Business Commons^™

Essays On Corporate Debt Structure, Kyuyoung Oh

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

The dissertation consists of three chapters exploring three different facets of corporate debt structure choice. In the first chapter, “Risk Management and the Choice between Secured and Unsecured Debt: Evidence from Natural Experiment,” I study whether and how corporate hedging affects firms’ choice between secured and unsecured debt. Exploiting the introduction of steel futures as a natural experiment, I provide causal evidence that risk management enables firms to switch from secured to unsecured debt without sacrificing debt capacity. Cross-sectional evidence supports the interpretation that risk management drives the results. The effects are stronger for firms that are more likely to …

Essays On Race And Finance, Tian Qiu

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

In my first chapter, I show a positive municipal financing shock has heterogeneous effects on academic achievement. White students show meaningful improvement, but Black and Hispanic students do not. Consequently, the achievement racial gap widens following the shock. Changes in school funding do not explain this phenomenon; rather, it is explained by heterogeneous outcomes in household Socioeconomic Status (SES). These results highlight the possibility that a credit shock-induced increase in government spending could unexpectedly increase the local racial disparity. The second chapter examines the role of race and racial concordance between financial advisors and their local community. There are significant …

Essays In Household Finance, Morteza Momeni

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

In my first chapter, I use new granular loan-level data and a novel instrumental variable to estimate the effect of competition among auto dealerships on the joint pricing of cars and car loans. I find that increased competition causes auto dealers to decrease vehicle prices to attract consumers. They, however, offset a large portion of their loss on vehicle prices through charging higher prices on a less transparent margin (i.e., loan markups). Consistent with the monthly payment targeting channel, I find that increased competition does not change consumers' monthly payments. My findings suggest that sophisticated sellers such as auto dealers …

Exploring The Use Of Rasch Models To Construct Measures Of Firms’ Profitability With Multiple Discretization Ratio-Type Data, Chen Qiu

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

Ratio-type data plays an important role in real-world data analysis. Mass ratios have been created for different purposes, depending on time and people’s needs. Then, it is necessary to create a comprehensive score to extract information from those mass ratios when they measure the same concept from different perspectives. Therefore, this study adopts the same logic of psychometrics to systematically conduct scale development on ratio-type data under the Rasch model. However, it is first necessary to discretize the ratio-type data for use in the Rasch model. Therefore, this study also explores the effect of different data discretization methods on scale …

Analysts’ Eps Forecast Revisions After Repurchase Announcements, Meng Huang

Theses and Dissertations--Accountancy

Analysts’ earnings per share (EPS) forecasts are one of the most widely used indicators of firm performance by market participants and firm executives. There are two components in EPS forecasts, but prior literature almost invariably focuses on the net income component (numerator) and ignores the shares outstanding component (denominator). Changes in shares outstanding mechanically alter EPS forecasts due to a changed denominator. These mechanical changes in EPS forecasts, however, do not reflect a firm’s real performance. Therefore, it is important to understand analysts’ share adjustment behaviors in order to better interpret analysts’ EPS revisions after share changing events. This paper …

Harmonizing The Disjointed: Economic Integration And Risk Sharing, Samuel Acheampong

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

This dissertation consists of three essays examining the role of risk diversification in European markets. At the economy level the first two essays seek to identify whether economic integration efforts among European countries result in sharing risks to consumption with regional neighbors, as opposed to global partners. At the firm level, the third essay seeks to understand whether managers of large companies in the United Kingdom choose less financial leverage if they are specifically compensated with more cash bonus as opposed to other forms of performance incentives.

In Essay 1, I assess the extent to which European countries diversify consumption …

Three Essays On Entry Barriers And Incentives In Labor Markets, Samuel Ingram

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

Occupational choice at the margin depends on both the incentives for entry and barriers to entry. The primary entry barrier determined by regulation is an occupational license. These are government laws determining the minimum qualifications to enter an occupation including education, testing, fees, and background checks. These regulations are currently enforced on 25% of the US labor market. The laws are crafted to protect consumers from unsafe goods and services but also have important consequences in labor market outcomes. The consequences may include fewer workers entering the profession, changes to which workers enter the profession, and altering competition, all of …

Essays On Financial Institutions And Advisors, Joseph D. Farizo

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

In my first chapter, I examine how index funds vote their proxies on firms in its index that their family does not hold in its actively managed funds. For a given proxy proposal at a given point in time, I find that an index fund is more likely to oppose management on shares its family does not hold in its active funds than on shares its family does hold in its active funds. I further demonstrate that index fund governance has positive effects on the probability a proposal passes and on shareholder value. In my second chapter coauthored with Will …

