Business Commons^™

Quran & Capitalism: The Compliance Of Income Share Agreements With Shari'ah, Kamil Fadel

Honors Program Theses

Income share agreements (ISAs) are a necessary option to finance higher educations. ISAs eschew fixed payments for the flexibility of income based repayments between a student and an investor. ISA contracts stipulate that, in return for educational financing, a student promises a percentage of their future income for an agreed upon time frame. Should the student not possess sufficient income, their obligations are $0.00. Among the fastest growing financial sectors is Islamic financing. Islamic finance abhors gambling, deception, and usury and upholds the public good as its ultimate aim. As Islamic finance grows globally, an opportunity to offer shari’ah compliant …

Succession; A Business Strategy, Jan Miller, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Farm Systems and Economics published reports

Plan, Prepare, Prosper - workshop

This document is part of the Plan, Prepare, Prosper program that was developed under the Pilot of Drought Reform Measures ('the pilot'), a joint initiative between the Australian Government and the Western Australian Government. The program aims to support farmers and rural communities to prepare for drought, climate variability and other challenges.

The Succession planning: A business strategy workshop will help participants to begin and maintain the succession planning process.

This workshop will guide you through the process of exploring, planning and enacting succession planning.

Please use this manual as a checklist to help you …

International Diversification Into Emerging Equity Markets: Perspective Of U.S. Investors, Ki C. Han, Sukhun Lee, David Y. Suk, Hyun Mo Sung

School of Business: Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this study, we examine whether investing in emerging markets is indeed beneficial to U. S. investors. The results we find in this study are not so encouraging for U. S. investors. First, the change in currency exchange rate weakens the benefit of overseas investment to U. S. investors. Second, the correlations between the U. S. market and the emerging markets have been steadily rising during the sample period. Third, most of these emerging equity markets scored lower Sharpe Ratios than the U. S. equity market. Fourth, we find that the emerging market and its currency market move in the …

Factors Predicting Profitability Of Enterprises Funded By Microfinance Institutions In Burkina Faso, Fulgence Kabore

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In sub-Saharan Africa, only 13% of new businesses show profitability and survive beyond start-up. Such a low rate of success has an adverse impact on the region economy as small and medium enterprises comprise 90% of African businesses. Understanding the cause of business failure can help existing and new entrepreneurs to focus on factors that may help to overcome barriers to business growth and increase entrepreneurs' chances of success. The purpose of the correlation study was to examine the relationship between business ownership characteristics, resources and professional management, timing, and profitability. The resource-based theory served as the theoretical lens for …

Strategies Mortgage Loan Executives Need To Prequalify Mortgage Loan Applicants, Clement Olutayo Ogunyemi

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The mortgage industry played a major role in the recession faced by the U.S. economy in 2008, with approximately 8.8 million borrowers, or 10.8% of all homeowners, with negative equity in their homes. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies mortgage loan executives use to prequalify mortgage loan applicants. The target population consisted of 8 mortgage executives at 5 mortgage lending firms located in northwest Arkansas who demonstrated strategies to enhance the prequalification of mortgage loan applicants. The conceptual framework for the study was the theory of asymmetric information. In-depth, face-to-face interviews were conducted and the …

Creating An Ethical Organizational Environment In Banking, Svenja Nitsche

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

An ethical organizational environment ensures a trustworthy organization. This case study explored strategies that banking managers in the United Arab Emirates used to create an ethical organizational environment, one that emphasized the inclusion of ethical values, moral principles, and commitment to society. The target population included senior managers who created and implemented strategies to ensure employees adopted the ethical values in pursuit of an ethical environment. Ethical climate theory provided the conceptual framework for this study. Interviews with 5 managers and company documentation contributed the data for this research. Data were analyzed following inductive investigation and case description. Connecting corporate …

Factors Affecting Student Loan Default In Proprietary Non-Degree Granting Colleges, Samuel Hanson Kelley

