Business Commons^™

Great Recession And Corporate Recovery: Empirical Evidence Of The Impact Of Firms' Internal Control System, Gbolahan Oladayo

Theses and Dissertations

In Previous studies, we are made to understand that recession has a detrimental effect on corporate valves. Hence, I investigate substantial evidence that firms with a good internal control system, even during the financial crisis of 2008, were able to minimize redundancies that could have negatively affected the recovery of their company’s post-recession. Thus, firms with effective internal control systems are able to recover from negative events significantly faster (as measured by the firm’s values) than those without such systems.

Factors Affecting Irs Audit Rate Probability: Empirical Evidence From Rgv Region, Issack Guyo

Theses and Dissertations

IRS tax audits are intended to curb tax evasion; however, they are costly to conduct and have negative impacts on taxpayers. The purpose of this study is to find out factors that lead to high IRS audit rate in a region from the perspective of the Rio Grande Valley (RGV). Relationship between IRS tax audit rate and determinants of tax evasion identified by Davis, Cebula, & Boylan (2020) among others are studied. A regression analysis is conducted on the regions scores on poverty rate, demography, unemployment rate and general level of education with the IRS audit rate. The results suggest …

Corporate Governance And Short Sales, Andres Bello

Theses and Dissertations

Chapter one in this study examines the relation among short sales activity and the CEO dismissals, its disclosure, and replacement choice. The study includes several monthly and annualized short sales metrics: short interest ratio, SIR, measured as the shares held short as of settlement date divided by outstanding shares and short cover ratio, SE, measured as the monthly shares held short as of settlement date divided by the volume traded as well as regression modeled abnormal activity from 1992 to 2018. The results suggest informed trading in the pre-announcement period, revealing SIR and abnormal short interest ratio metrics significantly increase …

Essays On The Roles Of Employee Representatives On The Board In Corporate Policy-Making, Amirhossein Fard

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of four chapters, investigating the roles of employee representatives on the board in corporate policies in a sample of European countries. I examine the role of employee representatives on the board in firms’ merger and acquisition intensity and performance. In addition, I study the value-creating roles of these directors. In particular, I study the effects of employee representative directors on the firms’ pay gap between the CEO and average employees. In chapter Ι, I describe the background on the idea behind the presence of employee representatives and how the laws mandating this presence have changed in Europe. …

A Contingency Approach For Supply Chain Preparedness To Pursue Circular Economy Business Models, Santosh Nandi

Theses and Dissertations

A growing stream in circular economy (CE) research is about circular economy business models (CEBM). It suggests how firms could learn to adopt unique material and product designs, newer business models, value chain networks and potential enablers that satisfies CE ideologies about economic, environment, and society. However, the understanding about how firms could integrate CEBM practices at internal, supply chain, and external levels is limited. Given the rising complexities in supply chains, the goal of this dissertation is to: (a) understand the landscape of CE concepts within the supply chain management context, and consequently (b) comprehend how firms’ preparedness about …

The Hierarchical Effects Of Employee Choice Of Language: The Role Of Customer Bilingualism And Self-Concept Clarity, Fuad Hasan

Theses and Dissertations

The impact of the choice of language is continuously widening and deepening in different socio-political contexts due to globalization and multiculturalism (Heller, 2010). A nascent stream of research (Zolfagharian, Hasan, & Iyer, 2017) also suggests that, in multicultural service encounters, employee choice of language affects customer perceived interaction quality, which in turn influences a host of outcome constructs germane to service researchers. Therefore, this dissertation focuses on how employee choice of language works in customer mind and shapes their attitude toward service interaction and the service itself. The exploration of this underlying psychological mechanism is expected to provide answers to …

Essays On Financial Markets And Investments, Shahil Sharma

Theses and Dissertations

Essay I examine regime-switching in the response of U.S. stock price to oil price shocks. We find statistically significant, time-varying, and dynamic state dependent response that resembles to high and low response regimes. Furthermore, we examine whether the timing of the regime shifts are consistent with three (direction, magnitude, and business cycle) manifestations of asymmetry by modeling the transition probabilities governing the switching process as functions of state variables. We observe strong and statistically significant support that stock price responds more aggressively to oil specific shocks during recessions than during expansions, while findings suggest weaker evidence of asymmetry pertaining to …

Three Essays On Economic And Financial Development In Latin America: Evidence From The 2000s Commodity Boom, Andre Coelho Vianna

Theses and Dissertations

The dynamic forces of commodity prices have become a subject of large interest due to the uprise of a commodity supercycle in the beginning of the 21st century. The main purpose of this dissertation is to assess the role of commodity shocks and international trade in Latin American financial and economic development in the last two decades. The first essay examines how commodity market structural shocks explain the variations in commodity prices. Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) results from 1997 to 2015 show that aggregate demand shocks are more evident during the recent commodity boom period and are robust to different …

Essays On American Depositary Receipts: New Fears, Investor Attention And Financial Bubbles, Juan P. Gutierrez

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of four chapters, focusing on American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) and how they are affected by new measures of investor sentiment, new proxies of investor attention, and financial bubble detection. ADRs are negotiable certificates of ownership in foreign companies that are traded in the U.S. financial markets.

