Business Commons^™

The Golden Straightjacket Is Out Of Style, Lacey Germana

Best Integrated Writing

Germana’s review of Thomas Friedman’s The Lexus and the Olive Tree provides careful summary and critique of Friedman’s argument and passionately calls for a balance between increased standards of living and careful stewardship of the earth.

The Distribution Of Globalized Power, Rachel Canter

Best Integrated Writing

Canter reviews Thomas Friedman’s The Lexus and the Olive Tree and observes the dissonance between our notions of globalization and global society; she offers an alternate worldview that pays respect to regional cultures and values.

Cost Of Debt And Federal Home Loan Bank Funding At U.S. Bank And Thrift Holding Companies, Scott Deacle, Elyas Elyasiani

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

We investigate the relationship between the cost of debt issued by bank holding companies (BHCs) and thrift holding companies (THCs) and their use of Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) advances. Cost of debt is used as a measure of bank riskiness for the first time in a FHLB study. A two-equation model of FHLB advances and cost of debt is estimated. Three main results are obtained. First, greater reliance on advances by BHCs and THCs is associated with lower cost of debt in the pre-crisis period, and more strongly so during the crisis, because granting of advances sends a positive …

Perspectivas Locales Sobre El Litio En El Salar De Uyuni: Niveles De Conocimiento Y Opiniones Regionales Sobre El Proyecto Que Puede Determinar El Futuro Del Litio En El Mundo, Gillian Greenberg

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

La combinación del aumento en la urgencia por hacer algo sobre el cambio climático y la popularidad creciente de los vehículos eléctricos sitúan al litio como un material clave en la transición de hidrocarburos en los próximos años. A causa de que la reserva más grande del litio en el mundo está ubicada en el Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia tiene la oportunidad de influir en esta evolución. El proyecto estatal para industrializar el litio en el Salar de Uyuni comenzó en 2008 y continúa trabajando hacia el objetivo de la producción de baterías de litio. Para las comunidades alrededor del …

Women In Microfinance And Its Social Effects On The Community: A Case Study In Hue, Vietnam, Madison Spigel

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Microfinance, a form of micro lending with no collateral, has been used as a way to finance the poor since the foundation of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh by Muhammad Yunus in 1983. Since the Doi Moi period, the Vietnamese government has showed great interest in microfinance and has made this loan system available to both its rural and urban citizens through organizations like the Women‟s Union. Through detailed surveys and semi-structured in depth interviews of both women in the Union as well as related parties in Hue, I was able to study how microfinance is used by these women …

Global Economic Expansion And The Prevalence Of Militarized Interstate Disputes, Lucas Hahn

Honors Projects in Economics

Over the past several decades the entire world has experienced both the positive and negative effects of globalization. The question that this report will address is whether or not global economic expansion has led to a decline in the prevalence of militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) and what factors influence the prevalence of MIDs. This report will take an in-depth look at Thomas Friedman’s “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention”. It also includes a quantitative analysis in which regression techniques were used to see how different economic factors influence the prevalence of MIDs, while also introducing a previously unused independent variable …

Ec 845 Nebraska Cash Soybean Prices And Basis Patterns, Jessica J. Groskopf, Cory Walters

Extension Farm and Ranch Management News

No abstract provided.

Responsible Microfinance Bundling: Experimental Evidence On Separating Insurance And Credit Offers, Vance J. Larsen

Open Access Theses

In recent years combining multiple financial products into one package in a process known as bundling has become more common among microfinance institutions (MFIs). While bundling can be beneficial to MFIs by cutting costs and providing protection from client default, the implications for MFI customers are less clear. Bundling the products may take advantage of the existing relationship between the financial institution and the client to expand microinsurance access and take-up, but alternatively offering too many products could lead to low client understanding and thus low take-up of the product. We conducted a randomized field experiment to determine if separating …

From Hard Money To Branch Banking California Banking In The Gold Rush Economy, Larry Schweikart, Lynne Pierson Doti

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

In Gold Rush–era California, banking and the financial sector evolved in often distinctive ways because of the Gold Rush economy. More importantly, the abundance of gold on the West Coast provided an interesting test case for some of the critical economic arguments of the day, especially for those deriving from the descending—but still powerful—positions of the “hard money” Jacksonians.

