Business Commons^™

Personal Bankruptcy And The Accumulation Of Shadow Debt, Bronson Argyle, Benjamin Iverson, Taylor Nadauld, Christopher Palmer

Faculty Publications

Compiling new liability-level data from the balance sheets of personal bankruptcy filers, we document that a sizable share of reported liabilities are “shadow debt,” debt not reported to credit bureaus that often arises from the non-payment of goods and services. We use this new data to evaluate how debtor cash flows affect when consumers file for bankruptcy and how much debt they have at bankruptcy. We find that filers respond to a quasi-exogenous $100 increase in monthly cash flows by delaying filing by an average of one month and by increasing unsecured indebtedness by $4,000 in the months preceding filing. …

Were There Fire Sales In The Rmbs Market?, Craig B. Merrill, Taylor Nadauld, René M. Stulz, Shane M. Sherlun

Faculty Publications

Many observers have argued that the fall in RMBS prices during the crisis was partly caused by fire sales. Using a unique dataset of RMBS transactions for insurance compa- nies, we show evidence supportive of a role, at the transaction level, of forced sales that occurred at discounted prices relative to fundamentals, and find that the RMBS market behaved as a whole as would be expected in the presence of fire sales. We show that risk- sensitive capital requirements and mark-to-market accounting can jointly create incentives for financial institutions subject to adverse capital shocks to sell stressed securities.

Market Predators, Lauren Cohen, Karl B. Diether, Christopher Malloy

Faculty Publications

We find evidence of predatory trading in the corporate bond market. Exploiting novel data on the short selling behavior of institutional investors, we demonstrate that short sellers target those bonds likely to experience the largest negative events in the future: bonds about to be downgraded to junk status, and specifically those held by insurance companies and other institutions that are required to liquidate when bonds fall to junk status. We show that shorting in these bonds predicts large negative returns, which largely reverse over the next year. Short sellers’ trading activity is premeditated: they build up large short positions in …

Small And Medium Scale Firms Financing Strategies In Nigeria, Anthony Ogochukwu Chukwu

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Past studies highlighted that small and medium scale enterprises contributions to nations’ economy have been minimal due to their inability to access the sufficient funds for their operations. The challenge is that small business owners lack the right strategies to raise finances required for business operations. The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences of small and medium scale enterprise owners in raising of finances from lending institutions. The conceptual framework emphasized the concepts of business environment, financing institutions, knowledge, and experience of small business owners as related to small and medium scale enterprise funding. The research …

The Effects Of Foreign Direct Investment On Gender Inequality In Uganda, Peter Oogu

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Abstract Gender inequality is one of the greatest global development challenges. In the developing countries, including those in Sub-Saharan Africa, work-place gender inequality hinders the emancipation of women. The purpose of this quantitative study was to analyze the effects of foreign direct investment on gender inequality in the Ugandan private sector. Chabot and Duyvendak’s transnational diffusion theory and Becker’s theory of economic discrimination formed the theoretical foundation for the study. The research questions dealt with the relationship between foreign direct investment and the percentage of female workers, the percentage of women in leadership positions, and the gender wage gap in …

Bending The Investment Advisers Act's Regulatory Arc, Joseph A. Franco

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

The Investment Advisers Act of 1940 (“IAA”) and its regulatory purview have changed dramatically over the life of the statute. The statute began as a simple registration scheme with barebones conduct integrity prohibitions for wealth managers and purveyors of investment newsletters. Although the statute’s original minimalist cast was deficient, the IAA’s regulatory scope has undergone a fundamental transformation, both in terms of the expanding class of advisers covered by the statute’s substantive provisions and the statute’s expansive structural integrity requirements. Over a span of decades, the IAA’s focus has been reoriented so that it is directed at least as much, …

Performance Measurements On Concession Periods To Forecast Water Infrastructure Investment Returns, Reyneck Buthani Magudu Khoza

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Public-private-partnership stakeholders in South Africa are inconsistent in applying performance measurements to optimize concession period agreements for water infrastructure development and drive infrastructure financial value at postconcession termination. The purpose of this qualitative e-Delphi study was to assess consensus among 17 public-private-partnership experts on the best practice within the South African context for using performance measurements to optimize concession period agreements for water infrastructure development and drive infrastructure financial value at postconcession termination. The research question pertained to their level of consensus. Determination and analysis of the concession period conceptual model that illustrates how to achieve benefits of the concession …

Strategies For Mitigating Voluntary Employee Turnover In Small Businesses, Eric Regneco Gant

