Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

A Financial Epidemic: How Financial Literacy Affects College Students’ Financial Management Practices And The Debt Crisis In America, Mikala Styles

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Debt levels are rising significantly in America. More and more people are accumulating debt in the forms of mortgages, student loans, credit cards, and car loans. Basic financial principles such as saving, budgeting, investing, and paying bills are not being utilized consistently by the average individual. This is because of financial illiteracy. The vast majority of Americans do not have the basic knowledge and understanding of these financial concepts to adequately put them into practice in their daily lives. This study focuses on the levels of college students’ financial literacy, how that pertains to the rising debt crisis, and explores …

High Returns And Low Volatility: The Case For Mid-Cap Stocks, Ryan Lynch

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study examines excess risk-adjusted returns generated by mid-cap firms with an average market equity between $2.4 billion and $5.5 billion in 2017. Researchers have heavily studied the small-firm effect since its identification in the early 1980s, leading investors to overweight small-cap securities. Additional investments in the small-cap segment caused the small-cap anomaly to weaken. This study finds that excess returns of small-cap firms compared to mid-cap firms are not statistically significant in the periods 1946 – 2017 and 1982 -2017. However, mid-cap firms generate significantly higher 3-year average returns relative to small and large-cap firms after the initial identification …

The Effects Of Players’ Salary Level And A Salary Cap On The Revenue Of Professional Soccer Teams In The United States And England, Tyler Watson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis serves as an examination of the relationship between players’ salaries and teams’ revenues for the American Major League Soccer and English Premier League. Historically, the salary cap imposed on teams playing in Major League Soccer has been heavily criticized of holding the league back. Comparisons have been made to leagues such as the English Premier League which assert that the limitation keeping Major League Soccer from attaining similar success is the presence of the salary cap. Data was gathered from the twenty teams in Major League Soccer and the twenty teams in the English Premier League for each …

The Relationship Between A Firm’S Ownership Structure, Governance, And Innovation, Erica J. Wagner

College of Business Theses and Dissertations

Firm innovation is key for many companies to continuously thrive in the marketplace. Unfortunately, there are drawbacks to making innovative investments because of the upfront costs and riskiness of future returns. This creates conflicts because managers are under pressure to meet short-term earnings forecasts. A managers’ short-term focus on a firm’s business strategy may not be in the best interests of the shareholders’ long-term vision of a firm. For this reason, a strong corporate governance system can trigger an increased level of monitoring of the decision-making of managers so that it’s aligned with shareholders’ goals. Often, a firm’s long-term strategy …

Hedging With Volatility, Mário Alagoa

Doctoral Dissertations (DBA)

A risk-averse investor with a long equity position is presumably interested in identifying a hedging strategy that protects the value of that investment. The common approach encompasses using either financial derivatives or holding assets (such as gold or Swiss francs) as portfolio hedges as they show negative correlation with equities. This paper proposes using volatility indexes as portfolio hedges instead; it shows that a volatility-based dynamic hedging strategy is the most effective at protecting the value of an equity investment.

Essays On Institutional Ownership And Corporate Finance, Qijian Wang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters that span earnings management, innovation, and insider trading.

Chapter 1: Prior literature finds that earnings management is negatively correlated with institutional ownership. The question is whether institutional investors drive down earnings management of the firms they invest in, or they choose firms with lower earnings management. In this paper, I use the regression discontinuity design around Russell 1000 and 2000 indexes reconstruction to obtain an exogenous variation in institutional ownership. I find that institutional investors do not drive down earnings management after they become shareholders. Instead, institutions choose firms with lower earnings management level …

Capm-Based Company (Mis)Valuations, Olivier Dessaint, Jacques Olivier, Clemens A. Otto, David Thesmar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

There is a discrepancy between CAPM-implied and realized returns. Using the CAPM in capital budgeting -- as recommended in finance textbooks -- should thus have valuation effects. For instance, low beta projects should be valued more by CAPM-using managers than by the market. This paper empirically tests this hypothesis using publicly announced M&A decisions and shows that takeovers of lower beta targets are accompanied by lower cumulative abnormal returns for the bidders. Specifically, our estimates imply an average net loss to bidders corresponding to 12% of the average deal value and exceeding USD 10 billion per year in aggregate.

Market Imperfections, Macroeconomic Conditions, And Capital Structure Dynamics: A Cross-Country Study, Moonsoo Kang, Wei Wang, Ying Xiao

Business Faculty Publications

This paper investigates how “systematic” adjustment costs proxied by market imperfections and macroeconomic conditions affect capital structure dynamics in a cross-country setting. We document substantial variations in firms’ capital structure adjustments across countries and, particularly, over time. Consistent with adjustment costs impeding firms from rebalancing their capital structures, worse market imperfections are associated with slower speeds of adjustment (SOA) and larger leverage deviations. Intertemporally, capital structure adjustment is procyclical, with SOA increasing by 0.9 percentage point for a one-percentage-point increase in GDP growth rate. The procyclicality is attributable to good macroeconomic conditions mitigating market imperfections through channels of 1) facilitating …

Exploration Of The Impact Of Lean System On Profitability In U. S. Pharmaceutical Industry, Linya Shu

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Business and Technology at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree Master of Science by Linya Shu on April 27, 2018.

