Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

The Never Ending Attraction Of The Ponzi Scheme, Pearl Jacobs, Linda Schain

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

In the 1920’s, Charles Ponzi engaged in a notorious money making scheme. This scheme had been tried before but no one prior to Charles Ponzi had managed to swindle millions of dollars out of unsuspecting people. Thus, the scheme bears his name. In December 2008, Bernard Madoff, a major Ponzi schemer, was exposed. He managed to con investors out of over $65 billion over a thirty year period. Madoff was a highly respected financial expert. The investors were mostly well educated and supposedly financially savvy. How did this happen? This paper will examine some theories which may help explain both …

Crummer/Suntrust Portfolio Recommendations [2011], Ina Toderita, Daniel Parry, Jared Schneider, John Flatley, Kevin Ford, Neil Asma, Nicole Hession, Kevin Schnacke, Ronald Wensing, Jennifer Anderson, Homer Marshman, Michael Ackerman, Dean Walker, Ardit Bitincka, Thomas Biddinger

Crummer Truist Portfolios

The analysis of the current economic situation forecasts a favorable environment for growth for U.S. corporations. The desired asset class allocation distributes only the minimum to cover the fixed income and cash constraint; the rest of the portfolio is allocated to equities. Predicted economic growth means increased production and low interest rates will provide a favorable environment for U.S. corporations to grow earnings. In addition, low inflation will help keep costs low, allowing businesses to hold prices for their goods and services. Even though we believe U.S. consumers are not ready to pay higher prices due to continued high unemployment, …

A Structural Analysis Of The European Monetary Union And Its Effect On Greece In Light Of The European Financial Crisis, Stephanie C. Ramos

CMC Senior Theses

The intent of this paper is to analyze the structural composition of the European Monetary Union and its implications for the European Financial Crisis, specifically with respect to Greece. This analysis will be driven by a trend analysis of several economic variables from 1999-2010. These variables range from the four requirements set under the Maastricht criteria, competitiveness indicators, and relative European trade balances, to international investment position. A quantitative and empirical analysis of this data finds that the Greek crisis was a result of structural issues with the EMU and the Greek government. The ECB’s inability to enforce the Maastricht …

Corporate Governance And The 2008-09 Financial Crisis, Martin Conyon, William Q. Judge, Michael Useem

Management Faculty Publications

The financial crisis of the late 2000s resulted in enormous costs to the economies of many countries and the fortunes of millions of families, and it challenged a host of our conceptions and theories of corporate governance. The governing boards of many financial-services firms seemed unable to prevent the risky and ill-fated decisions that jeopardized their firms, devastated their investors, and helped precipitate a financial meltdown that morphed into global recession. Company boards were also directly responsible through their compensation committees and consultant advisors for a sharp rise in executive compensation during the 2000s that may have contributed to undue …

Essays On Foreign Currency Risk Management, Sungjae Francis Kim

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation studies on-balance-sheet and off-balance-sheet foreign currency risk management of corporate firms and commercial banks. It is comprised of two essays. The first essay investigates what determines firms’ foreign currency spot net asset positions, derivatives hedging and synthetic hedging positions. We build a model that anticipates a firm’s market timing in currency markets and credit markets according to the exchange-rate return and interest rate differential. Using a unique set of data containing complete foreign currency spot and derivatives positions of Korean exporting firms, we empirically find that currency position-squaring firms have significantly higher firm value. We also find evidence …

Three Essays On Real Estate Finance, Shuang Zhu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the mortgage default behavior and the valuation of distressed properties. Three essays are included. The first essay uses New Orleans foreclosure data, where each property has three appraisals, to investigate the factors affecting appraisal bias and accuracy, and to estimate the magnitude of appraisal accuracy for distressed properties. Our main finding is that the relation between the client and the appraiser affects valuation bias. Customer employed appraisers tend to give client friendly valuation than their court appointed counterpart. Experienced and licensed appraisers render less biased valuations; while appraisers specializing in lenders tend to give lender friendly …

Socially Responsible Investing: A Comparative Analysis For The Bluegrass Community Foundation, Andrew Hedrick

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

In the fall of 2010 the Blue Grass Community Foundation began considering whether an updated investment strategy that included Socially Responsible Investing would be advantageous and in line with the mission of the organization. The question was raised whether this type of investing meant that the return on investment from securities currently held in the Foundation’s portfolio had to be sacrificed in order to incorporate this type of investment philosophy into the existing criteria used to invest the organization’s assets.