Essays On Corporate Finance And Institutional Investors, Ang Li

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

The dissertation consists of three chapters spanning two areas of finance: corporate finance and institutional investors. In the first chapter, “Board Gender Diversity, Firm Culture, and Female Inventors”, I study how employee's Research and Development (R&D) activity is affected by firm culture. Using board gender diversity as a proxy for female-friendly culture, I find that a greater representation of women in the boardroom is associated with increased productivity and innovation output by female inventors relative to male inventors. Female inventors file more highly cited patents and less uncited patents. The effect is driven by female directors with R&D or high-tech …

Stress And Cancer Treatment: How A Family’S Adaptability And Cohesion Affects Financial Stress, Emily Marie Johnson

Theses and Dissertations--Family Sciences

According to the American Cancer Society (2019), it is estimated that 1,762,450 new cancer diagnoses occurred in 2019 in the United States. Currently, cancer remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide (American Cancer Society, 2019). As cancer affects the family, roles within the family will shift (e.g., transitioning to a caregiving relationship), causing each family member to adapt. With the costs of cancer steadily increasing, this potentially leaves a devastating impact on the family. When considering family function in terms of Family Systems, John Rolland created the Family Systems Illness Model to explain how families adapt to an …

Essays On Financial Incentives, Tyson D. Van Alfen

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

In my first chapter, I use a novel dataset of customer reviews from Amazon.com to study the impact of managerial myopia on product market reputation. Using exogenous variation due to the timing of CEO equity vesting events, I show that short-term incentive shocks predict declines in reputation. A changing product market lineup and a deterioration of existing products are two mechanisms through which reputation is affected. The effect is larger when the CEO has other short-term concerns and when the firm has a low reputation in the product market. However, higher advertising expenses mitigate the negative reputational effect among consumers. …

Evaluating Kentucky State Pension Plans In The 2000s And Best Practices Moving Forward, Sarah Alegria

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

The Commonwealth of Kentucky sponsors three different pension retirement systems. This includes Kentucky Employee Retirement System, Teacher’s Retirement System, and Kentucky’s Judicial Form of Retirement System. Kentucky has one of the worst funded pension retirement plans and is currently facing shortfalls of about $43 billion (PEW, 2013). Between 1998-2008, Commonwealth of Kentucky’s legislators made many detrimental policy decisions that negatively affected its Pension Retirement System. The most impacting includes:

• Enhancements of Benefits in the Nineties
• Changing Final Compensation from the average of five-years to the average of three-years
• Mandated Yearly Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA)
• Not requiring the State to …

Procure-To-Pay Software In The Digital Age: An Exploration And Analysis Of Efficiency Gains And Cybersecurity Risks In Modern Procurement Systems, Drew Lane

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Procure-to-Pay (P2P) softwares are an integral part of the payment and procurement processing functions at large-scale governmental institutions. These softwares house all of the financial functions related to procurement, accounts payable, and often human resources, helping to facilitate and automate the process from initiation of a payment or purchase, to the actual disbursal of funds. Often, these softwares contain budgeting and financial reporting tools as part of the offering. As such an integral part of the financial process, these softwares obviously come at an immense cost from a set of reputable vendors. In the case of government, these vendors mainly …

Essays On External Forces In Capital Markets, Marcus Painter

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

In the first chapter, I find counties more likely to be affected by climate change pay more in underwriting fees and initial yields to issue long-term municipal bonds compared to counties unlikely to be affected by climate change. This difference disappears when comparing short-term municipal bonds, implying the market prices climate change risks for long-term securities only. Higher issuance costs for climate risk counties are driven by bonds with lower credit ratings. Investor attention is a driving factor, as the difference in issuance costs on bonds issued by climate and non-climate affected counties increases after the release of the 2006 …

Essays On Investments, Michael Farrell

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

The first chapter studies mutual funds. I model intraquarter trading and use a genetic algorithm to estimate the trade pattern that is most consistent with the fund's daily reported returns. I validate the model empirically on a sample of institutional trades from Ancerno and I confirm that the method more accurately predicts daily holdings when compared to existing naive assumptions. Further, my method is substantially more accurate in classifying a fund's tendency to supply liquidity, and this increased precision has important implications for identifying superior performing funds. Specifically, a long-short strategy based on the model's liquidity provision measures earns significant …