Committees Agenda, Wku Board Of Regents

Board of Regents Documents

Revised agendas for the Board of Regents' committees.

What Would We Do Without Them: Whistleblowers In The Era Of Sarbanes-Oxley And Dodd-Frank, Sean Griffith, Jane A. Norberg, Ian Engoron, Alice Brightsky, Tracey Mcneil, Jennifer M. Pacella, Judith Weinstock, Jason Zuckerman

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

Dr. Harold C. Smith Fund Of Ursinus College Official Prospectus, April 24, 2018, Johnathan Myers, Daan Slaats, Christian D'Ascenzo, Jonathan Guba, Parker Wolf, Sam Sjosten, Haley Sturla, Scott Deacle

Ursinus Student-Managed Investment Fund Prospectus

This prospectus contains investment strategy and performance for the following stocks in the managed fund: Garmin Ltd., Masimo, Micron Technologies, SEI Investments, Waste Management and Stamps.com.

Strategic Implications Of Blockchain, William R. Adams

Marriott Student Review

This thesis introduces blockchain, the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, and discusses how best to conceptualize it relative to other technologies. Following an explanation of the fundamentals of blockchain, also known as the distributed ledger, I identify the characteristics of the technology. Building upon blockchain’s inherent strengths and limitations, I explore potential business applications of blockchain. Finally, I recommend that leaders continue to track the development and adoption of blockchain technology, even if they decide that implementing it does not align with their organization’s strategy at present.

Cost Analysis Of Private Student Loans, John Bledsoe

Undergraduate Research Conference

Purpose of Study: To help educate students on the types and possible outcomes of private student loans, hopefully giving them an advantage when/if they are faced with the decision of what type of loan to choose.

Predictive Power? Textual Analysis In Mergers & Acquisitions, Philip Morgan

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Modern corporations utilize mergers and acquisitions as strategies to develop shareholder value today more than ever before, yet the need for understanding firms’ rationale and strategy is critical in predicting post-merger stock performance for all investors. I apply the interpretive power of textual analysis and regression to a corpus of SEC mergers and acquisitions public company filings between 1994-2017. Not only do I challenge the statistically significant correlation between word content and post-transaction abnormal stock returns, but I also characterize the effects of time segments, transaction size, and industry variation across time. As a final application, I consider sentiment analysis …

Essays On Ipo Lockups, Wentao Wu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation includes two chapters. The title of the first chapter is “How Divergence of Opinions Matters: Evidence from Lockup Effects in VC-backed IPOs”. The title of the second chapter is “Short-selling Around IPO Lockup Expiration”.

The first chapter discusses how divergence of investor opinions plays a role in explaining IPO lockup effects in venture capital backed (VC-backed) IPOs. It is well established that IPO lockup expiration is associated with negative cumulative abnormal returns (CARs). While a number of studies have examined these lockup effects, they offer very limited explanations to the phenomenon. Miller (1977) suggests that divergence of investor …

Digital Banking: Overcoming Barriers To Entry, Alan Megargel

Dissertations and Theses Collection

This dissertation examines digital banking from the perspective of two types of industry participants; non-bank FinTech alternative [substitute] financial service providers whom are intent on disrupting the market, and [incumbent] traditional banks whom are urgently pursing digital strategies in order to counteract the FinTech threat. This study is motivated by five main research questions: (1) Are FinTech firms disrupting traditional banks, and if so, what are the modes of disruption? (2) Do tradition banks view FinTech firms as a threat, and if so, what are they doing about it? (3) What are the various digital banking strategies, and how are …

News From The Graduate School - Masters Of Business Administration, Otterbein Office Of Graduate Programs

Graduate School

Newsletter that provides updates from the Graduate School and the MBA Graduate Program.

Ursinus College Investment Club Newsletter, Spring 2018, Haley Sturla, Johnathan Myers, Scott Deacle

Investment Management Company Newsletter

Inside this issue:

A Note to Our Readers and Donor Recognition

Quantitative Strategies with Matt Yuros ’12, TFS Capital

Inside Institutional Investments with Michael Fleming ’97, Vanguard

Bitcoin: Is It A Bubble? with Dr. William Luther, Kenyon College

Portfolio Performance, the First Year

Looking Forward

The Relationship Between Financial Literacy, Financial Status, And Academic Success In College Students, Brian Douglas Brausch

Dissertations

As the cost of college continues to rise, an increasing number of students are relying on loans and credit cards to fund their postsecondary education. In an effort to curb student debt and increase retention and graduation rates, many universities have begun to offer financial literacy initiatives to stimulate financial knowledge and promote positive money management behaviors.

This study examines the relationship between a for-credit personal financial literacy course and student academic success and economic status. Students who took a personal finance course during their first or second year of college are compared to a random sampling of students who …