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractVoluntary employee turnover costs businesses significant resources in training and recruitment. An employee’s voluntary turnover could cost small business owners $3,000 to $10,000 in training and recruitment costs and reduce company performance, profitability, and competitive advantage. Grounded in Vroom’s expectancy theory of motivation, the purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies that owners of small businesses in the eastern United States use to mitigate voluntary employee turnover. Data were collected from semistructured telephone interviews with five small business owners with at least three years of experience mitigating voluntary employee turnover. Data were analyzed using Yin’s five-step approach. …

Visual Presentation Of Mirr And Mnpv Calculations, Tom Arnold, Joseph Farizo

Finance Faculty Publications

Project cash flows and modified cash flows are presented in an illustrative graphic within Excel for the live or virtual classroom. Further, the graphic computes and displays the relevant modified internal rate of return (MIRR) and modified net present value (MNPV), with associated formulas. The presentation allows for a discussion of the reinvestment assumption attributed to the internal rate of return (IRR) and the net present value (NPV) calculations.

Crummer Suntrust Portfolio Recommendations: Crummer Investment Management [2021], Ryan Abronski, Louis Charpentier, Hannah Johnson, David Baldock, Austin Hieb, Luiggi Reno, Shawn Hudson, Eric Necamp, Brandon Carlin, Jackson Pliska, Jacob Carroll

Crummer Truist Portfolios

SunTrust endowed this portfolio to provide scholarships for future Crummer students and to give current students a practical, hands-on learning opportunity. This year, we are pleased to be able to award $50,000 in scholarships. We are extremely grateful for SunTrust’s generosity and investment in higher education. We have all learned a great deal from this experience and the responsibility of managing real money.

Our first challenge is to establish a portfolio position that takes advantage of economic opportunities while avoiding unnecessary risk and conforming to the Crummer SunTrust Investment Policy Statement (IPS). We are also tasked by the IPS to …

Tracking School-To-Work Transition Among The Youth In The Philippines, Futoshi Yamauchi, Marites Tiongco

DLSU Business & Economics Review

This paper examines wage variations and turnovers using a unique tracking survey data of Filipino youth who were initially sampled at Grade 6. The analysis also uses mathematics and English test scores at Grade 6 to proxy for cognitive abilities. The empirical results show that returns to education and ability increase with labor market experience and occupational upgrading. The study highlights the importance of academic achievements, measured by both years of schooling completed and academic test scores, in upgrading occupations of youth to realize higher returns in the labor market, even though many youths often start with irregular and undesirable …

Effects Of Advance Refunding Municipal Bonds After The U.S. Tax Cuts And Jobs Act, Sarah Curry

Doctor of Business Administration Dissertations

The process when U.S. municipalities retire callable bonds early and refinance them with bonds of a lower coupon rate is called advance refunding. The advance refunding of debt is a widespread practice in municipal finance; however, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 removed the option to keep this debt tax-exempt and now requires municipalities to convert from tax-exempt to taxable. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the impact eliminating advance refunding of municipal debt into tax-exempt status has on the municipality’s advance refunding decision making process, specifically at the state level. Municipal governments are still …

Effect Of Servant Leadership On Job Satisfaction In Nigerian Mortgage Banks, Adedayo Aderemi Olatunbode

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractSeveral researchers examined the relationship between servant leadership and job satisfaction in organizations and reported a significant positive correlation between the two variables. However, the generalizability of these results was limited because 97% of the studies were conducted in the West and China, and none were conducted in Nigeria or in mortgage banks. The purpose of this nonexperimental, quantitative, correlational study was to examine the relationship between servant leadership and job satisfaction in a high-power distance culture, specifically in the mortgage bank industry in Nigeria. The theoretical frameworks were the leader-member exchange theory and motivation-hygiene theory. The research questions addressed …

Relationship Between Working Capital Management, Strategies, And Performance Of Nigerian Manufacturing Firms, Ayebainasuoton Francis Alagoa

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Many Nigerian manufacturing firms have faced working capital management anomalies due to concerns of balancing profitability and liquidity that led to most business failures. To remain competitive corporate managers and business leaders of manufacturing firms need to operate optimally in working capital by understanding the association between working capital management (WCM), working capital strategy (WCS), and performance. Using the cash conversion cycle theory as the linchpin, the purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to examine the relationship between WCM, WCS, and performance. The study utilized secondary financial data spanning 2014 to 2018 from a random sample of 54 publicly …

Retrospective And Forecasting Analysis Of Increased Long Term Care Demand In Niagara, Breanne Alissa Hines

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

A problem exists within the Canadian healthcare system as many patients experience longer lengths of stay (LOS) in acute care (AC) and complex care (CC) beds within hospitals because of a lack of long term care (LTC) facilities. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the extra days patients wait for placement and assess the benefits of increasing the number of LTC beds. The theoretical framework used was the four-level model of the health care system. Research questions involved 2017-2019 data for the number of LTC beds required to eliminate waits and evaluate beds needed in the future. This …

Honors Research Project Goodyear Business Suggestion, Drew Hodgson, Seth Gwirtz, Isabel Hartzler, Heather Kriston, Savannah Novak

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Our project takes on the task of evaluating the current market of the tire industry in todays pandemic. We are taking our findings to the local company Goodyear, and supplying suggestions to their firm in order to help their bottom line going forward. At the end of this, we will propose to Goodyear a solution within their firm on whether to pivot, expand, or downsize their current operations.