The Effect Of State-Level Constitutional Debt Limitations On The Costs Of Capital, Micah Johnson

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Forty-five states have adopted some form of constitutional limitation on their own legislature’s ability to issue debt and raise capital. Eleven states have more than one such limitation. It seems intuitive to assume that constitutional strictures on a state’s ability to manage its fiscal policy would affect that state’s standing in the market, and it seems equally safe to assume that different combinations of the various forms of debt limitation would lead to varying effects in the market from state to state. However, the specific effects arising from the various constitutional provisions have proven to be difficult to measure. This …

The Local Government Financial Response To Natural Disasters In Kentucky, Lucas Taulbee

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

This study seeks to estimate the effect of disasters on the total receipts and total spending of county governments in Kentucky. In addition to estimating the effects of disasters on total receipts and total spending, this study also seeks to estimate the effects of disasters on specific categories of revenue (taxes, intergovernmental, etc.) and spending (transportation, recreation, general government, etc.). These effects are estimated using data on county budgets for 2007 through 2017 from the Kentucky Department for Local Government (DLG) and data on disaster declarations and public assistance grants from FEMA.

The principle findings of this study suggest that: …

An Analysis Of Kentucky School Activity Fund Requirements For Internal Controls And Segregation Of Duties Compared With National Standards And Requirements In Surrounding States, Marla J. Carnes

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Across the United States, K-12 school systems receive and disburse a significant amount of funds at the school level. These funds are classified as school activity funds and may be broken into two distinct categories: 1) student activity funds and 2) district activity funds. Student activity funds are generally derived from fundraising activities of students to support a particular student group or organization such as the Y-Club, senior class, or student council. District activity funds are generated in the normal course of school business and may include funds such as locker fees, parking permit fees, school picture sales, or vending …

Analyzing The Presence Of State-Run Retirement Plans For Private Sector Employees, Ruthann Froberg

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

State-run retirement plans for non-covered private sector employees are a rapidly growing area of state policy. Since 2010, the majority of states in the U.S. have moved to either examine, enact, or implement these plans. This policy intends to increase private savings in an effort to reduce future reliance on public assistance and Social Security. Despite the current public policy interest, there is a lack of research evaluating the impact of plans or common state characteristics that are associated movement in this policy area. This capstone focuses on answering the latter question. Using state-level demographic, pension, welfare, and policy data, …

Essays On Share Repurchases, David Moore

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

In my first chapter, we document and study the use of Rule 10b5 1 preset repurchase plans. We exploit this new and widespread form of payout to examine an issue at the core of payout decisions—the tradeoff between commitment and financial flexibility. Relative to open market repurchases, preset plans provide an expanded repurchase window and increased legal cover, albeit at the cost of reducing repurchase flexibility and the option to time repurchases. These costs and benefits are significantly associated with Rule 10b5-1 adoption. Consistent with preset plans signaling commitment, Rule 10b5-1 repurchase announcements are associated with greater and faster completion …

Essays On Hedge Fund Trading And Performance, Qiping Huang

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

In the first essay, I create a hedge fund informed trading measure (ITM) that separates information related trades from liquidity driven trades. The results indicate that ITM predicts future stock returns at the trade level, thus is associated with information. By aggregating the most informed trades at the stock level, I find that stocks heavily purchased by informed hedge funds earn a significant alpha. The results indicate that the ITM performs better than some previously documented measures and is robust to two different versions of the measure. The second essay exploits the expiring nature of hedge fund lockups to create …

Conduit Bond Financing Of Local Governments—Perspective From The U.S. And China, Zihe Guo

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

As an alternative way to issue bonds, conduit financing has been widely used by local governments and nonprofit organizations. Conduit financing allows one entity to issue debt on behalf of single or multiple borrowers. In the state of California in the U.S., a local agency is allowed to issue municipal bonds in compliance with law, but can also borrow through a joint powers agency (JPA). In this case, the JPA serves as a conduit. Conduit financing is preferred by local agencies in certain circumstances because it is more convenient or fixed issuance costs can be split between several conduit borrowers …

Brokers And Investment Advisors, Nathaniel Phillip Graham

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

Brokers and investment advisors are a large and important part of the financial industry. Using a novel data set that includes the majority of the financial advisory industry, in this dissertation I document the size of the financial advisory industry and the prevalence of customer complaints in the industry, which I use as a proxy for misconduct. I then test for two potential drivers of advisors’ misconduct: professional standards in the form of fiduciary responsibilities and influence from social networks. I find that variation in fiduciary duties—specifically fiduciary versus suitability standards— does not appear to affect advisors’ propensity for misconduct. …

