Business Commons^™

Modelling Cross-Market Linkages Between Global Markets And China’S A-, B- And H-Shares, Thi Tuan Anh Do

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

One of the biggest challenges in quantifying joint risk and forming effective policies in financial management and investment strategies is to fully understand the characteristics of market associations in low and high volatility periods. Market interdependence, therefore, is a hot topic that has received interest from academics and industry experts, especially since the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997. China, being the world’s second-largest economy, has been the centre of many studies investigating stock market dependencies. While China has three major share types, namely A-, B- and H-shares, with different market players, market characteristics and operating efficiency, the number of studies …

Constructing Corporate Capability In Changing Contexts: The Innovation Journey Of Strategic Management Development At Bankwest, Moira Watson

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis is about an unfolding management development process over time. Interconnections influencing corporate capability are explained and insight provided into the social construction of strategic organisational change. Studies of strategically-focused change don’t generally address the part management development plays in innovation and corporate capability construction. This research thus fills a persistent knowledge gap in the understanding of the way management development is provided within organisations and the value of the process.

This empirical study is in the process research tradition. A longitudinal, in-depth case study of BankWest, an Australian financial services company undergoing significant change between 1997 and 2009, …

An Investigation Into The Volatility And Cointegration Of Emerging European Stock Markets, Anna Golab

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This dissertation examines the interaction between European Emerging markets including cointegration, volatility, correlation and spillover effects. This study is also concerned with the process of the enlargement of the European Union and how this affects the emerging markets of newcomers. The twelve emerging markets studied are Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungry, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, which are all progressing very rapidly in their reforms and domestic economic stability.

The majority of prior studies on stock market comovements and integration have concentrated on mature developed markets or the advanced emerging markets of the Czech Republic, …

Individual Retirement Savings Behaviour : Evidence From Malaysia, Nurasyikin Jamaludin

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis investigates factors that influence individuals‟ investment choice decisions within the context of retirement savings in Malaysia. The focus is on individuals‟ likelihood of investing part of their retirement savings in approved unit trusts (also known as mutual funds). In addition, individuals‟ choice of fund and mutual fund selection criteria are also explored. This thesis utilised questionnaire-based surveys to solicit responses from members of the Employees Provident Fund (EPF), as well as from unit trust consultants. Data collected from 440 EPF members and 561 unit trust consultants were analysed using statistical procedures of SPSS version 18.0 (also known as …

An Investigation Into The Use Of Neural Networks For The Prediction Of The Stock Exchange Of Thailand, Suchira Chaigusin

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Stock markets are affected by many interrelated factors such as economics and politics at both national and international levels. Predicting stock indices and determining the set of relevant factors for making accurate predictions are complicated tasks. Neural networks are one of the popular approaches used for research on stock market forecast. This study developed neural networks to predict the movement direction of the next trading day of the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) index. The SET has yet to be studied extensively and research focused on the SET will contribute to understanding its unique characteristics and will lead to identifying …

An Investigation Of The Equity Premium Using Habit Utility And Equity Returns: Australian Evidence, Lurion De Mello

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The gap between the return on stocks and the return on the risk free assets represented by bonds is named the 'Equity Premium' or 'Equity Risk Premium'. In the history of asset pricing models, one of the most serious problems for the equity premium is that the average equity premium is too large to be explained by standard general equilibrium asset pricing models. Researcher's have tried to use variables such as dividend yield's to explain the gap between stocks and bonds with mixed results. After retrieving around a one percent equity premium with the most standard consumption base asset pricing …

Determinants Of Internet Banking Adoption In Thailand, Bussakorn Jaruwachirathanakul

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Increasingly competition in the financial services sector is forcing service providers to develop and utilise alternative delivery channels (Daniel, 1999). Within the sector, banking has always been a highly service intensive activity that relies heavily on technology to acquire, process, and deliver services and information to consumers (Tan & Teo, 2000). The emergence of the Internet has provided a way for banks to improve the efficiency of their service delivery and to gain a competitive advantage by reducing the number of brick-and-mortar branches. The study investigated the adoption of lnternet banking services in Thailand and is based on the premise …

The Service Delivery Process : An Examination Of How Consumers Evaluate Technology-Assisted Service Encounters In The Retail Banking Industry, Catherine W. Munene