In Chapter I, I make a brief introduction of ADRs. The types of programs there are, the market capitalization and volume in general and to some specific countries.

In Chapter II, I show that negative investor sentiment measures, derived from internet aggregate search indices, have a contemporaneous negative effect on ADR …

The Effects Of Developed Country Equity Markets On Developing Country Trading Partner Growth, Jorge S. Maldonado

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three chapters, focusing on the effects that developed countries have on their developing country trading partners with the consideration of macroeconomic variables. In Chapter I, I explore the differences in the drivers and the corresponding magnitude effects on domestic real stock returns during fixed and floating exchange rate regimes. In Chapter II, the equity developed market effects on domestic real stock returns is determined during the pre- and post-great recession periods under floating exchange rate regimes. Chapter III summarizes the findings and provides concluding remarks regarding the benefits and disadvantages in adopting a floating exchange rate …

Hormonal Influence On Female Consumption Of Revealing And Sexy Fashion Products, Ngoc B. Pham

Theses and Dissertations

This doctoral dissertation addresses the biological and psychological components of consumers’ decision-making processes. Particularly, it investigates the impact of female sex hormones on women’s consumption behaviors regarding fashion products. These hormones reach peak level when women are near ovulation, and this research examines how these hormones, when at peak level, influence women’s attitudes and purchase intention towards sexy and revealing fashion products.

The research is based on two theoretical frameworks: ovulatory shift hypothesis (OSH) and theory of reasoned action (TRA). Specifically, the OSH, based on the female ovulatory cycle postulates that women change their sexual preferences for men with perceived …

Essays On Financial Decision Making, Corey A. Shank

Theses and Dissertations

Individuals make financial decisions daily, yet the literature on the mechanisms that drive financial decisions is limited. This dissertation looks to examine how physical characteristics, and personality subconsciously influence financial decision making by conducting an experiment. Furthermore, this dissertation examines biased decision making in the betting market by using data from covers.com. First, this dissertation finds that the cognitive impairments associated with having a higher body mass index is positively related to poor financial decision making and being more likely to commit the present bias, and distorting probabilities. Second, this dissertation finds that business students are more apt to fit …

Two Essays On International Capital Flows And Cross-Listings, Lu Sui

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores two interesting issues: international capital flows and cross-listings. With high volatility of capital flows and imbalance of capital flows between emerging and advanced economies, the topic of capital flow management is always attractive to researchers and policy makers. The first essay explore how capital flows in G20 countries are significantly impacted by pull and push factors. The results show that international capital flows are significantly associated with domestic financial development, which is measured by stock market liquidity and domestic credit. Moreover, international capital flows are affected by some push factors such as, the growth of world economy …

Regression-Discontinuity Analysis Of The Effects Of Government Housing Policies, Alejandro Rojas

Theses and Dissertations

An influential literature has applied regression-discontinuity (RD) analysis to investigate the effects of government housing policies. This literature has failed to identify substantial effects of these policies, but may also suffer from various biases and limitations. This dissertation carefully examines what, if any, issues face RD analysis in this context. Chapter II considers the Affordable Housing Goals (AHGs) and Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), affordable housing policies that compel Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (F&F) and depository institutions, respectively, to increase access to mortgage credit for borrowers perceived by some as “underserved” by the mortgage market. Chapter III considers the overall …

Essays On Non-Traditional Activities In The Banking Industry, Lijuan Sun

Theses and Dissertations

Starting in the 1980s, financial innovations and technology improvements led to important changes in corporate financing, primarily a significant decrease in the share of bank loans and an increased share of bonds and stocks. This change challenged the traditional banking business. The Gramm–Leach–Bliley (GLB) Act of 1999 allowed banks to engage more freely in non-traditional activities such as investment banking, venture capital, security brokerage, insurance underwriting, and asset securitization. Further, GLB encouraged changes in banks' business models and income mix that were already underway. Chapter I shows an introduction of non-traditional activities. Chapter II examines the relationship between non-traditional activities, …

Essays On Corporate Governance, Wonseok Choi

Theses and Dissertations

Corporate governance is one major research topic in financial economics. Studies in this area explore how much severe agency problems firms have and how to mitigate such agency problems to benefit the firms and their investors. In this dissertation, I investigate whether outside directors’ dissention has a monitoring role. The first essay tests whether outside directors’ dissention increases firm value through outside directors’ monitoring role. The second essay examines outside directors’ dissention on earnings management. I found supportive evidences that outside directors’ dissention can increase firm value and reduce earnings management. Also, only aggressive dissentions can lead higher firm value …

Essays On Stock Market Contagion: Evidence From The Americas, Juan Andres Rodriguez-Nieto

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation we examine the financial contagion from the U.S. to the Americas during the U.S. financial crisis.