This paper examines literature relevant to the topic and conducts an analysis of a sample of mutual funds currently available …

U.S. State Employee Pension Systems: An Investigation Into The Causes Of Unfunded Liabilities, Chuck Truesdell

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Defined benefit retirement plans for state employees have come under fire, both financially and politically, following recent market volatility and subsequent losses in pension investments. Asset losses matched with liabilities that are set years in advance translate to pressures on state policymakers and plan administrators to either find ways to improve the finances of these pension systems or transition to defined contribution plans that put the financial risk on individual employees rather than the state government. Because most states are legally and contractually obligated to pay retiree benefits regardless of the pension system’s financial condition — even to the point …

Evaluating Economic Relationships Of Stapled And Traditional Australian Reits, Jaime Yong, David Allen, Lee Lim

Research outputs 2011

The number of Australian Real Estate Investment Trusts (AREITs) trading as stapled securities has grown significantly in the past ten years. Though this type of trust structure improves the income growth to investors, stapled AREITs are riskier relative to traditional AREITs that act primarily as holding companies of property assets. Academic literature on REIT characteristics has found that these assets have become less integrated with bonds and more with stocks. An increasingly mature AREIT market implies that prices of these assets have become more integrated with values of the underlying direct property investments. This study employs quarterly prices over 30 …

Modeling The Conditional Heteroscedasticity And Leverage Effect In The Chinese Stock Markets, Zhihui Yin, Albert Tsui, Zhaoyong Zhang

Research outputs 2011

The Chinese stock market has experienced an astonishing growth and unprecedented development since its inception in the early 1990s, emerged to be the world's second-largest by market value by the end of 2009. The Chinese stock market is also one of the most volatile markets, which has been called by many observers a “casino”. In the recent years there are several far-reaching events that have reshaped the Chinese stock markets. The most notable events include the “dot-com bubble” in 2000, China’s non-tradable shares reform in 2005 and the global financial crisis in 2008. It is noted that the “dot-com bubble” …

Peas In A Pod: Canadian And Australian Banks Before And During A Global Financial Crisis, David Allen, Ray Boffey, Robert Powell

Research outputs 2011

In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), the Canadian and Australian banking systems have been singled out by some commentators as having performed better than many other banking systems, particularly those in Europe, America and the United Kingdom. Banks in both Canada and Australia, for instance, have continued to report enviable earnings, sound capital levels, and high credit ratings both before and during the GFC. The G-20 and the European Union have tried to identify the features of the Canadian and Australian financial systems which have underpinned this success in order to use them in shaping a revised …

Modeling Time-Varying Currency Betas: New Evidence From The Selected Markets, P. Jayasinghe, A. Tsui, Zhaoyong Zhang

Research outputs 2011

In the past decade, studies of exchange rate exposure have mainly focused on three approaches. The first approach uses conventional methods such as sub-sampling, dummy variables, and overlapping moving window regression to capture exchange rate exposure. The second approach uses pre-specified determinants of exposure coefficients to analyze the time-variation of exchange rate exposure. For example, Allayannis (1997) suggests that currency beta is determined by export and import shares, and finds support for time-variation of exposure in some 4-digit level SIC industries. The third approach employs time-varying second moments to derive time-varying exchange rate exposure (see, for instance, Hunter, 2005; Lim, …

Modeling Exchange Rate Exposure In The Japanese Industrial Sectors, P. Jayasinghe, A Tsui, Zhaoyong Zhang

Research outputs 2011

In recent years the volatility of exchange rate exposure and its associated risk have become a hot issue in international financial management. It is often assumed that a firm’s future operating cash flows is proxied by its market value, and the exposure coe fficient would be able to ef ficiently measure the impact of exchange rate changes on a firm’s return and its se nsitivity to the changes. Recen tly, some studies begin to investigate whether exchange rate exposure is asymmetric between currency appreciations and depreciations. By far most existing studies on exchange rate exposure assume that the variances of …

Innovative Transition Matrix Techniques For Measuring Extreme Risk: An Australian And U.S. Comparison, David Allen, Akhmad Kramadibrata, Robert Powell, Abhay Singh