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The significant problem addressed in this research was the increasing default rate among federal student loan borrowers who attended non-degree-granting proprietary colleges in Florida (i.e., career and technical colleges). The purpose of this study was to identify, better understand, and predict which borrower characteristics increased the likelihood of student loan default at proprietary non-degree-granting colleges. The research was based on the structural-functional and planned behavior theories and utilized a quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional design to explore the relationship between academic success, age, college graduation status, ethnicity, gender, high school class ranking, and federal student loan default. Self-reported data were obtained from …

Marital Status Of Executives And Company Performance, Ilona Day

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This research paper explores differences in company performance levels, as measured by selected company fundamentals and annual return, with regard to the marital status of top executives, specifically the chief executive officer and the chief financial officer. It examines whether the differences in firm performance are determined by the marital status of the respective business executive. Groups of never married, married, and divorced executives are compared against each other to establish if and how the company performance changes between these groups. Summary statistics of the examined variables in conjunction with the results of the simple and multiple regression analyses indicate …

Too Big To Fool: Moral Hazard, Bailouts, And Corporate Responsibility, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

Domestic and international regulatory efforts to prevent another financial crisis have been converging on the idea of trying to end the problem of “too big to fail”—that systemically important financial firms take excessive risks because they profit from success and are (or at least, expect to be) bailed out by government money to avoid failure. The legal solutions being advanced to control this morally hazardous behavior tend, however, to be inefficient, ineffective, or even dangerous—such as breaking up firms and limiting their size, which can reduce economies of scale and scope; or restricting central bank authority to bail out failing …

Controlling Systemic Risk Through Corporate Governance, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

Most of the regulatory measures to control excessive risk taking by systemically important firms are designed to reduce moral hazard and to align the interests of managers and investors. These measures may be flawed because they are based on questionable assumptions. Excessive corporate risk taking is, at its core, a corporate governance problem. Shareholder primacy requires managers to view the consequences of their firm’s risk taking only from the standpoint of the firm and its shareholders, ignoring harm to the public. In governing, managers of systemically important firms should also consider public harm. This proposal engages the long-standing debate whether …

Benchmark Regulation, Gina-Gail S. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

Benchmarks are metrics that are deeply embedded in the financial markets. They are essential to the efficient functioning of the markets and are used in a wide variety of ways—from pricing oil to setting interest rates for consumer lending to valuing complex financial instruments. In recent years, benchmarks have also been at the epicenter of numerous, multi-year market manipulation scandals. Oil traders, for example, deliberately execute trades to drive benchmarks lower artificially, allowing the traders to capitalize on the manipulated benchmarks. This ensures that later trades relying on the benchmarks will be more profitable than they otherwise would have been. …

Financial Analysis With Artificial Neural Networks Short-Term Stock Market Forecasting, Andrew Linzie

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Excerpt from Introduction

Seldom reward is absent from risk, and stock markets are a prime example. Stock markets across the world are viewed as profitable and risky at the same time. Companies have made a business out of forecasting these markets. Quantitative analysis companies use mathematicians, financial analysts, and computer scientists to compete in the stock market. The old days of floor trading have progressed towards high-frequency trading with supercomputers housed within the exchange. For example, the New York Stock exchange has created regulations for these companies so that there’s competitive equality. The computer’s power, length of cable to the …

Hedge Fund Boards And The Market For Independent Directors, Christopher P. Clifford, Jesse A. Ellis, William C. Gerken

Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise Working Papers

We provide the first examination of hedge fund boards and their directors. The majority of directorships are held by extremely busy independent directors. These directors are sought after by funds because they have more reputational capital at stake, making them independent and credible monitors whose presence can certify fund quality to investors. Busy independent directors are more likely to be hired by high quality funds, and their departure from the board is associated with investor withdrawals. Moreover, funds with busy independent directors are less likely to commit fraud, abuse discretionary liquidity restrictions, or engage in performance-based risk shifting.

Banking On It: Investment Banks As The Next Step For Impact Investing, Mitchell Laferriere

Social Space

For their size, investment banks have comparatively little to do with the rising practice of impact investing: They make up only nine per cent of all the assets under management (AUM) in the impact investment industry. That totals about US$1 trillion in investments in an US$11 trillion market.

