Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

How Operational And Disclosure Complexity Shapes The Conglomerate Discount, Feng Dong, John A. Doukas, Son Wilson, Rongyao Zhang

Finance Faculty Publications

This study examines how firm operational diversification and disclosure complexity jointly drive the conglomerate discount. We disentangle disclosure complexity, which is determined by managerially influenced financial transparency, from accounting complexity, which is a direct informational consequence of operational complexity. We find that operational diversification is consistently associated with significant conglomerate discounts, while disclosure complexity independently reduces firm value and amplifies the magnitude of the discount when diversification is high. These findings suggest that transparent disclosures can mitigate valuation costs, offering important implications for managers seeking effective communication, investors assessing complex firms, and policymakers aiming to enhance disclosure quality and market …

Data Utilization In Facilities’ Performance Management Decision- Making At U.S. Four-Year Public Institutions: A Cross-Sectional Exploratory Study, Tanaporn Supanichrattana

Theses and Dissertations

The growing complexity of higher education finance, aging infrastructure, and rising accountability expectations has intensified demands on facilities organizations to manage institutional assets strategically. As colleges and universities face sustained fiscal constraints and expanding operational pressures, the ability of facilities leaders to use data to inform performance management has become increasingly critical. Despite this importance, limited empirical research has examined how facilities leaders integrate data into decision-making within public higher education contexts.

The quantitative study employed a cross-sectional, exploratory survey design to investigate data utilization practices among facilities leaders at U.S. public four-year institutions. Guided by the Data–Information–Knowledge–Wisdom hierarchy and …

The Investor Perspective Of Materiality, Sam Lessinger

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Often auditors are asked to adopt the reasonable investor perspective in their materiality evaluations however, there is no consensus regarding what investors deem to be material. This can lead to confusion in the markets. In fact, past studies have shown how taking an investor perspective can backfire and may result in more leniency and fewer misstatements being deemed material by auditors. This leniency can, potentially, result in financial statements that mislead investors. The aim of this paper is to address the reasonable investor perspective to achieve a more complete understanding of an investor’s viewpoint. This study also incorporates the effect …

Financial Literacy And Inclusion Of Philippine Jeepney And Tricycle Drivers, Bryan N. Bernabe, Jyro B. Triviño

Leadership and Strategy Faculty Publications

The study investigated how the different elements of financial literacy influence the financial inclusion of jeepney and tricycle drivers in Caloocan, Metro Manila. Pearson correlation analysis revealed a positive correlation between financial inclusion and attitude, behavior, knowledge, and skills. Additionally, analysis of variance highlighted that education and age play significant roles in enhancing financial literacy. The linear regression findings also supported the idea that income acts as a positive moderator, augmenting the impact of financial literacy on financial inclusion. The study attempted to disaggregate its financial literacy components to understand their impact on financial inclusion, but its interrelationships also require …

Lost In The Language: Data Breaches And The Strategic Fog Of Risk Disclosures, Ling Tuo, Shipeng Han

Accounting Faculty Publications

This study examines whether firms strategically adjust the readability of Item 1A (“Risk Factors”) disclosures following data breaches. Using U.S. firm-year observations from 2006 to 2023, we find that data breaches are associated with a significant decline in Item 1A readability. This decline is not accompanied by a meaningful increase in informational content; instead, post-breach disclosures exhibit higher syntactic complexity, more positive tone, and lower textual similarity to prior and industry peers' filings, consistent with strategic obfuscation rather than transparent reporting. The readability decline is amplified among firms facing higher litigation risk but attenuated among firms with stronger reputations for …

Beyond Price: How Platform Power Shapes Demand Allocation In Online Hotel Channels, Ling Ling, Timothy Webb, Zvi Schwartz

Human Movement Studies & Special Education Faculty Publications

Rate disparity remains a widely used but poorly understood pricing strategy in the hotel industry. While previous research generally assumes that lower prices shift demand toward less expensive channels, this study investigates whether such effects occur in practice. Using high-frequency booking and pricing data from five full-service hotels across multiple online travel agencies (OTAs), we analyze how rate disparity relates to the distribution of demand across channels. The findings show that the impact of price differences is limited, highly non-linear, and strongly dependent on contextual factors. Channel market power and hotel-specific characteristics seem to play a more significant role than …

When Money Moves In: The Consequences Of Housing Wealth, Darren Aiello, Jason Kotter, Gregor Schubert

Faculty Publications

We construct a novel dataset of millions of household moves over 25 years to examine how housing wealth affects purchase decisions. We find that a $1 exogenous increase in housing equity leads movers to pay a $0.06 premium on their next home, controlling for property characteristics and time-varying local prices. This behavior is driven by search frictions— wealthier households pay a premium rather than incur additional search costs. In aggregate, these decisions spill over to the broader housing market and cause upward regional price pressure. A 10% increase in equity gain among incoming movers increases local house price growth by …