First, we examine the relationship between the U.S. perceived market volatility (VIX), perceived credit risk (TED spread), and the U.S. financial crisis, on the stock returns of these countries. Our findings suggest that VIX has negatively effects on the stock returns of all these countries and that this relationship increases significantly during the U.S. financial crisis. We also identify that increases in the TED spread, have negative effects on the stock market returns of Canada and Latin America, and this increases …

To Grow Or Not To Grow: Socio-Cognitive Determinants Of Small And Medium Firm Growth And Threshold Mentality, David A. Alvarado

Theses and Dissertations

Small business owners (entrepreneurs) are heterogeneous in their motivations and goals, with some seeking to expand firm scope, size, and purpose, and others seeking stability. The small and medium firm growth literature indicates that growth intention varies, but why does it vary so much, and so often? Why do some firms have a threshold mentality, represented by a stability intention, while others have a growth intention? To explore these questions, this dissertation empirically examines the socio-cognitive determinants of small and medium firm growth intentions. Participants included owner/managers of independent Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) decision-making authority for their firms. 159 …

Three Essays On Likability Factors, Crowdfunding, And Entrepreneurial Performance, Yuanqing Li

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I conduct three empirical studies exploring the relation between likability factors, crowdfunding characteristics and entrepreneurial performance. Together these studies integrate aspects of major entrepreneurial likability factors including liking of the entrepreneur (source attractiveness, credibility, personal traits) and liking of the message (verbal content and expression), and components of nonverbal and verbal cues. I apply computer-mediated communication (CMC) and persuasion theories, political and marketing literature to provide a more fine-grained understanding of likability on crowdfunding success. In the first essay, I study how the non-verbal cues of a crowdfunding video influence the crowdfunding success. By employing social presence …

Essays On The Unintended Consequences Of Banking Regulation, John Patrick Ned

Theses and Dissertations

Ned, John Patrick, Essays on the Unintended Consequences of Banking Regulation. Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), August 18, 2017, 77 pp., 11 tables, references, 34 titles. The introduction of new financial regulatory reforms are designed to usually provide a positive impact for the firms in the banking system. However, there are some unintended consequences to the firms in the banking industry after the introduction of new banking regulations. In the two essays, I examine the impact of introducing new banking regulation on the different firms in the financial services industry and the impact of the new banking regulation on the commercial …

Three Essays On Shareholder Activism, Khoa Huu Nguyen

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation includes three separate studies related to shareholder activism campaigns. The first study, presented in Chapter II, examines the question whether shareholder activism creates value for the targets’ shareholder. I find positive and significant abnormal returns on a day of the targeting announcement, 1.55%, and one day after, 1.33%. For Buy-and-Hold return analysis, I find that stock prices of the targets start to decrease 24 months before activism campaign announcements. Further results indicate that the targets are also underperforming to the market and to their matchings at pre-announcement periods. For post-announcement periods, however, targets’ stock returns recover and outperform …

Equity Mispricing, Firms' Innovation And Institutional Investors, Hamid Sakaki

Theses and Dissertations

First essay has two primary objectives. First, I investigate the relation between institutional investors and firms’ innovation activities and second, the impact of different types of institutional investors on firms’ innovation by classifying institutional investors into five groups. After controlling for other determinants of innovation, the results show that higher institutional ownership stability boosts innovation activities measured by the number of patents and citations. The results also indicate that banks, insurance, and investment companies have a positive and significant effect on firms’ innovation, while investment advisors could affect innovation activities negatively. Moreover, when I classify the institutional investors based on …

Antecedents And Outcomes Of Customer Engagement: Bridging Customer Value Co-Creation Behavior And Customer Psychological State Engagement, Samaneh Torkzadeh

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation draws on service-dominant logic and reviews the engagement literature to explore the antecedents and outcomes of two multi-dimensional customer engagement constructs: psychological state engagement (PSEngagement) and value co-creation behavior. PSEngagement is a precursor to value co-creation behavior, with the latter also known as behavioral engagement in prior research.