The Effect Of A Risk-Based Deposit Insurance Program In Korea, Youngil Oh

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Countries introduce a deposit insurance system to prevent bank-run and stabilize the financial market by protecting depositors. However, deposit insurance with a flat-rate system induces the insured banks to take more risky activities, an example of moral hazard. To deal with this problem, the Korea Deposit Insurance Corporation ('KDIC') adopted a Risk-Based Insurance Program ('RBIP ') for the Savings Banks ('SBs') on July 1, 2013, by charging a higher rate for the weak SB s and a lower rate for the healthy SBs. To mitigate the initial drastic impact on the SBs in an economic regression, the KDIC had reduced …

Food Imports Under Foreign Exchange Constraints In The Cfa’S Franc Zone Of Sub-Saharan Africa (Ssa), Seydina Ousmane Sene

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

To respond to the high imported food prices in their domestic markets, net food importing countries in the Communauté Financière Africaine (CFA) zone^[1] are adjusting their import tariffs and homologate domestic prices of imported commodities such as rice, wheat, maize, and sugar. This research uses a multivariate specification of error correction model (VECM) of estimation to investigate the link between food imports, world price index of rice, wheat, maize and sugar, real effective exchange rates, domestic food production, GDP, and trade openness in the short and long run. The data are on each homogenous commodity from 1969 to 2012. …

Essays On The Value Of A Firm’S Eco-Friendliness In The Financial Asset Market, Muhammad S. Ahmadin

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

This dissertation presents three different closely related topics on the value of eco-friendliness in the financial market. The first essay attempts to estimate hedonic stock price model to find a contemporaneous relationship between stock return and firms’ environmental performance and recover the value of investor’s willingness to pay of eco-friendliness. This study follows stock and environmental performances of the 500 largest US firms from 2009 to 2012. The firms’ environmental data come from the Newsweek Green Ranking, both aggregate measures: green ranking (GR) and green score (GS), and disaggregate measures: environmental impact score (EIS), green policy and performance score (GPS), …

Three Essays On Investments, Xin Hong

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

This dissertation consists of three essays on investments. The first essay examines the incidence, determinants, and consequences of hedge fund share restriction changes. This paper finds that nearly one in five hedge funds change their share restrictions (e.g., lockup) over the period of 2007-2012. Share restriction changes are not random. Fund’s asset illiquidity, liquidity risk, and performance are related to share restriction changes. A hazard model indicates that funds who actively manage liquidity concerns live longer by adjusting share restrictions. The paper examines whether changes in share restrictions create an endogeneity bias in the share illiquidity premium (Aragon, 2007) and …

Two Essays On The Low Volatility Anomaly, Timothy B. Riley

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

I find the low volatility anomaly is present in all but the smallest of stocks. Portfolios can be formed on either total or idiosyncratic volatility to take advantage of this anomaly, but I show measures of idiosyncratic volatility are key. Standard risk-adjusted returns suggest that there is no low volatility anomaly from 1996 through 2011, but I find this result arises from model misspecification. Caution must be taken when analyzing high volatility stocks because their returns have a nonlinear relationship with momentum during market bubbles.

I then find that mutual funds with low return volatility in the prior year outperform …

Two Essays On Nonbank Financial Institutions, Di Kang

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

Evidence shows that nonbanks, which are now significant participants in the corporate loan market, exploit information gained from lending to trade in public securities. In the first essay, I examine whether these institutions use loan-based information to facilitate merger and acquisition (M&A) deals. I find that firms are more likely to become targets if they borrow from nonbanks rather than banks. Borrowing from a larger number of nonbanks or from those with a sizeable client network also enhances a firm’s acquisition prospects. When nonbanks gain more information about borrowers through loan amendments or multiple loans, the impact of nonbank lending …

Farm Financial Performance Of Kentucky Farms, Tarrah M. Dunaway

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

This study examines farm financial performance of Kentucky farms using Kentucky Farm Business Management data from 1998-2010. Logit models are used to estimate the likelihood of farm characteristics affecting whether financial ratios fall into critical zones or not. The results show that large farms in terms of total gross returns and total assets are less likely to experience repayment capacity problems. Total gross returns significantly affect all five financial measures. These findings will help farmers and lenders understand what factors influence farm financial performance. Profitability migration is tested to see if the migration probabilities differ across business cycles. Migration drift …