Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Financial Wellness And Undergraduate Students, Kristin N. O'Donovan

BU Well

Liberal Arts Universities often include a core curriculum with the education provided to students. This core curriculum includes a variety of topics, separate from a student’s major, aimed at delivering a well-rounded education. However, one major topic seems to be missing from the core curriculum of many universities across the country: finance. Not only does this have implications to the financial wellness of undergraduate students, but the overall wellness of students as well. Undergraduate students face an increasingly difficult financial landscape with unique needs, and the financial decisions they make may have repercussions years or decades into their futures. Based …

Two Essays In Corporate Finance: The Effects Of Ownership And Governance On A Firm's Innovation And Capital Structure Decisions, Zhengyi Zhang

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In the first chapter, we assess the effect of changes of government ownership on corporate innovation activities. Across 58 non-US countries, treatment firms’ innovation, both in quantity and quality, decrease after a governmental acquisition by using a difference-in-difference regressions and propensity score matching. We show that there is conflict of interest between major shareholders and minor shareholders. The corporate innovation efficiency also decline after the government acquisition. We find that this negative relationship is more severe for the group with higher government ownership of banks, better creditor rights and worse stock market development.

For second chapter, if the optimal capital …

The Identification And Exploitation Of Terrorist Financing, Jacob S. Gordon

Senior Honors Theses

Terrorism and the threat of terrorist attacks have forced the United States to place a high priority on developing a comprehensive counterterrorism strategy. A crucial component of this overarching strategy focuses on targeting the finances of a terrorist organization, hoping to eliminate or stifle their sources of funding in an effort to render the organization incapable of launching successful operations due to an absence of funding. By analyzing the most common financing options that terrorist groups use, the United States can hone its ability to disrupt the funding operations for terrorist groups. Likewise, developing a method for tracking the laundering …

Banks Vs. Credit Unions: A Comparative Analysis Of Massachusetts Banks And Credit Unions Before, During And After The Recession, Mikaela Astore

Honors Program Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

What Predicts Loan Repayment At Auto Capital?, Kathleen Fogg

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

There are many underbanked Americans who struggle to obtain financing due to poor credit or no credit. Credit score is the primary measure used in the United States to determine credit worthiness, however there are many problems with credit score. Credit score may not be an accurate representation of risk and it can be manipulated. In addition, many Americans do not have a credit score. Some companies are beginning to use alternative measures to underwrite, but there are no published studies on using this method for subprime auto loans. This paper examines the potential alternative measures that Auto Capital, a …

Predictors Of Private School Sustainability Using Irs Form 990, Paul G. Leaman

Dissertations, 2014-2019

Private school leaders face financial sustainability challenges as competition for students and money increases. This study aims to identify financial metrics which school leaders can use for monitoring and guiding their school’s financial health. IRS Form 990 provided the financial data for calculating predictors of interest. The study evaluated data from 2009–2013 for five groupings of schools, as measured by operational size. The study included 1029 private schools after removing outliers and cases with missing data. Private school leaders helped define the dependent variable as the ratio of total revenue/total expense. Sustainable schools carried an averaged five-year ratio of greater …

Inked With Debt: An Overview Of The Student Debt Market And A Potential For Change, Brian Alexander Kean

Senior Theses

In a world of rapidly escalating amounts of student debt, the current system harms college stakeholders. Whether governments (state or federal), students, universities, or the economy, all parties are suffering in the current student debt market. At this point in time, student loans have become a sizeable debt vehicle second only to mortgage debt in the United States. A majority of students use loans to attend school, which often become a major decision in post-graduation plans. In addition, it is the only form of debt not dischargeable in bankruptcy. Due to this, an alarming amount of Americans have become ensnared …

The Effect Of Mortgage Timeline On The Investor's Portfolio, Grace Marie Wylie

Senior Theses

This thesis project creates a hypothetical situation in which individuals choose either a thirty-year or fifteen-year fixed-rate mortgage on the same house at the same time and uses historical data to simulate the stock portfolios resulting from investment strategies based on this choice. Both strategies have the same time horizon and total monthly payment, so investors should be indifferent between the two. Using the fifteen-year strategy, the investor pays a higher mortgage payment every month for fifteen years then invests the entire amount of the payment in the stock market monthly for the next fifteen years. Using the thirty-year strategy, …

Commonalities Of Asset Pricing Bubbles, Lauren Frances Pensegrau

Senior Theses

The focus of this thesis will be to examine the similarities between the 2007-2008 Subprime Mortgage Crisis and other crises resulting from the collapse of an asset pricing bubble throughout United States financial history. Particular emphasis will be placed on the real estate and stock bubbles of the 20th century, including the events leading up to the Great Depression and the Savings and Loan (S&L) crisis of the late 1980s. I explore commonalities throughout the life cycle of a bubble, from the catalysts that lead to bubble formation, to the drivers that fuel both expansion and collapse, and finally, the …

The Benefits Of Global Diversification, David J. Tassone

Honors Thesis

International diversification reduces total risk to a portfolio by adding uncorrelated assets and brings higher long-term returns. In this study, the research looks to see if any single country index or continent index consistently outperforms a diversified value-weighted global market index. In order to value-weight the global index, the study uses the International Monetary Fund’s voting shares of each country and equates each voting share to each country or continent’s stake within the value-weighted global market index. To correct for currency exchange, the study uses iShares and other ETFs denoted in the United States Dollar. The value-weighted global market index …

Shareholder Advocacy In Corporate Elections: Case Studies In Proxy Voting Websites For Retail Investors, Robin Miller

Sustainability and Social Justice

One of the key rights shareholders retain is the right to vote on issues affecting the companies in which they invest. This voting right is seen as one of the primary means of exercising diligent corporate governance (Cole 2003, Fairfax 2009). Only 28 percent of individual investors vote in corporate elections compared with 91 percent of institutional investors. Informed voting decisions at corporate elections can be very information intensive, and theories of rational apathy and the free rider problem may explain a lack of participation from individual investors.