Less Commute Miles. Decreased Tire Wear. What Would You Do?, Dylan Schwarz, Brendon M. Ford, Brandon D. Hadinger, Abbie N. Pearce, Jacinta M. Pikunas

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

With the flagrant recognition of the coronavirus as one of those most impactful viruses in the history of the world, it is important to study how the effects of such a disease can create troublesome ripple effects in the world. Covid-19 has caused the death of hundreds of thousands of individuals and has negatively impacted the lives of American’s all across the country during the nationwide lockdown. Decreased work commuters, minimal road travel, and little need for car repairs hit the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company hard. The University of Akron has teamed up with Goodyear to explore such effects …

Organizational And Financial Considerations Of Inter-District School Of Choice On One Small District In The Detroit Metropolitan Area, Lori Lucas

Wayne State University Dissertations

The research study investigated the organizational and financial structure of a school district that participated in inter-district school of choice. The goal was to see if choice, resident and non-resident, had any influence on these structures. The literature that I reviewed highlighted the various organizational and funding mechanisms that school districts need to account for when considering options such as school of choice. This research study was conducted on a smaller scale compared to studies that have been completed on a grander scale. The goal of this study was to review the organizational and financial changes that districts make to …

Mapping The Knowledge Of Islamic Accounting Studies On Shariah Audit: A Bibliometric Analysis, Luqman Hakim Handoko, Sepky Mardian

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The issues of shariah audit appeared more than three decades ago along with the progress of the Islamic financial industries. But it is challenging to obtain a study explaining the current state of shariah audit research to date. Therefore, it is necessary to assess the research on the Shariah audit. Thus, this study aimed to analyze and visualize the current state of shariah audit using a bibliometric approach. The bibliometric analysis was conducted by using VOSviewer software. To fulfill this goal, the keywords such as shariah audit, shariah auditing, and its variations were searched from the Scopus database. The articles …

Are Monthly Market Returns Predictable?, Jussi Keppo, Tyler Shumway, Daniel Weagley

Faculty Publications

We document significant persistence in the market timing performance of active individual investors, suggesting that some investors are skilled at timing. Using data on all trades by active Finnish individual investors over almost 15 years, we also show that the net purchases of skilled versus unskilled investors predict monthly market returns. Our results lend credibility to the view that market returns are predictable, without having to specify which variables active investors use to successfully time the market.

Portfolio Construction Under Group Risk Parity Strategy In The Stock Exchange Of Thailand, Warintorn Sornpradit

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Risk parity strategy has been commonly applied to construct a portfolio with multiple asset classes. For single asset class, group risk parity is introduced such that risks from each group are equally contributed. This study investigates and compares performances of group risk parity strategy in Thai market under two different grouping methods which are sector and size with non-group risk parity, minimum-variance, and equal-weight strategies. The study mainly focus on two periods which are during 2016-2020 and in years with highly volatile down market. The analysis indicates that there is no clear evidence that group risk parity strategy outperforms others …

Deterring Algorithmic Manipulation, Gina-Gail S. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

Does the existing anti-manipulation framework effectively deter algorithmic manipulation? With the dual increase of algorithmic trading and the occurrence of “mini-flash crashes” in the market linked to manipulation, this question has become more pressing in recent years. In the past thirty years, the financial markets have undergone a sea change as technological advancements and innovations have fundamentally altered the structure and operation of the markets. Key to this change is the introduction and dominance of trading algorithms. Whereas initial algorithmic trading relied on preset electronic instructions to execute trading strategies, new technology is introducing artificially intelligent (“AI”) trading algorithms that …

Stock Market Volatility And Business Cycle: Exploring Cross-Country Spillovers, Nufazil Altaf

DLSU Business & Economics Review

This study explores the impact of the financial crisis on the relationship between stock market volatility and the business cycle. In addition, the possible spillover effects within a cross-country framework are also examined. The study is based on secondary macroeconomic data of monthly frequency for the time period of 1991:01 to 2012:12. Bivariate and multivariate causality techniques are used to arrive at results. Results of the study provide fresh evidence for the existence of strong bidirectional causality between stock market volatility and the business cycle for all sample countries. In fact, this bidirectional causality was found to be strong when …

