical matter: do debtors in fact associate feelings of shame with filing for bankruptcy, and, if so, why (or why not)? This article, for the first time, undertakes precisely this inquiry. Specifically, …

Examining The Low Volatility Anomaly In Stock Prices, Munish Malhotra

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Modern portfolio theory states that investments with greater beta, a common measure of risk, require greater returns from investors in order to compensate them for taking greater risk. Therefore, under the premise that market participants act rationally and therefore markets run efficiently, investments with higher beta should generate higher returns vis-à-vis investments with lower beta over the long run. In fact, many studies suggest that investments with lower beta actually generate equal to or higher returns relative to investments with higher beta. In looking at data for the S&P 500 going back 22 years between 1990 and 2012, this study …

The Development Of The Risky Financial Behavior Scale: A Measure Of Financial Risk Tolerance, Yilong Zheng

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There is an increasing need for a more comprehensive instrument to measure risk tolerance in human financial decision making studies. The traditional economic method and the more recent psychometric method of examining risk tolerance were both reviewed in the study. The purpose of this thesis was the initial development and validation of the Risky Financial Behavior Scale (RFBS), with items taken from four different domains noted in previous studies. Phase I and II consisted of item pool generation, construct determination from content experts' review and cognitive interviews. Data from these stages were collected and used for item revision prior to …

Cascading Failures And Fundamental Uncertainty: Divergence In Financial Risk Assessment, Alexander Kent Spray

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

By applying common financial risk assessment models to the network economy formalized in Delli Gatti et al. (2006), and by contextualizing both in the broader literature on complexity in economic systems, the question of convergence in economic models is addressed. Critically, a formal state condition is identified which can contribute to the emergence of periods of extreme divergence from expected conditions even in a model characterized by restrictive assumptions regarding agent choice and market structure. The strength of the impact of this state condition, here the topology of a credit network, on the dynamics of the economic system is furthermore …

Structured Finance And Its Effects On Macroeconomic Stability, Brian Charles Fahey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The tools and techniques of structured finance have changed banking remarkably over the past twenty years. This area grew to become larger than the sum total of traditional banking deposits in 2007. Despite this, the field is poorly understood and its connection to macroeconomic stability was underestimated until the credit crisis. This paper explores the structured finance market in three phases. First, the market is broken into parts based on the incentives and motivations of each of the three major agents in the field. Next, a critical review of pricing models that are used to justify the valuations of the …

The Global Credit Crisis Of 2007–2009: An Examination Of Some Of The Causes, Chronology, And Unconventional Monetary Tools Employed, Mark P. Culver

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper will first examine some of the causes over many years and conditions that evolved that preceded the 2007-2009 credit crisis as well as some of the events that took place in the midst of the crisis. More importantly, this paper will examine how central banks applied the generally prescribed first line defense in the form of conventional monetary policy to its full extent without complete or adequate satisfaction or result. The bulk of the paper is directed at a description and analysis of the unconventional monetary tools, that which has come to be called quantitative easing, that central …

Lanse Minkler On Human Rights And Structural Adjustment By Rodwan Abouharb & David Cingranelli. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 276pp., Lanse Minkler

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Human Rights and Structural Adjustment by Rodwan Abouharb & David Cingranelli. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 276pp.

A Study Of Colorado's Tabor Law And Its Influence On Public Finance During The 2001 Recession, Zak Brewer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Colorado's constitutional Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) is a product of the citizen initiative process, a mechanism of direct democracy that allows citizens to circumvent legislatures and enact laws themselves. A prominent argument against this process is that such a mode of lawmaking can generate conflicts within state constitutions and bring about unintended consequences. This paper considers the Colorado state budget difficulties that arose during the 2001 recession, the relationship of TABOR and those difficulties, and finds that TABOR resulted in unintended consequences that were unforeseen by voters who approved the measure. Examples of these unanticipated, unintended consequences include: significant …

World Bank, Adrienne Stohr

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The mission of the World Bank is to aid developing countries stabilize their economies through financial and technical assistance. The five dominant themes that emerge in a review of the World Bank literature are: health, gender, environment, globalization, and global governance. Each of these themes is broadly related to issues that consistently influence the larger issue of how the World Bank incorporates, rejects, or impacts human rights.