Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Green Bonds For Financing Renewable Energy And Energy Efficiency In South-East Asia: A Review Of Policies, Dina Azhgaliyeva, Anant Kapoor, Yang Liu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Mobilizing private finance for renewable energy and energy efficiency is critical for Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) not only for the reduction of global temperature rise but also for meeting fast-growing energy demand. Two-thirds of green bonds issued in ASEAN were used to finance renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. This paper provides a review of green bond issuance and green bond policies in ASEAN. Issuance of green bonds in top three green bond issuing countries in ASEAN, i.e. Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, are reviewed in detail. Green bond policies in ASEAN are effective in promoting green bond issuance. …

The Adoption Of Cryptocurrency Technology Into The Us Banking Infrastructure, Trevor Melito

Senior Theses

This thesis examines the possibility of using Blockchain technology to permanently change the payment structure of the US banking system. First, I examine the current technology that dominates the banking sector. I introduce the most frequently used payments methods including Automatic Clearing House transfers and wire transfers, both domestically and internationally. In addition, I highlight the major players controlling these transactions. Under the current system, frictions between senders and receivers cause billions of dollars in losses each year.

Next, I examine Blockchain’s roots along with some similar cryptocurrency technology, namely Distributed Ledger Technology and Smart Contracts. The transparency, security, and …

Institutional Investors, Asset-Backed Securities, And Single-Family Rental Homes: A Revolution Doomed To Fail Or The Building Of A Future Empire, Brandon Deshotels

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Permanent Equity: Successfully Finding And Buying A Small Business, Lewis Wang

Senior Theses

This thesis aims to build off the existing research on the advantages of permanent equity within the micro-cap market space. This strategy combines many advantages from private equity, venture capital, small-cap, and value / quality investing in order to generate a differentiated return. While the pros and cons of these various strategies have been explored by previous academic research, not much has been written on the actual implementation and choices practitioners must make when they decide how to deploy capital. In order to dive deeper into implementation, this thesis presents several anecdotes of various firms that invest in this space …

Artificial Intelligence-Enhanced Predictive Insights For Advancing Financial Inclusion: A Human-Centric Ai-Thinking Approach, Meng Leong How, Sin Mei Cheah, Aik Cheow Khor, Yong Jiet Chan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

According to the World Bank, a key factor to poverty reduction and improving prosperity is financial inclusion. Financial service providers (FSPs) offering financially-inclusive solutions need to understand how to approach the underserved successfully. The application of artificial intelligence (AI) on legacy data can help FSPs to anticipate how prospective customers may respond when they are approached. However, it remains challenging for FSPs who are not well-versed in computer programming to implement AI projects. This paper proffers a no-coding human-centric AI-based approach to simulate the possible dynamics between the financial profiles of prospective customers collected from 45,211 contact encounters and predict …

Valuation Of American Options And Employee Stock Options, Qianru (Jennifer) Shang

Doctoral

Options play an important role in the financial world and are actively traded with huge trading volume. Most of the options traded on exchanges are American options. Spanning over a few decades, the American option pricing problem continues to intrigue scholars and practitioners in finance. The employee stock options (ESOs), a variant of American options, has been increasingly popular for firms to compensate, motivate and retain employees. ESOs importantly do not trade in markets nevertheless fair value must be determined – often by accountants. Unique features of ESOs however complicate the valuation. Our research, consisting of three papers, focuses on …

Addressing The Student Loan Crisis: Nudging Borrowers To Lower Their Repayment Costs, Genevieve O. Dobson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Purpose of Research is to determine why student loan borrowers are making poor decisions regarding their repayment plan selection and how we could use the theory of nudge to get them to make better choices. This study evaluates three main biases found in decision making to determine which one is most likely to be utilized in making decisions. It also investigates ways a tool can be created to allow borrowers to make better choices.

I use the Elaborated Action Design Research Methodology to diagnose, design and implement an effective tool. In my study, I create an artifact that allows …

Advancing Asset Management At Indot, Louis Feagans

Purdue Road School

As INDOT continues to develop Asset Management, the use of GIS and the mapping of assets become more critical. In this session INDOT will show the advancement in GIS Asset Management that has occurred in the last few years and where we are headed in the future.

Essays On The Disposition Effect, Matthew Henriksson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation contains two essays that shed new light on the disposition effect – that is, the tendency for investors to be especially eager to realize gains over losses. The first essay combines county-level natural disaster data with individual investor transactions to document an increased disposition effect for investors impacted by a natural disaster. This effect is increasing in disaster severity and decreasing in the length of time following the event, suggesting that extreme natural disasters can significantly influence investor behavior, especially in the short term. These findings are not explained by liquidity needs, tax incentives, or informed trading. The …

Essays On Mortgage Portfolio Diversification, Timothy Patrick Dombrowski

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Portfolios of mortgage loans played an important role in the Great Recession and continue to compose a material part of bank assets. The distribution of mortgage portfolio returns, and consequently, the risk of these portfolios, is quite distinct even from other fixed income asset classes. This dissertation contains three essays, each aiming to analyze a specific component of risk in mortgage portfolios and role of geographical diversification in reducing this risk.

The first essay investigates how cross-sectional dependence in the underlying properties flows through to the loan returns, and thus, the risk of the portfolio. In addition to demonstrating this …

Understanding Cryptocurrencies, Wolfgang Karl Hardle, Campbell R. Harvey, Raphael C. G. Ruele

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

Cryptocurrency refers to a type of digital asset that uses distributed ledger, or blockchain, technology to enable a secure transaction. Although the technology is widely misunderstood, many central banks are considering launching their own national cryptocurrency. In contrast to most data in financial economics, detailed data on the history of every transaction in the cryptocurrency complex are freely available. Furthermore, empirically oriented research is only now beginning, presenting an extraordinary research opportunity for academia. We provide some insights into the mechanics of cryptocurrencies, describing summary statistics and focusing on potential future research avenues in financial economics.