Two Essays On Investor Emotions And Their Effects In Financial Markets, Jiancheng Shen

Finance Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation provides empirical evidences on media-based investor emotions in predicting stock return, conditional volatility, and stock and bond return comovements.

We first studied the interaction between US media content and the US stock market returns and volatility. We utilize propriety investor sentiment measures developed by Thompson Reuters MarketPsych. We select four measures of investor sentiment that reflect both pessimism and optimism of small investors. Our objective is two-fold. First, we examine the ability of these sentiment measures to predict market returns. For this purpose, we use dynamic Vector Auto-Regressive models. Second, we are interested in exploring the effects of …

Essays On The Equity Risk Premium, Mohamed Mehdi Rahoui

Finance Theses & Dissertations

The equity risk premium (ERP) is an essential component of any asset pricing model both for academics and practitioners alike. Nevertheless, the financial literature does not accord much attention to the ERP estimation issues (Damodaran, 2015). The first chapter of this dissertation gives a summary of the recent literature review on the subject of the ERP. The second chapter explores four of the most commonly cited models in literature for estimating the ERP: the Historical Mean of Realized Returns Model (HMRRM), the Dividend Discount Model (DDM), the Free Cash Flow Model (FCFM), and the Sharpe Ratio Model (SRM). The results …

Mexico Consensus Economic Forecast, Volume 19, Number 2, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr., Adam G. Walke

Border Region Modeling Project

No abstract provided.

Impacts Of Ecotourism In Costa Rica: A Sustainable Alternative To Conventional Tourism, Kimberly A. Kleszczynski

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

This ethnographic project examines the economic and social influences of tourism, specifically ecotourism, on the local communities of Costa Rica. The proposed research seeks to investigate the effects of ecotourism on the environment and quality of life for residents in Costa Rica while demonstrating the importance of sustainable development in relation to the ecotourism sector. The primary purpose of this research is to view the impact of ecotourism on Costa Rican society, with a particular focus on culture, economics, the environment, and specifically from the perspectives of local Costa Rican residents. Ultimately this paper will define what ecotourism is and …

The Impact Of Geopolitical Factors On The Future Economic Integration Of Asean +3, Michael Corrigan

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

East and Southeast Asia have benefited greatly from China’s growth and are gaining significantly more economic and political power in comparison to the West. The growing interdependence in this region has led to the continuing economic integration of the ASEAN Plus Three countries. The research paper analyzes the geopolitical factors that impact this integration, such as historical tension, regional security conflicts, social, cultural and economic differences, as well as economic rivalries. In addition, the strategic agendas of the main actors, including the U.S., are analyzed to provide a comprehensive argument concerning the impact these geopolitical factors will have on future …

Benchmarking And Currency Risk, Massimo Massa, Yanbo Wang, Hong Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We show that the currency risk embedded in the benchmarks of international mutual funds negatively affects fund performance. More specifically, a high benchmark-implied currency risk induces funds to invest in markets with less volatile currencies, leading to a higher degree of currency concentration in portfolio holdings. This currency concentration, however, departs from the optimal equity allocation strategy across countries and reduces fund performance. We document that funds resorting to high currency concentrations underperform funds with low currency concentrations by as much as 1%-2% per year.

Entrepreneurship, Education And Credit: The Golden Triangle, Roberto M. Samaniego, Juliana Yu Sun

Research Collection School Of Economics

We develop a model to evaluate the impact of college education finance on welfare, inequality and aggregate outcomes. Our model captures the stylized fact that entrepreneurs with college are more common and more profitable. Our calibration to US data suggests this is mainly because higher labor earnings allow college educated agents to ameliorate credit constraints when they become entrepreneurs. The welfare benefits of subsidizing education are greater than those of eliminating financing constraints on education because subsidies ameliorate the impact of financing constraints on would-be entrepreneurs.

Two Essays On Short Selling, Zhaobo Zhu

Finance Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation provides some new evidence that the information contained in short selling is informative about future returns, confirming the role of short sellers in the price discovery process.

