Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Active Managers Vs. Index Funds, Steven D. Dolvin

All Chapters

Watch this video to facilitate discussion about active vs. passive investing, as it reviews the large amount of money being invested with Vanguard.

All-Time Market Highs And Market Timing, Steven D. Dolvin

All Chapters

With the market at all-time highs, many investors are left wondering if stocks are still attractive investments. Based on PE ratios, the market's current level of 17.5 if slightly above the historical average, but not excessively so. Thus, if corporate profits remain strong, valuations could remain stable (so says some analysts). See article and video here, Fidelity. The video also discusses the difficulty of market timing, which is a good reminder for most investors.

Etfs That "Mimic" Buffet, Steven D. Dolvin

All Chapters

Watch this video to facilitate discussion about ETFs that use criteria similar to those applied by Warren Buffet.

Fund Manager Performance, Steven D. Dolvin

All Chapters

Fund managers, on average, have historically trailed the broad market. However, this year has been exceptionally bad for managers, with only 23% of large-cap funds outperforming the index. See this article (WSJ) for some explanation from Goldman Sachs.

The Future Of The Nyse, Steven D. Dolvin

All Chapters

Watch this video to discuss the sustainability of the iconic NYSE.

Facebook Options And Ipo Expiration, Steven D. Dolvin

All Chapters

After a company goes public, inside investors must hold stock until after the "Lockup Expiration." Research suggests that prices fall around this event, and investors are using options to try to benefit from this phenomenon. Watch a related video here, WSJ.

Housing Policies In Singapore: Evaluation Of Recent Proposals And Recommendations For Reform, Sock Yong Phang, David K. C. Lee, Alan Cheong, Kok Fai Phoon, Karol Wee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The Singapore housing market is unusual in its high homeownership rate, the dominance of HDB housing, and the extensive intervention of the government in regulating housing supply and demand in both the HDB and private housing sectors. Recent rapid population increases in a low interest rate and high global liquidity environment has resulted in accelerated house prices increases in Singapore. Earlier this year, the government launched “Our Singapore Conversation” of which discussion on housing policies constitutes one major component. This “conversation” comes in the wake of several consecutive rounds of measures to stabilize housing prices using various instruments. This paper …

Designing Efficient Infrastructural Investment And Asset Transfer Mechanisms In Humanitarian Supply Chains, Shantanu Bhattacharya, Sameer Hasija, Luk N. Van Wassenhove

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We analyze the efficacy of different asset transfer mechanisms and provide policy recommendations for the design of humanitarian supply chains. As a part of their preparedness effort, humanitarian organizations often make decisions on resource investments ex ante because doing so allows for rapid response if an adverse event occurs. However, programs typically operate under funding constraints and donor earmarks with autonomous decision-making authority resting with the local entities, which makes the design of efficient humanitarian supply chains a challenging problem. We formulate this problem in an agency setting with two independent aid programs, where different asset transfer mechanisms are considered …

Do Venture Capitalists Play A Monitoring Role In An Emerging Market: Evidence From The Pay-Performance Relationship Of Chinese Entrepreneurial Firms?, Jerry X. Cao, Qigui Liu, Gary G. Tian

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper investigates venture capitalists’ monitoring of managerial behaviour by examining their impact on CEO pay-performance sensitivity across various controlling structures in Chinese firms. We find that the effectiveness of venture capitalists' monitoring depends on different types of agency conflict. In particular, we find that venture capital (VC) monitoring is hampered in firms that experience severe controlling-minority agency problems caused by disproportionate ownership structures. We provide further evidence that VC is more likely to exert close monitoring in firms that have greater managerial agency conflict, and thus require more direct monitoring. However, controlling-minority agency problems have a greater impact on …

Outward Foreign Direct Investment By Emerging Market Firms: A Resource Dependence Logic, Jun Xia, Xufei Ma, Jane W. Lu, Daphne W. Yiu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines and extends the resource dependence logic of diversification for a better understanding of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) activities by emerging market firms. We contend that the diversification logic is bounded by state ownership, an important but less considered component of interdependence. Our empirical results, based on panel data analysis of Chinese listed firms, suggest that the level of interdependence between Chinese and foreign firms in China in multiple forms, including symbiotic, competitive, and partner interdependencies, is positively associated with the level of the Chinese firms' OFDI activities. However, Chinese firms with higher levels of state ownership …

Do Loan Loss Reserves Behave Like Capital? Evidence From Recent Bank Failures, Jeffrey Ng, Sugata Roychowdhury

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Regulatory capital guidelines allow for loan loss reserves to be added back as capital. The evidence in this paper suggests that the influence of loan loss reserves added back as regulatory capital (hereafter referred to as “add-backs”) on bank risk cannot be explained by either economic principles underlying the notion of capital, or accounting principles underlying the recording of reserves. Specifically, we observe that in sharp contrast to the economic notion of capital as a buffer against bank failure risk, add-backs are positively associated with the risk of bank failure during the recent economic crisis. Further the positive association of …

Vanguard Vs. The Industry, Steven D. Dolvin

All Chapters

For years, Jack Bogle (the founder of Vanguard) has touted the benefit of passive investing, which is primarily driven by the relatively low fees they charge. Moreover, Bogle has highlighted the inability of active investors to outperform the market. Recent large investor flows into Vanguard products suggests that investors are increasingly agreeing with Bogle. See article here, WSJ.