The Effects Of Financing Green And Brown Sectors: What Do Theories And Evidence Say?, Hao Liang, Maria Teresa Punzi

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper critically examines the economic and welfare implications of financing green and brown sectors. Drawing on a comprehensive review of recent theoretical and empirical literature, we highlight that while conventional green finance—allocating capital toward environmentally friendly (“green”) sectors and away from carbon-intensive (“brown”) sectors—can promote decarbonization, it may also produce unintended externalities. In particular, it can inadvertently incentivize higher emissions from brown firms and contribute to economic disruption. Using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model, we demonstrate that lowering the cost of capital for green sectors leads to only modest reductions in emissions, whereas raising it for brown …

Policy Uncertainty Reduces Green Innovation, Mengyu Wang, Jeffrey Wurgler, Hong Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Policy uncertainty can undermine the power of government subsidies to stimulate environmentally friendly research and development. We show that Chinese firms’ green R&D falls as the uncertainty of environmental subsidies rises: Exogenous, weather-driven air pollution variability induces subsidies to fluctuate, and firms in areas with high weather-driven subsidy variability undertake less green R&D and hire fewer technical employees, controlling for the average level of subsidies. Heavy emitters and environmental technology firms are more affected. The results also illustrate how policy uncertainty can arise when policymakers are influenced by conditions that are salient but with causes that are difficult to disentangle.

Large Owner Expropriation Threat And Stock Option Pay's Effect On Firm Risk-­Taking Behaviors In Weak Institutions, Cuili Qian, Lipeng (Gary) Ge, Xuesong Geng, Jiatao Li, Maria Hasenhuttl

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Research Question/Issue: This study investigates the impact of managerial stock option pay on firm risk-­ taking behaviors in aweak institutional context, a critical question that has been overlooked by the literature. Specifically, we build on the comparative corporate governance perspective that emphasizes the implications of large shareholders' expropriation threat in weak institutions to develop predictions about their impact on the stock option's incentive alignment effect. We further explore the boundary conditions of such a relationship.Research Findings/Insights: Based on a sample of Chinese listed firms between 2006 and 2016, we find that a high level of large shareholders' expropriation threat weakens …

Contemporary Issues In Economics And Finance: The View From China, Kenneth S. Bigel

Open Touro Created

2026

This collection of essays showcases original research crafted by exceptional young scholars—primarily high school students from China and North America—guided step-by-step from topic selection to final publication. Across diverse subjects in business and the social sciences, these emerging researchers demonstrate curiosity, discipline, and global awareness. Their work provides a rare window into the questions today’s youth are asking on both sides of the Pacific, offering fresh perspectives and a meaningful bridge between two world powers. Designed not only to inspire but also to instruct, this compendium fills a long-recognized gap in early research education: it presents accessible, real student …

Bitcoin Halving: How Effective Is It In Driving Cryptocurrency Market Dynamics?, Nyoman Sri Subawa, Caren Angellina Mimaki, I. Made Oka Mahendra, Made Srinitha Millinia Utami

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Bitcoin halving is a quadrennial event that halves mining rewards and is believed to influence cryptocurrency prices and cryptocurrency market dynamics. This study examines the effect of Bitcoin halving on Cryptocurrency Prices, with Government Regulations, Market Sentiment, and Cryptocurrency Performance as mediating variables. A quantitative research approach was employed, gathering original data via survey instruments from 294 participants within the cryptocurrency community in Bali, which were analyzed using PLS-SEM. The findings indicate that Bitcoin halving exerts a favorable and statistically meaningful influence on Government Regulations, Market Sentiment, Cryptocurrency Performance, and Cryptocurrency Prices. Market Sentiment fully mediates the influence of Government …

Crisis, Credit Risk, And Productivity: Lessons From The Vietnamese Banking Sector During Covid-19, Van Nguyen, Phuong Thanh Le, Reza Kiani Mavi, Amir Arjomandi

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This study investigates how an unprecedented systemic shock, the COVID-19 pandemic, reshaped bank productivity and intermediation efficiency in Vietnam, one of the fastest-growing emerging economies. We develop a novel risk-adjusted total factor productivity (TFP) measure based on the by-production Luenberger–Hicks–Moorsteen (LHM) indicator, which incorporates non-performing loans as undesirable outputs to better capture credit-risk dynamics. Using a balanced panel covering both the pre-pandemic and pandemic periods (2016–2022), our results show that Vietnamese banks experienced a general decline in productivity before and during COVID-19, driven largely by reductions in technical and scale efficiency. However, foreign and state-owned banks recorded stronger technological progress …