The first essay examines the cross-sectional relation between the change in short interest and expected stock returns. NYSE/AMEX stocks with large decreases (increases) in short interest over past medium-term horizon experience significant and positive (negative) abnormal returns. Moreover, the positive abnormal returns are larger in absolute value and are more persistent than negative abnormal returns. The return spread between bottom and top deciles is economically and statistically significant and persistent. The …

Commercial Bank Small Business Lending Pre And Post Crisis, Kevin T. Jacques, Richard Moylan, Peter J. Nigro

The Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance

We analyze small business lending at U.S. commercial banks, how it has changed over time and how it differs by bank size. Specifically, we examine the impact of government policy intervention on small business lending in the aftermath of the financial crisis. We find several important results. First, we find that the Troubled-Asset Relief Program’s (TARP) $200 billion Capital Purchase Program (CPP) had little impact on the banks that received capital injections’ small business lending. Second, the Small Business Loan Fund (SBLF) lending program appears to have been a success as banks participating in the loan fund increased their lending …

External Management Reserve: Overview And Performance Of Major Asset Classes For The Period 2000-2016, Mujtaba Muhammad Farouk, Abdurrahman Abdullahi

Bullion

This paper discusses in detail, various asset classes available to both active and passive reserves managers and analyse the performance of the asset classes held mostly by central banks. Following an introduction, the paper is structured as follows: Section two reviewed literature on reserves management, including motives and what guides the decisions of the investment committee in determining asset classes. Section three analysed the various asset classes that reserves managers invest in, while section four evaluates the major central banks' asset classes' performance over the lost fifteen years covering the period before and after the 2008 global financial crisis. Section …

Is The Discovery Of Oil A Curse Or A Blessing To Nigeria?, Ahmed S. Saidu, Saidu B. Aliyu, Umar A. Zubair

Bullion

The discovery of oil in commercial quantity in Oloibiri in Niger Delta in 1955 opened a new chapter in the economic landscape of Nigeria. Before the discovery of oil resources, agriculture was the main source of government revenue. Over the years however, revenue from oil export become the backbone of the economy. The annual budget, which defines economic direction the country charts, is solely based on crude oil revenue. This situation can be likened to one putting his eggs in one basket. And it is exactly this situation that has become the major source of agitation by oil producing areas …

The Impact Of Relationship Marketing (Rm) On Relationship Quality (Rq): Empirical Evidence From Commercial Bank Customers In Nigeria., Sunny E. Ekakitie

Bullion

The study set out to determine the impact of Relationship Marketing (RM) on relationship quality (RQ), with respect to the services Nigerian banks deliver to their clients. Three hypotheses were formulated to drive the study. Survey research design was adopted using a 48-item Likert style questionnaire to capture the opinions of valued clients. The study covered the six geo-political zones in Nigeria with 4 states drawn randomly from each zone. Extensive literature on RM and RQ were reviewed. Models/theories were lucidly discussed with the study evolving the quality/customer satisfaction model which is a modification of Zineldin's (2006) technical and functional …

Treasury Single Account System And Economic Juche: The Nigerian Experience., Kingsley Imandojemu

Bullion

This paper critically examines the nexus between the full implementation of the Treasury Single Account System (TSA) and Economic emancipation in Nigeria. Using data sourced from the Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin, the study employed the use of explorative analysis. Findings emanating from the research indicate that the full implementation of TSA is capable of rejuvenating the drive for economic emancipation in Nigeria. Therefore, this paper has recommended policy reforms to serve as an operational framework for the full implementation of TSA, being one of the pre-conditions of optimal resource utilization and economic autarky.

Housing Policies In Singapore, Sock Yong Phang, Matthias Helble

Research Collection School Of Economics

Singapore has developed a unique housing system, with three-quarters of its housing stock built by the Housing & Development Board (HDB) and homeownership financed through Central Provident Fund (CPF) savings. As a result, the country’s homeownership rate of 90% is one of the highest among market economies. At different stages of its economic development, the Government of Singapore was faced with a different set of housing problems. An integrated land–housing supply and financing framework was established in the 1960s to solve the severe housing shortage. By the 1990s, the challenge was that of renewing aging estates and creating a market …

Wage Distribution Impacts Of Higher Education Faculty Unionization, Charles S. Wassell Jr, David W. Hedrick, Steven E. Henson, John M. Krieg

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

The literature on the effects of unions on the distribution of wages at the macroeconomic and inter-industry levels has given little attention to the effects at the firm level. At the same time, research on collective bargaining impacts in higher education has focused on the overall wage level rather than on the distribution of salaries. Using panel data on individual faculty members, we find faculty unionization to be associated with a significant flattening of the wage distribution across academic disciplines. This has implications for why faculty might choose to unionize, even in the absence of an overall wage premium.