Do Women Generate Better Returns?, Steven D. Dolvin

All Chapters

Some prior research suggests that women make for better investors, primarily because they generally trade less than men (meaning lower transaction costs). However, a new fund aims to exploit the benefit women may provide as board members. The Barclays Women in Leadership ETN will invest in companies with a female CEO or a board that has a membership of at least 25% women. See here for an article that discusses the new fund (WSJ).

See previous post (ETFs vs. ETNs) for a discussion of the fund structure.

Time To Sell?, Steven D. Dolvin

All Chapters

For technical traders, it may be time to sell. While the market has yet to make a "death cross," some other indicators are saying sell. In particular, a recent WSJ article identified three signals that recently occurred in tandem: overvaluation based on earnings multiples, extreme divergence in sector performance, and excessive levels of bullish enthusiasm. This combination has occurred six times since 1970, with each event resulting in market drops of at least 22%. Will this happen again?

How Can Banks Use Big Data?, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Banks can recommend better use of money for customers, but data security is crucial

Incentives And Firm Behaviors, Thu Hien Thi Nguyen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My research interests focus on the economic behavior, choices, and actions of organizations as well as individuals given their incentives, and analyze the consequences of such decisions to the financial health of firms and the macro economy. A firm is incentivized by the value investors place on its operations; while employees, particularly the management team, is incentivized by the private benefits the firm gives them. Understanding the impact of such incentives will help alleviate the classic agency costs in modern organizations.

Stock illiquidity raises the cost of share ownership to outside investors. The sizable adverse price impact of trading increases …

Mispricing, Speculation And Real Activities Manipulation, Cristhian R. Mellado-Cid

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Real activities manipulation involves changes made by firm’s managers to the normal business operations of the firm and consequently should affect the firm cash flows. Real activities manipulation can reduce firm value because actions taken in the current period to increase earnings can have a negative effect on cash flows in future periods. As such, real activities manipulation should deserve more attention from researchers. First, I attempt to explore the causality relationship between real activities manipulation and firm equity mispricing. Results show that firms with high real activities manipulation have lower level of equity mispricing while firms with high levels …

The Relationship Between Institutional Ownership And Firm Performance, Javeria Farooqi

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

In the past three decades, the presence of institutional investors has increased 33% in the equity market. The main goal of this dissertation is to study the relationship between institutional ownership and firm performance. I examine how the level institutional investors' involvement in composing their own portfolio, as oppose to replicating their portfolio, impacts their level of monitoring and disciplining their portfolio firms. Specifically, I investigate the relationship between institutional ownership and firms' operating efficiency, earnings management and cost of debt.

In Chapter II, I explore the relationship between institutional ownership and firms' operating efficiency. I use the data envelopment …

An Examination Of G10 Carry Trade During Non-Crisis And Crisis Period (2007-2009), Charles Kwame Armah Danso

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Carry trading is a form of currency trading in which an investor buys assets in a higher interest yielding currency by borrowing in a low interest yielding currency without hedging for exchange risk. I seek to compare and contrast the performance of carry trade strategy before and after the financial crisis (2007-2009). I also compare and contrast how the carry trade strategy and covered interest rate arbitrage fare in different periods. Carry traders do not hedge their position using forward rates whereas covered interest rate arbitrageurs do hedge their position using forward rates. A comparison of the two trading strategies …

Underpricing And Buy And Hold Abnormal Returns In Venture Capitals' Portfolio Firm Ipos, Abdelhamid Riani

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

I seek to explore in detail the relationship between Venture Capitals (VC) characteristics and the underpricing and long-run performance of their portfolio firms overtime using a sample of 2,052 IPO firm-year observations, corresponding to 669 unique U.S.VCs from 1985-2013. Gompers (1996) and Lee and Wahal (2004) focus on individual portfolio firms and relate the performance of these firms in IPOs to the VCs that back these firms, I focus on the VCs themselves as individual entities and examine how their whole portfolio of IPOs fares. I find that the more experienced the VC is, the larger the underpricing and the …