Stock Returns And Industrial Production: A Sectoral Analysis, Griffin Lazarus

CMC Senior Theses

This paper analyzes the relationship between stock returns and future industrial production growth rates from 1926-1940. It replicates the work of Fama (1990) and Schwert (1990) with the intent to see if the relationship continues to hold using sector data. Furthermore, this paper focuses on the 1926-1940 sample period to explore how the relationship is affected by the stock market crash of 1929. It is expected that the relation will be weak for the industry sectors experiencing strong growth prior to the crash. The results indicate that the relationship between stock returns and future industrial production growth rates persists on …

Market Capitalization And Firm Value: The Size Factor, Rajiv.Issar Issar

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Current multifactor valuation pricing models use size (measured by market capitalization) of a firm as one factor to determine the value of a security. The problem with current standard models was that none of them could explain the value of a security consistently and accurately based on current factors and in particular the size factor. The purpose of this quantitative study using existing time-series data over a 10-year period from 2006 to 2015 was to examine the impact of size factor on the realized rate of return of financial securities, while controlling for the impact of market rate of return. …

Growth Capital Strategies For Defense Industry Women-Owned Small Businesses, Karen Renee Butler

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Access to growth capital, a critical factor for growing a successful, sustainable business, is a challenge for women-owned small businesses. Following the resource based theory, the purpose of this multiple case study was to explore what capital growth strategies 6 small women-owned business leaders in the defense industry in Dayton, Ohio used to ensure business sustainability beyond the initial start-up period of 1 year. Data were collected through semistructured interviews and company documents. Methodological triangulation, member checking, reflexivity, and an audit trail were used to strengthen credibility and trustworthiness. Based on thematic analysis of the data, emergent themes included growth …

Implementation Variables Of Corporate Social Responsibility In The Financial Services Industry, Gregoire Kokomo

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Abstract

Seventy percent of small and medium-sized U.S. companies experience negative performance because of leaders' lack of knowledge of corporate social responsibility (CSR) program implementation. CSR implementation is complex and requires organizational resources such as expertise, personnel, time, and money. Implementing CSR programs is challenging for many leaders. Research on CSR implementation in the U.S. financial services industry is scarce, and leaders of financial services firms do not have a clear understanding of how to make CSR implementation successful. The purpose of this study was to explore optimal strategies for making corporate social responsibility program implementation effective. The central research …

Benchmark Regulation, Gina-Gail S. Fletcher

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Benchmarks are metrics that are deeply embedded in the financial markets. They are essential to the efficient functioning of the markets and are used in a wide variety of ways-from pricing oil to setting interest rates for consumer lending to valuing complex financial instruments. In recent years, benchmarks have also been at the epicenter of numerous, multi-year market manipulation scandals. Oil traders, for example, deliberately execute trades to drive benchmarks lower artificially, allowing the traders to capitalize on the manipulated benchmarks. This ensures that later trades relying on the benchmarks will be more profitable than they otherwise would have been. …

Improving Hiv Outcomes In Pakistan : The Interaction Between Politics, Power And Implementation, Hina Khalid

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

HIV contributes to the highest number of deaths from infectious diseases in low-income countries. In this three-paper dissertation, using the case of Pakistan, I focus on understanding how the exercise of power by actors at three different levels of the health system, individual, program and societal, influences policy implementation and shapes HIV program outcomes. The objective is to improve HIV service provision thereby achieving improved health policy outcomes. I adopt a mixed-methods approach and use quantitative (logit regression) and qualitative techniques (content analysis of newspapers and semi-structured interviews). One paper tests the role played by network operators in influencing condom …

Are Capital Market Parameters Estimated From Yahoo Finance And Nasdaq Data The Same?, Ronnie Clayton, Bill Schmidt