Commentary: Where Does The Talent Pools Of Smes Come From?, T. Mandy Tham

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In a commentary, SMU Assistant Professor of Finance Mandy Tham explored how ‘family members’ is defined could affect the size of talent pool for SMEs and family businesses, and suggested some criteria for the selection of family members to be nurtured for the SMEs and family businesses.

Pension Fund, Financial Development And Output Growth In Nigeria, Iwegbu Onyebuchi

Bullion

This study examines the indirect effect of pension fund on economic growth in Nigeria through the financial system. Using Autoregressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) model, the study found out that pension fund contribution is effective in stimulating growth through investment in portfolios that yield short term returns; this implies that pension fund contribution cannot on its own without a credible financial system impact on economic growth. The policy implication of this study is for Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) to invest in portfolios with short-term returns; thus, a large chunk of funds invested in federal government securities should be unbundled to other …

Investigating The Impact Of Widening Price Limits On Volatility: The Experience Of The Nigerian Stock Exchange, Mohmmed A. Yadudu

Bullion

This paper empirically evaluates the impact of return volatility from widening price limits from 5% to 10% on the Nigerian Stock Exchange(NSE) on September 18, 2012 using a Stochastic Volatility model in an event study framework. Using daily trading data from September 2010 to September 2014, the study finds that widening of price limits in the NSE has not increased volatility as feared by some regulators. Stocks with higher free floats and institutional ownership display lower volatility when price limits are widened. This suggests that smaller stock exchanges can improve market efficiency by widening price limits without increasing volatility. The …

Chronic Disease Management: How It And Analytics Create Healthcare Value Through The Temporal Displacement Of Care, Steve M. Thompson, Johnathan Whitaker, Rajiv Kohli, Craig Jones

Finance Faculty Publications

The treatment of chronic diseases consumes 86% of U.S. healthcare costs. While healthcare organizations have traditionally focused on treating the complications of chronic diseases, advances in information technology (IT) and analytics can help clinicians and patients manage and slow the progression of chronic diseases to result in higher quality of life for patients and lower healthcare costs.

We build on prior research to introduce the notion of temporal displacement of care (TDC), in which IT and analytics create healthcare value by displacing the time at which providers and patients make interventions to improve healthcare outcomes and reduce costs. We propose …

Incorporating Financial Statement Information To Improve Forecasts Of Corporate Taxable Income, Danielle H. Green, Erin E. Henry, Sarah M. Parsons, George A. Plesko

WCBT Faculty Publications

We contribute to the research on the information content of earnings as it applies to the forecasting of economic activity across reporting models. We examine whether publicly available financial statement information is incrementally useful in forecasting confidentially reported taxable income. More precise firm-level taxable income forecasts can improve policymakers’ modeling of the tax system and their ability to analyze the effect of proposed changes in corporate tax law. When aggregated, improved micro-forecasts can also yield more accurate macro-forecasts of corporate taxable income, a significant component of the federal budget. We find that financial statement information improves firm-level estimates of future …

Investing With Cryptocurrencies: A Liquidity Constrained Investment Approach, Simon Trimborn, Mingyang Li, Wolfgang Karl Hardle

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

Cryptocurrencies have left the dark side of the finance universe and become an object of study for asset and portfolio management. Since they have low liquidity compared to traditional assets, one needs to take into account liquidity issues when adding them to a portfolio. We propose a Liquidity Bounded Risk-return Optimization (LIBRO) approach, which is a combination of risk-return portfolio optimization under liquidity constraints. Cryptocurrencies are included in portfolios formed with stocks of the S&P 100, US Bonds, and commodities. We illustrate the importance of the liquidity constraints in an in-sample and out-of-sample study. LIBRO improves the weight optimization in …

Why Commonality Persists?, Raja Velu, Zhaoque Zhou, Chyng Wen Tee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Studies on commonality in returns, order flows and liquidity find that the first principal component is closely aligned with the market factor. With the increasing presence of high-frequency trading, commonality in returns, order flows, and liquidity can potentially arise from the commonality in the interpretation of real-time signals. In this paper, we go beyond the first factor and show that the other dominant principal components consistently reflects investors' herding behavior, demonstrating the multi-dimensional aspect of commonality. Instead of relating the asset returns to order flows, we take both as endogenous, and provide empirical evidence showing that returns commonality is driven …

The Effects Of Funding Gaps On Depot Maintenance Hours, Carlo S. D'Amato

Theses and Dissertations

The relationship between expenditures and readiness level is a topic of interest to military senior leaders, defense resource planners, and the American taxpayer alike. Senior leaders within the Air Force (AF) justify increased defense budgets by pointing to the potential adverse effects that decreased funding could have on military readiness. Resource planners within the AF are then tasked with the responsibility of ensuring that budgets are allocated most effectively to maximize the AF's ability to project airpower across a variety of contingency operations. This thesis investigates the relationship between budgets and readiness by examining the relationship between depot level funding …

Developing Standard Production Cost Factors For Major Defense Acquisition Program (Mdap) Platforms, Jordan S. Edwards

Theses and Dissertations

Cost estimators commonly use the analogy and factor method when developing Major Defense Acquisition Program (MDAP) estimates. Previous studies discussing and developing factors for the production lifecycle phase have been limited in scope and statistical analysis efforts. This research significantly expands the currently available toolkit for Department of Defense cost analysts by updating the current database of historical data and exploring potential relationships through statistical testing. Specifically, 3,462 unique factors were created across nine level II Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) elements broken down into four categories; commodity type, contract type, contractor type, and service. The production cost factors were created …