Many shareholders cannot attend annual corporate meetings, so they …

On The Behavior Of Entrepreneurial Factor Supply To The Firm, Nicos Zafiris

The Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance

This paper draws on an existing, but little used, approach to the choices governing the supply of ‘entrepreneurial’, in the sense of ‘residually remunerated’, resources to an enterprise, especially post start up. It focuses in particular on the hybrid ‘own factor demand/supply curve’ to the firm of Bronfenbrenner (1960), but attempts to treat such supply in conjunction with ‘contractual’ employment of resources, thus making use of gearing and portfolio concepts. To achieve this, it is found necessary for the hybrid schedule to be reinterpreted and recast as the locus of the relevant utility maximising choices. A model is presented which …

The Relationship Between The Behaviors Of The Top 50 Most Endorsed Athletes In The World And The Monetary Value Of Their Endorsement Deals, Rogerio B. Ribeiro

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The top endorsed athletes in the world are most likely the ones who have the biggest impact on their sport. These athletes are usually among the best in their sport or they might have something special that creates a strong relationship between the athlete and his or her fans. It is possible to say that this relationship combined with their skills on and off of the fields, courts, or arenas is what makes these athletes special. Big companies all over the world feel attracted to these athletes and, as a result, they spend millions of dollars every year in order …

Net Present Value Model Application For Identification Of Capital Gains/Loss In Athletic Investment, Ricardo Pabon

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study evaluates whether there is a capital gain yield in the athletic investment decision allocating university resources to any component of athletics (teams, facilities, equipment, etc.) at any institution. The data for testing is analyzed by using the NET PRESENT VALUE MODEL which is composed of initial outlays, operating cash flows at time t, and cost of capital. This analysis will estimate if the investment decisions are correct or not.

Merger Means Of Payment And Analyst Biases Around Merger Announcement Date, Yiling Zhang

Finance and Real Estate Dissertations - Archive

I find strong evidence that analysts report downward-biased earnings estimates on acquiring firms when the earnings announcement date is within a 60-day window prior to the merger and acquisition (M&A) announcement date. Acquiring firm stocks have a greater positive realized forecast error in cash only transactions on the earnings announcement date compared to acquirers involved in pure stock transactions. In addition, analysts are more likely to upgrade their recommendations of acquirer stocks in cash only transactions compared to pure stock transactions within a 90 day window of the M&A announcement date. Finally, an increase in the market-to-book ratio leads to …

Fear And The Housing Market, Sergiy Saydometov

Finance and Real Estate Dissertations - Archive

In this dissertation, I use Google search frequency to construct a new measure of housing market-level sentiment and analyze its relation with housing prices. I term this measure as the Home Price Fear Index, or Fear Index or Fear for short. The Fear Index is based on Google Search volume for certain real estate and economic terms, such as foreclosure, recession, and market value. In the first essay, I examine the relation between the Fear Index at the national level and the Case/Shiller National Home Price Index. I find this relation to be inverse, with an increase in Fear predicting …

Hedging In Energy: The Case Of Linn Energy, Llc, Riley E. Nelson

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper is a case study of LINN Energy, LLC over the period of Q1 2013 to Q4 2015. Due to volatility in commodity prices, energy companies choose to hedge their future production using forwards, futures, swaps, and options strategies. I selected LINN Energy as the subject for this study due to the breadth of detailed historical hedging information available through the company’s website. LINN Energy disclosed much more than is required for independent oil and gas companies, making them the perfect case study for this thesis. LINN Energy, LLC is one of the few publicly traded LLC’s and is …

Outperforming The S&P 500 Using Top-Down Asset Allocation, Benjamin Lanier

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper investigates whether portfolio managers can outperform the S&P 500 index using top-down asset allocation, using historical returns, standard deviations, and correlations of different asset classes. Efficient diversification between asset classes reduces the idiosyncratic risk by selecting assets from a wide variety of different classes of assets in different parts of the world. The goal is to create an optimization model that makes it possible for a portfolio manager to generate higher expected returns, while taking risk equal to that of the S&P 500, or incur lower risk while generating the same expected return of the S&P 500.

The Fall Of Petrobras And Its Impact On The Brazilian Economy, Nicolas Lema Severich

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper investigates the full scope of the poor decisions made by the Brazilian oil giant, Petroleo Brasileiro. This paper is focused on the midst of a corruption scandal that ended the hopes and dreams of an entire nation. Fundamental analysis as well as technical analysis are used to determine the intrinsic value of Petrobras. Petroleo Brasileiro is analyzed as an oil company, as a mother company for the Brazilian economy and as the disruptor of a recession that will be remembered historically.

The Overlap Of Cross Sectional And Time Series Momentum Strategies, Samuel Adams

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper contributes to existing literature by providing an analysis of combined time series momentum and cross sectional momentum strategies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average from February, 1991 to December, 2015. Combined momentum strategies are shown to not outperform cross sectional momentum strategies, and all momentum strategies tested are shown to under perform the market index. The twelve month historical return serves as the foundation from which the momentum strategies are formulated. Holding periods discussed in this paper include portfolio’s offset by one month from the historical return calculations . Momentum results during the time period analyzed are driven …