Research, Publications & Creative Work

Empirical studies need good data sources; yet such data sources are expensive; either in the time that is dedicated to gathering information or in the actual funds expended to obtain user friendly databases such as those provided by Wharton Research (wrds.) at the University of Pennsylvania. Many authors must expend the time to obtain data because funding is not available to obtain more expensive databases. The question then becomes "Which publicly available data source should one use or are the data obtained from different publicly available sources the same?" This study compares parameters estimated from daily returns for a sample …

Market Adaptation To Regulation Fair Disclosure: The Use Of Industry Information To Enhance The Informational Environment, Susana Yu, Gwendolyn Webb

Department of Accounting and Finance Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Our fundamental research interest is in exploring the ways in which the financial markets have adapted to Reg FD, and our particular focus is on how market participants use industry information embedded in firms’ earnings announcements. We find that announcements of quarterly earnings made by companies that are the first in their industry to report in a given quarter have significant effects on the stock returns of other firms in the same industry as well as on their own stock returns. We then test the implications of these findings for their effects on the information environment. Overall, our empirical findings …

Athletes Quality Of Life After Retirement, Kevin Estrada

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

Professional athletes have had a long life of being able to compete in the sport they love. Once retried, most athletes quality of life worsens. Injuries and the dramatic change from competing sets up a former athlete for adversity. Most people believe that athletes are privileged individuals that earn too much money for the work they do. However, consequences such as bankruptcy, depression, and even suicide points otherwise.

●The findings show that although athletes might have a gifted early life the quick change in lifestyle sets them up for failure. Also I agree that former athletes have a worse quality …

Ipo Ready? Illuminating The Dark Box Of Private Equity, Tyler Gregory Cornellier

Honors Theses and Capstones

The use of public equity data can help combat the challenges private equity funds currently face regarding data availability. The goal is to create a model to provide guidance to both investors and entrepreneurs in the decision-making process. The data gathered would provide insight on how close a private company is to a successful Initial Public Offering (IPO). The idea is that a model, showing the average financial metrics of companies within certain industries during an IPO, can provide new perceptiveness as to how the private company is performing.

Indian Microfinance Sector: A Case Study, Sean P. Gillon

Honors Theses and Capstones

In developing areas of the world with very little economic structure, many activities are not monetized. In other words, money is not used to carry out these tasks because the people in these areas do not have the expendable funds required. In order to combat this problem, micro financing has become increasingly more apparent in these areas of distress. Microfinance is an economic development strategy that allows for those in need to borrow actual money in order to start a business, go to school, or even gain access to everyday living requirements. Microfinance has made tremendous strides over the years, …

Does Aggregated Returns Disclosure Increase Portfolio Risk Taking?, John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian

Faculty Publications

Many experiments have found that participants take more investment risk if they see less frequent returns, portfolio-level returns (rather than each individual asset’s returns), or longhorizon (rather than one-year) historical return distributions. In contrast, we find that such information aggregation treatments do not affect total equity investment when we make the investment environment more realistic than in prior experiments. Previously documented aggregation effects are not robust to changes in the risky asset’s return distribution or to the introduction of a multiday delay between portfolio choice and return realizations.

A Strategic Approach To Life Planning, R Henry Migliore

Migliore Collection

The purpose of this book is to help people develop a long-term life plan to achieve their dreams for their lives. My hope is to stir a vision or dream and then to provide a means by which that dream may be achieved.

Graduate Bulletin, 2017-2018, Minnesota State University Moorhead

Graduate Bulletins (Catalogs)

No abstract provided.

State Funding And Its Impact On University Funding, Andrew Wolfgang Doppstadt

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Managing Energy Price Risk Using Futures Contracts: A Comparative Analysis, Jim Hanly

Articles

This paper carries out a comparative analysis of managing energy risk through futures hedging, for energy market participants across a broad dataset that encompasses the largest and most actively traded energy products. Uniquely, we carry out a hedge comparison using a variety of risk measures including Variance, Value at risk (VaR), and Expected Shortfall as well as a utility based performance metric for two different investor horizons; weekly and monthly. We find that hedging is effective across the spectrum of risk measures we employ. We also find significant differences in both the hedging strategies and the hedging effectiveness of different …