Navigating Financial Futures: A Case Study Of A Targeted Financial Literacy Program For African American College Students, Michael L. James

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This dissertation presents a qualitative analysis of a targeted financial literacy program designed for African American college students. The dissertation examined how African American college students describe and make meaning of their participation in a targeted financial literacy program, particularly in relation to the program’s structure, content, and delivery. Despite growing interest in financial literacy education, interventions that acknowledge the persistent wealth gap and systemic financial inequities faced by African Americans remain underexplored. Employing a case study research method within a program understanding framework, this study investigated a program at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Findings reveal that the …

Who Invests In Crypto? Revealed Types And Economic Drivers Of Retail Investment, Darren Aiello, Scott R. Baker, Tetyana Balyuk, Marco Di Maggio, Mark J. Johnson, Jason Kotter

Faculty Publications

Using transaction-level data from millions of U.S. households, we provide the first comprehensive characterization of retail cryptocurrency investment. Crypto investors are distinguished not by demographics but by a latent behavioral type revealed through consumption patterns—one that also predicts higher participation in traditional equity brokerages. The economic forces driving crypto investment, including income shocks, workplace peer effects, and inflation exposure, mirror those driving traditional investment. Crucially, households whose consumption matches the crypto-investor profile are more responsive to all these drivers across both asset classes, suggesting that investor type is a more relevant distinction than asset class.

Essays On Stock Market Expectations And Financial Decisions, Shanxiang Yang

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation consists of three essays on stock market expectations and financial decisions. The first essay shows significant racial differences in expectations regarding future stock market performance. Using data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Survey of Consumer Expectations from 2013 to 2022, we find that, relative to White Americans, Black and Hispanic Americans have lower probabilistic expectations that the stock market will increase. This racial gap in expectations was even larger during the recession caused by the Covid-19 epidemic, suggesting that economic uncertainty exacerbates this heterogeneity in expectations. Furthermore, we show that relative to White Americans, the …

Three Essays On Option Markets, Fangzheng Ou

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation includes three essays examining index option and stock option markets. The first essay investigates the pricing kernel puzzle by examining S&P 500 index option returns and empirical pricing kernels across expiration dates ranging from one month to one year. We document that at short maturities, out-of-the-money call option returns are negative and decrease with the strike price, while at long maturities, at least some are positive and increase with the strike price. Empirical pricing kernels predominantly exhibit a W-shape at short maturities, with this pattern becoming less pronounced and evolving toward a monotonically decreasing curve at longer maturities. …

A New Functional Setting For Term Structure Modeling Using The Health-Jarrow-Morton Framework, Michael Pokojovy, Ebenezer Nkum, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr.

Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Publications

The well-known Heath–Jarrow–Morton (HJM) framework provides a universal and efficacious instrument for modeling the stochastic evolution of an entire yield curve by explaining the interest rate dynamics in continuous time under no-arbitrage conditions. Existing implementations involve exponentially weighted function spaces as theoretical settings for the former stochastic evolution. While the choice of weight can have a drastic effect on model calibration and subsequent forecasting, it cannot be estimated from market data and does not allow for any objective interpretation. The proposed approach does not have this shortcoming as it adopts a suitably designed unweighted function space. The HJM equation is …

100 Conversation Starters To Develop Student Critical Thinking In Intermediate And Financial Accounting Courses, Joe B. Hoyle

Bookshelf

INTRODUCTION

Why create a book containing nothing but accounting problems?

The genesis of an idea is often difficult to recall, but I can trace the creation of this project to a single sentence found in a specific book.  One recent summer, to help prepare myself for the upcoming academic year, I began reading Why Don’t Students Like School? by Daniel T. Willingham.  On page 16 of the dog-eared copy I acquired on the Internet, I was drawn to a key sentence like a moth to a flame.  The words were buried rather unobtrusively within a long paragraph but, for me, …

Lease Capitalization And Financial Flexibility: An Empirical Investigation Of Asc 842’S Impact On Liquidity In The Us Telecommunications Industry, Caleb J. Martin

Doctor of Business Administration Dissertations

Measures of liquidity are some of the most important financial ratios to analyze when measuring a firm’s overall financial health and its ability to pay both creditors and dividends. The US telecommunications industry is an industry that has become synonymous with dividends, mergers, and acquisitions, all of which are possible due to industry wide and firm specific liquidity. With the implementation of ASC 842 and the new standard of placing operational leases on the balance sheet, additional research may be warranted to determine the effect ASC 842 may have on firm liquidity. This study investigated whether there was evidence to …