The model proposed in this dissertation was tested in two service contexts: higher education, with a sample size of 454, and fitness, with a sample size of 122. To minimize the common method variance typical of survey research (Podsakoff, et al. 2003), the model was tested twice per context, once …

Value Cocreation As A Double-Edged Sword In Customers' Quality Of Life And Service Outcomes, Arash Hosseinzadeh

Theses and Dissertations

Both Service Dominant (SD) logic and transformative service research have received attention from marketing managers and scholars as a result of the expansion of the service sector. However, the SD logic perspective on "the growth of human wellbeing needs more explanation and attention" (Vargo & Lusch, 2016, p. 20). Healthcare is particularly relevant to both streams of research and enables customers to contribute to their wellbeing through cocreation of value. The marketing literature indicates customer value cocreation (CVCC) in healthcare activities enhances service perceptions and quality of life (QoL). However, the healthcare literature demonstrates that cocreation may damage patients' psychological …

Mobile Appointment Reminders In Patient-Centered Care: Design And Evaluation, Ying Wang

Theses and Dissertations

Reminder systems have great potential to enhance healthcare outcome if it can facilitate collaborative appointment management with accessible mobile communication technology in patient-centered care. Yet, Current appointment reminder systems are effective but not optimal (McLean, et al. 2016). Following the design science process delineated by Peffers et al. (2007) and other requirements, this study proposes a design of reciprocal reminder system that automates the process of appointment rescheduling for healthcare providers and patients in addition to confirmation and cancellation. Based on the premises of media synchronicity theory, media naturalness theory and stakeholder theory as kernel theories, this study develops a …

Essays On The Performance And Earnings Management Of Cross-Listing Firms, Klaus S. Beckmann

Theses and Dissertations

I investigate the performance and earnings management of firms that cross-list in foreign markets. In the first essay, I analyze and compare the underpricing and buy-and-hold abnormal returns of depositary receipt equity offerings with preceding Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) and Seasoned Equity Offerings (SEOs) of the same firms to identify differences and motivations of equity offerings free of any matching bias. I find that domestic equity offerings entail significantly larger underpricing than subsequent foreign equity offerings. The average buy-and-hold abnormal returns of depositary receipt equity offerings are significantly lower than the underlying firm’s performance at preceding domestic equity issuances over …

Profitability And Financial Characteristics Of U.S. Publicly Traded Health Services Companies, Alessandra Rios

Theses and Dissertations

The health industry is affected by economic factors like income and prices. From 2007 to 2013, two turning points affected the healthcare industry, the financial crisis and the Affordable Care Act. This study is an attempt to measure the effects these turning points had on profitability of health services firms. To examine the potential changes the two events had on profitability, quarterly financial data was used to create a basic model that measures the Return on Assets, Return on Equity, Total Margin and Operating Margin of the firms. OLS regressions were run and results indicate that both ROA and ROE …

Identifying Elements Of A Climate For Sustainability, Rosemond A. Moore

Theses and Dissertations

Sustainability as an area of research is growing in importance not only among academicians, but practitioners as well. A 2010 Accenture study of 700 CEOs found that 93% identified sustainability as important to the long term future success of their organizations. Utilizing CEO sustainability statements Content Analysis was conducted to understand and identify those key elements necessary for a climate for sustainability. A climate for sustainability is one in which sustainability policies, practices, and procedures drive behaviors that are rewarded, supported, and expected within an organization.

Content analysis of CEO statements from organizations recognized for both their sustainability practices as …

The Competitive Environment Of Community Banking And The Potential Impact On Microenterprise Entrepreneurs' Access To Bank Financing, Robert D. Morrison

Theses and Dissertations

Over the past 35 years, Great Depression era regulatory restrictions on the geographic area of operation and the scope of financial services banks can offer have change significantly. These changes fueled a surge of merger activity and resulted in a 70% decrease in the number of bank charters by 2015. Currently, community banks hold only 14% of bank assets in the US; nonetheless, they play an important role in the US economy because they continue to provide the majority of funding to small businesses. This study finds that over 83% of bank failures occurred in metropolitan areas despite the distribution …

The Effect Of Investor Sentiment On Futures Market Returns And Volatility, Kenneth Steven Lovell

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

For over thirty years research has been done on investor sentiment and their effects on market returns and volatility. The theory of De Long et al., (1990) has been used to explain the effect of uninformed investor sentiment (also known as noise trader sentiment) on market returns and volatility. Studies of Wang (2003) and Sanders et al. (2003, 2009) in the futures market have found that uninformed investor sentiment does not affect future market returns, which is contrary to De Long et al. (1990). Also previous studies of investor sentiment in the futures market do not seem to investigate the …