Ipo Markets In Asia Financial Centers : How The Different Ipo Locations Affect Firms’ Stock Prices, Yuanzhen Jiang

Lingnan Journal of Banking, Finance and Economics

For most of non-listed corporations when they are confronting the issues of cutting capital cost, to increase the base of their investors, to develop the firm business quicker, or even to diversify the pool of investors, one of the most important alternatives that the executives and shareholders of these corporations may think is to do IPO (Initial Public Offering); which could be done in the domestic or in the foreign IPO markets. This paper firstly introduces the situation and differences among different IPO markets in Asia major financial centers that includes Mainland China, Hong Kong and Singapore. Then it will …

Should Hong Kong Maintain A Linked Exchange Rate System?, Hoi Yin Tsoi

Lingnan Journal of Banking, Finance and Economics

The linked exchange rate was implemented in 1983. This paper finds that over these 32 years, this system did bring lots of benefits to Hong Kong. Nevertheless, as Hong Kong is a vastly different place now relative to what it was 32 years ago, the costs for the adoption of the link outweigh the benefits so this system is no longer suitable for Hong Kong. It is suggested that in order to serve the best interest of Hong Kong, it should not maintain the linked exchange rate system and should switch to the managed floating exchange rate system.

Empirical Study : Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connection Sign Of Efficiency Improvement?, Ming Cheung Fok

Lingnan Journal of Banking, Finance and Economics

Stock market connection encourages local corporations cross-listing in overseas stock markets which will, theoretically, enhance the information flow between countries and the stock market efficiency. In view of a closed economy like China and a free economy like Hong Kong, the announcement of Shanghai-Hong Kong stock connection program seems to be a great opportunity for testing the well-known Efficiency Market Hypothesis (EMH). Employing Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and the random walk model suggested by previous studies, this paper will present the comparison of market performance before and after the connection as evidences for the hypothesis testing.

An Empirical Analysis Of Factors Influencing China's Real Estate Prices-Based On The Var Model, Pan Xiao

Lingnan Journal of Banking, Finance and Economics

The real estate industry has an increasingly significant position in our national economy. It is important for real estate investment and national macro-control to analyze the main factors that affect its prices, in order to predict its future movements. In this paper, the dynamic econometric analysis method was used to analyze these macroeconomic factors that influence the real state prices on a empirical research. And the results show that the expected prices of real estate, money supply, real estate development investment and household income are the dominant factors influencing them.

Factors In The Returns On Stock : Inspiration From Fama And French Asset Pricing Model, Yuanzhen Jiang

Lingnan Journal of Banking, Finance and Economics

Under the inspiration of Fama and French asset pricing model, this paper mainly studies the relationship between the month return of A shares and the factors that may have an effect on the stocks’ month return. It also compares the differences in the reaction of all shares and GEM board shares to these factors. It is important to highlight that these factors include the market, firm size, earnings and book-to-market information. The data used in this project comes from the quarterly data of China stock market from March of 2000 to December of 2011 and was used in panel model …

Going For The Gold: The Economics Of The Olympics, Victor Matheson, Robert Baade

Economics Department Working Papers

In this paper, we explore the costs and benefits of hosting the Olympic Games. On the cost side, there are three major categories: general infrastructure such as transportation and housing to accommodate athletes and fans; specific sports infrastructure required for competition venues; and operational costs, including general administration as well as the opening and closing ceremony and security. Three major categories of benefits also exist: the short-run benefits of tourist spending during the Games; the long-run benefits or the "Olympic legacy" which might include improvements in infrastructure and increased trade, foreign investment, or tourism after the Games; and intangible benefits …