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This study examined consumers' perceptions post-adoption of technology and how these perceptions affect their levels of dis/satisfaction and their continued use of technology·assisted service encounters. To this end, this study investigated the criteria that consumers in Western Australia's retail banking industry are likely to use when evaluating banking transactions involving EFTPOS, ATM, telephone, and Online banking modes. II examined whether these criteria changed with the mode of electronic banking in use and whether the significance of the criteria changed with

consumers' demographic characteristics. In addition, this study explored whether consumers who use these modes of electronic banking experience the paradoxes …

Are Sri Funds Different From Non-Sri Funds, From A Financial Asset Perspective?: Evidence From Some Australian Sri Funds, Ingebjørg Kristoffersen

Theses : Honours

Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) has seen a remarkable growth in recent years – primarily in the US and UK, but also in other markets including Australia. This growth, along with the development of corporate social responsibility, is suggested to be a result of increased awareness in social, environment and human rights issues. The literature offers several suggestions as to how SRIs and SRI funds may differ from other investments, as financial assets. It has been suggested that SRIs are more likely to represent smaller stocks, and also more likely represent growth rather than value stocks compared to non-SRIs. Furthermore, different …

The Use And Usefulness Of Managed Fund Ratings In Australia, Paul Gerrans

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Managed fund ratings have become an increasingly available piece of information to guide choice of managed funds. From the perspective of modem portfolio theory and specifically within the efficient markets paradigm, the value of such information is questionable. No profitable relationship should be able to be demonstrated between a fund rating and its subsequent performance. This thesis investigates the relationship between fund ratings and subsequent performance using Morningstar ratings, the most prominent Australian rating provider, for two of the largest and most important groups of managed funds. A positive relationship between a fund's star rating, its quantitative and qualitative components, …

Finding The True Performance Of Australian Managed Funds, Victor Soucik

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

When making conclusions about the performance of managed funds, it is critical that the framework in which such performance is measured provides an accurate and unbiased environment. In this thesis I search for true performance of the two major classes of funds- equity as well as fixed interest managed funds. Focusing, first on the former class, I examine five measurement models across three risk-free proxies, nine benchmarks proposed by the extant literature (covering conditional and unconditional as well as single and multi factor definitions) and over three independent periods in an effort to identity (in a consistent setting) the most …

International Portfolio Diversification With Special Reference To Emerging Markets, Joseline Chimhini

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This study evaluates the potential benefits that investors obtain from diversifying their portfolios into emerging markets when the time varying behavior of assets is considered. It also tests whether the existing asset-pricing model developed in the context of developed markets, which assumes complete integration, can explain the expected returns in emerging markets and determines the risk of investing in these markets using cross section and time series data. An international capital asset pricing model (ICAPM) with time varying moments developed by Harvey (1991) is adopted. The conditional asset-pricing model, which takes into account prevailing world economic factors, was used. The …

Financial Intermediation And Economic Performance In Zimbabwe, Gift Chirozva

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Financial literature is replete with theoretical and empirical evidence suggesting financial development has a causal effect on economic growth. Yet there is no consensus on the finance-growth nexus. The direction of causality is still controversial In fact, classical economists argue that financial factors are neutral and hence cannot have real effects. Critics argue the traditional methods of identifying long run economic relationships fail to address the methodological conflict between equilibrium implied by theory and the disequilibria in the data. The rise of new representation techniques such as the General Methods of Moments (GMM) and vector autoregression [VAR] brought with them …

M-Garch Hedge Ratios And Hedging Effectiveness In Australian Futures Markets, Wenling Yang

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This study deals with the estimation of the optimal hedge ratios using various econometric models. Most of the recent papers have demonstrated that the conventional ordinary least squares (OLS) method of estimating constant hedge ratios is inappropriate, other more complicated models however seem to produce no more efficient hedge ratios. Using daily AOIs and SPI futures on the Australian market, optimal hedge ratios are calculated from four different models: the OLS regression model, the bivariate vector autoaggressive model (BVAR), the error-correction model (ECM) and the multivariate diagonal Vcc GARCH Model. The performance of each hedge ratio is then compared. The …

Resource Allocation And Efficiency In Public Sector Audits, Kar M. Chong

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

In recent years, the push for reform in the Australian public sector audit has placed the Office of the Auditor-General (hereafter OAG) in a more contestable or market- like environment, where the OAG is accountable for an efficient and effective provision of public sector audit. The purpose of this study is to compare the cost efficiency of in-house and contract-out arrangements to deliver financial audits in the public sector. It empirically tests whether there are audit cost and audit fee differences between in-house providers (i.e., the OAG) and contractors (i.e., public accounting firms). The secondary aims of this study are …