Research outputs 2011

Comparing Australia and the U.S. both prior to and during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), using a dataset which includes more than six hundred companies, this paper modifies traditional transition matrix credit risk modelling to address two important issues. Firstly, extreme credit risk can have a devastating impact on financial institutions, economies and markets as highlighted by the GFC. It is therefore essential that extreme credit risk is accurately measured and understood. Transition matrix methodology, which measur es the probability of a borrower transitioning from one credit rating to another, is traditionally used to m easure Value at Risk (VaR), …

Modelling Exchange Rate Pass-Through In Australia, China And India, Shrabani Saha, Zhaoyong Zhang

Research outputs 2011

Exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) has attracted a ttention of many researchers in the last three decades due to the adoption of flexible exchange rate system by many countries. The objectives of this study are to make a comparative study by exploring the literature relating pass-through for import prices and domestic prices in Australia, China and India. In particular, we test whether the exchange rate pass-through to import prices is complete, estimate the pass-through to CPI to investigate whether there is any association between the pass-through and the average inflation rate across these countries. Using a structural VAR model we test …

Assessing The Dynamic Relationship Between Small And Large Cap Stock Prices, K. Ho, B. Ernst, Zhaoyong Zhang

Research outputs 2011

The historical long-run return on small capitalization stocks has unquestionably outperformed large capitalization stocks since 1926. The phenomenon of small capitalization stocks having higher risk- adjusted returns compared with large capitalization stocks is an equity market anomaly first discovered in 1981. Since then, many academics and investors have strongly argued that “size is dead”. This paper argues that far from being dead, the phenomenon of size effect appears alive and well and it could be exploited effectively over long-term investment horizons. To analyze this phenomenon, we focus specifically on the dynamics of small cap and large cap prices. We test …

Modeling The Fractional Integration In Volatility Between The Greater China Financial Markets, K. Ho, Zhaoyong Zhang

Research outputs 2011

The dynamics of the interrelationships among the financial markets in the Greater China area including Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, is a noteworthy issue of economic research. This is not only because the financial markets in this region have grown rapidly over the past decade, but also because of the arguably asymmetric integration of the emerging Chinese economy with advanced countries in the real side of the economy and tight control over financial market. Since its establishment in the early 1990s, the Mainland Chinese stock market has expanded rapidly in terms of capitalization, turnover, and the new listings. Even …

Modeling The Conditional Volatility Asymmetry Of Business Cycles In Four Oecd Countries: A Multivariate Garch Approach, K Ho, A Tsui, Zhaoyong Zhang

Research outputs 2011

There are many studies on the business cycle indicators in the past decades, but mostly focusing on the asymmetric and non-linear features of business cycles incorporated into the conditional mean equation rather than the conditional variance formulation. Recently, the hypothesis of volatility asymmetry in business cycle indicators has been re-examined by, for instance, Ho and Tsui (2003 and 2004) using univariate asymmetric power ARCH (APARCH) and EGARCH models. However, the main drawback of univariate GARCH analysis is that it fails to capture the co-movement of macroeconomic variables. These co-movement relationships are important issues emphasised by the business cycle researchers, yet …

Are Credit Ratings A Good Measure Of Capital Adequacy?, David Allen, Akhmad Kramadibrata, Robert Powell, Abhay Singh

Research outputs 2011

Focus on capital adequacy intensified since the onset of the Global Financ ial Crisis (GFC), with many US and other global banks experiencing capital shortages over this time. The Basel standardised approach uses credit ratings as a determinant for corporate capital adequacy requirements. A problem with credit ratings is that they were designed to be a measure of relative, as opposed to absolute credit risk, and do not ratchet up or down with changes in economic circumstances. This paper examines how credit risk as indicated by credit ratings (and thei r associated capital requirement) changed pre and post Global Financial …

Modeling Information Linkages In The Stock And Options Markets, K Ho, L Zheng, Zhaoyong Zhang

Research outputs 2011

When markets are assumed to be complete, option trading should not contain new information for market participants, as options derive their prices from the underlying stocks. However, if markets are incomplete, then this unidirectional relationship may not be true, because informed traders may prefer to trade options instead of the underlying stocks for several reasons: one, option trading involves lower transaction costs and higher financial leverage; and two, investors who have private information about stock price volatility can only make their bet on volatility in the option market. Compared with the research on the relationship between options trading activity and …