The Prospect Of Indonesian Government Retail Sukuk: From The Perspective Of Sharia Financial Knowledge, Education, And Behavior, Fajri Adrianto

DLSU Business & Economics Review

As a source of government financing, the Indonesian government’s retail Sukuk is still not as popular as conventional government bonds. The Indonesian government has issued serial retail Sukuks with the code SR to get funds from retail investors, especially those concerned with Sharia values. Sharia financial literacy is expected to determine the success of this Sukuk. This study fills the gap of previous research on financial literacy by investigating the Sharia financial literacy in the investment decision. This study investigates the descriptive analysis of Sharia financial literacy in Indonesia and its relationship with the prospect of retail Sukuk issued by …

Reinforcing The Role Of Intellectual Property In The Battle Against The Pandemic: The Vowel Framework, Daniel S. Hofilena

DLSU Business & Economics Review

The intellectual property (IP) system plays a vital role in public health crises as everyone should have access to medicines and equipment to protect themselves. Thus, the State can utilize the system for the greater good. An IP-centric approach can be summarized using the simple letters of the vowels: Awareness – for the populace to respect IP rights, they must first be educated as to its value; Enforcement – for infringers to be discouraged, IP holders should have an avenue for the easy enforcement of their rights; Incentivize – for businesses to be encouraged to invest in certain forms of …

Analyst Non-Gaap Reporting: When Do Equity Analysts Adjust Gaap Earnings – An Application Of Text Based Firm Complexity, Patrick Chen

CMC Senior Theses

Equity analysts adjust GAAP earnings to report non-GAAP figures that they believe better represent a firm’s current and future performance. The importance of such non-GAAP(street) figures has been determined and accepted by the literature, but the process in which analysts arrive at such figures is less understood. I apply a newly defined measure of firm complexity using text based analysis of firm annual reports and investigate its effect. When complexity increases, it becomes harder to individuate different components of a system. When that system is a firm, complexity then increases the difficulty in determining an accurate measure of performance. The …

Diversifying Investment Portfolios With Collectible Sneakers: Expected Returns And Benefits Of Diversification, Samuel Soo

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis seeks to identify if collectible sneakers can provide diversification benefits to an investor’s portfolio. Using data from a global collectible sneaker marketplace, StockX, I constructed an index to compare it with other traditional assets, including the S&P 500 index and 5-year US Treasury Bills. By calculating key metrics including expected returns, volatility, and correlation, I analyzed the risk-return characteristics of the collectible sneaker asset class compared to other traditional asset classes. From the data analysis I performed, I found that collectible sneakers did not outperform returns significantly compared to traditional asset classes, but had low correlations, which provides …

Spac Success Factors: Determinants Of Post-Acquisition Share Price Growth, Cade Moffatt

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines characteristics of Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) as determinants of post-acquisition success. I collected data on all SPACs which merged with a target firm between 2016 and the start of 2021. The data set controls for a host of variables including the contractual design of the SPAC, management team characteristics, founder compensation structure, key underwriter data, and performance metrics measured throughout the SPAC’s lifecycle. Using a multivariable regression, I find new and robust insights into the SPAC market. Contrary to current literature, I conclude that the misaligned incentives caused by the initial at-risk capital supplied by founders …

Don’T Get Screwed: What Factors Determine The Inclusion Of J. Crew Blockers?, Michael Sill

CMC Senior Theses

A “J. Crew Maneuver” is a type of collateral-stripping event that transfers the value of a nearly insolvent company from the lender to the borrower. This concept matters to lenders because it exposes them to significant downside risk through the loss of hundreds of millions of pledged collateral. While credit analysts and debt lawyers have commented on the importance of preserving creditor value ex ante through lender-protective clauses embedded within debt documents, this paper breaks ground on empirically studying the determinants of these protective clauses known as “J. Crew Blockers”. I hypothesize that private equity backing, a contractionary credit environment, …

Zoom In, Class Out: An Event Study On Publicly Traded Ed Tech Firm Valuations During Covid-19, Matiss Ozols

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines how publicly traded Ed Tech firms reacted to negative announcements regarding COVID-19. Using an event study method, I document how an international portfolio of Ed Tech firms react across multiple event windows. The results show that Ed Tech firms reacted positively to the announcement of the first US death and negatively to the World Health Organization’s declaration that COVID-19 was a pandemic. Additionally, differences in geographical location did not impact cumulative abnormal returns across event windows. Finally, firm-specific characteristics such as volatility and financial leverage had little or no significance on stock returns.