An Empirical Comparison Using Both The Term Structure Of Interest Rates And Alternative Models In Pricing Options On 90-Day Bab Futures, Irene Chau

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The use of the term structure of interest rates to price options is relatively new in the literature. It describes the relationship between interest rates and the maturities of bonds. The first model that described the interest rate process was the Vasicek (1977) model. There have been many studies on the formulation of theoretical pricing models. Yet limited empirical research has been done in the area of actually testing the models. In this thesis we report the results of a set of tests of the models indicated below. This paper involves analysis of the pricing errors of the Black model …

Perceptions Of Financial Counselling In Western Australia, Natalie Dall

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The development of financial counselling in Australia during the past decade has been complex and fragmented. Financial counselling and rural counselling services within Western Australia are funded from a range of government, non-government and church based groups. This has contributed to problems in the identification of basic definitions of the need for services, the role of the financial counsellor and service models or functions. The failure to define the role of the financial counsellor and the needs to be addressed by financial counselling services, "appears to be the most important historic weakness in the field." (Wyse et al., 1990, p.2). …

Determinants Of Accounting Policy For Identifiable Intangible Assets, Yuan Chew

Theses : Honours

This research replicates with modifications the previous study by Coombes, Otto and Stokes (1993) which examines the economic determinants of the amortisation of identifiable intangible assets (lIAs). The study focuses on the published consolidated annual reports of a sample of top 150 listed Australian companies, ranked by market capitalisation, as at June 1989, over the period 1989 to 1990, whereas the previous study by Coombes et al. (1993) concentrates on the top 150 listed Australian companies, ranked by market capitalisation, as at 30 June, 1988, over the period 1986 to 1989. The empirical evidence of the present research using contracting …

A Case Study Examining Factors Influencing Loan Pricing Within The R&I Bank, Yawar Zoeb

Theses : Honours

This paper sets out to examine the influence of variables that affect the pricing of commercial loans within the context of the R&I Bank. This will be achieved by collecting financial information on past business loan pricing decisions from a specific R&I Bank branch selected. The information so collected would be analysed from the viewpoint of understanding the pricing of risk. Of specific interest is the examination of loans in a branch to find out the distribution of loans across the spread of credit risk premiums. A credit risk premium, also referred to as the interest rate margin (IRM), is …

Measuring The Quality Of Service Within Challenge Bank, George M. Gilchrist

Theses : Honours

This research project looks at how the management and counter staff of four branches of the Challenge Bank define quality of service and asks them to judge if they deliver that quality. lt also examines the climate for service in which staff operate. The project simultaneously explores the customers' idea of what constitutes quality service, and whether or not customers consider they receive it consistently. A review of the most recent literature on customer service from Australia and overseas, has provided a theoretical framework for the interpretation of the data. It was necessary to first define quality of service then …

A Review Of The Credit Application And Assessment Process From A Consumer Perspective, Natalie Dall

Theses : Honours

It has been noted by the consumer Credit Legal Service in Western Australia that there has been considerable debate about the lending practices of financial institutions. It is argued by many Financial Counsellors that lending practices, such as the assessment of using credit scoring, may contribute credit to the worthiness increasing number of consumers who are overcommitted. The Consumer Credit Legal Service has suggested that there is a need to seek information about the lending practices in Western Australia. The study reviewed the current credit application and assessment process that operates in Western Australia using a case study approach. The …

The Systematic Interest Rate Risk Of The Returns On Australian Bank Shares, Michael Shanahan

Theses : Honours

This paper examines the relationship bank share returns have with interest rate changes. Specifically, what is the systematic interest rate risk of Australian bank share returns. The reasons why bank shares and interest rates possibly have a relationship with interest rates are numerous, interrelated and complicated. Shares and interest rates generally have a relationship because of the comparison made between interest bearing securities and dividend paying shares. However, the relationship is compounded with banks, because of their exposure to interest rate risk. This paper involves two separate analyses. The firp.t part involves attempting to measure a bank share's interest rate …

Determinants Of A Firm's Approach To Accounting For Goodwill, Christine E. Taylor

Theses : Honours

The purpose of this study is to ascertain factors that may explain an Australian firm's approach to accounting for goodwill and to examine the diversity that existed in accounting for goodwill in the pre-standard era. Utilising a costly contracting framework, determinants of the accounting policy choice are proposed and three separate groups of hypotheses are formulated. The ex ante hypothesis in this study utilises industry as an explanatory variable that would be expected to explain the motivations of accounting choices by firms. It was found that there is no significant association between industry classification and the choice of method in …