Business Commons^™

An Analysis Of Corporate Social Responsibility And Real Earnings Management, Rachel Brassine

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Real earnings management (REM) is costly in the form of intense loan restrictions, increased interest expense, and public scrutiny. Nevertheless, companies still practice REM. Based on agency and stakeholder theories, this research predicts that as a company’s CSR score increases, REM will decrease, and this association will become more negative when a critical mass of females on the board of directors exists and when a board-level CSR committee is present. This study also predicts that when a company offers an executive incentive plan based on CSR metrics, REM will decrease, and the relationship will become more negative with a critical …

Utilizing New Technologies To Measure Therapy Effectiveness For Mental And Physical Health, Jonathan Ossie

Dissertations

Mental health is quickly becoming a major policy concern, with recent data reporting increasing and disproportionately worse mental health outcomes, including anxiety, depression, increased substance abuse, and elevated suicidal ideation. One specific population that is especially high risk for these issues is the military community because military conflict, deployment stressors, and combat exposure contribute to the risk of mental health problems.

Although several pharmacological approaches have been employed to combat this epidemic, their efficacy is mixed at best, which has led to novel nonpharmacological approaches. One such approach is Operation Surf, a nonprofit that provides nature-based programs advocating the restorative …

A Probabilistic Exploration Of Food Supplementation And Assistance, Logan Mattingly

Honors College Theses

Food insecurity is a stark threat that grips our country and affects households throughout our country. Dietary insufficiency manifests itself in ways that affect health and public safety. According to researchers, individuals who suffer from food insecurity have a higher risk of aggression, anxiety, suicide ideation and depression. These problems tend to occur unequally distributed among those households with lower income. In this work, an exploratory analysis within these data sets will be performed to examine the socio-economic, biographical, nutritional, and geographical principal components of food insecurity among survey participants and how the US Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) effects …

Performance Classification Of Ornstein-Uhlenbeck-Type Models Using Fractal Analysis Of Time Series Data., Peter Kwadwo Asante

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation aims to assess the performance of Ornstein-Uhlenbeck-type models by examining the fractal characteristics of time series data from various sources, including finance, volcanic and earthquake events, US COVID-19 reported cases and deaths, and two simulated time series with differing properties. The time series data is categorized as either a Gaussian or a Lévy process (Lévy walk or Lévy flight) by using three scaling methods: Rescaled range analysis, Detrended fluctuation analysis, and Diffusion entropy analysis. The outcomes of this analysis indicate that the financial indices are classified as Lévy walks, while the volcanic, earthquake, and COVID-19 data are classified …

An Assessment Of "Long-Thin" Airline Routes: Network Structure And Emissions Implications For Environmental Policy, Porter Burns

All Master's Theses

The purpose of this research was to define, map, and quantify the network and environmental implications of “long-thin” routes (LTRs) – a route structure that has been discussed in the aviation industry but not formally studied in literature. LTRs were defined through the use of global OAG scheduling data from 1998 to 2018 to identify trends in air traffic growth and network dynamics. Flights were separated into seven aircraft class sizes (e.g., 75–150 seats, 150–225 seats) to measure LTRs at multiple scales. Routes were considered “long” if the stage length was at or above the 75^th percentile in each …

Impacts Of Covid-19 On Industrial Growth In The United States, Emily G. Warthman, Charles J. Landis

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

COVID-19 has caused massive ramifications on all parts of life in the world and industry growth/decline is not immune to it. This report will analyze nine different industries’ profit and revenue from quarterly data during the years 2009-2022. Forecast models will be generated using various methods and different techniques of validating to predict the values from Q2 2020- Q4 2022 based on historical data. After which, a comparison will be conducted between those predicted values to the actual average revenue and profit generated by order of greatest error percentage made. Thorough research will then be completed to determine if there …

Estrategia De Aprovechamiento De Oportunidades Comerciales Del Café Colombiano En La Asean, Ana María Quiza Torres

Finanzas y Comercio Internacional

El café es uno de los productos más valiosos y valorado en el mundo, ya que este ha sido foco de diversas investigaciones gracias a los beneficios y productos los cuales se pueden crear a base de café. Teniendo en cuenta esto, el presente trabajo se plantea la investigación del sector cafetero entre Colombia y la ASEAN, buscando identificar una estrategia la cual se puede aplicar para lograr una cooperación cafetera entre Colombia y la ASEAN. Para esto se busca determinar, las fortalezas y debilidades que tenemos frente a la ASEAN, identificando así los mejores factores en base fortalecimiento de …

Towards Structured Planning And Learning At The State Fisheries Agency Scale, Caleb A. Aldridge

Theses and Dissertations

Inland recreational fisheries has grown philosophically and scientifically to consider economic and sociopolitical aspects (non-biological) in addition to the biological. However, integrating biological and non-biological aspects of inland fisheries has been challenging. Thus, an opportunity exists to develop approaches and tools which operationalize planning and decision-making processes which include biological and non-biological aspects of a fishery. This dissertation expands the idea that a core set of goals and objectives is shared among and within inland fisheries agencies; that many routine operations of inland fisheries managers can be regimented or standardized; and the novel concept that current information and operations can …

Portfolio Optimization Analysis In The Family Of 4/2 Stochastic Volatility Models, Yuyang Cheng

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Over the last two decades, trading of financial derivatives has increased significantly along with richer and more complex behaviour/traits on the underlying assets. The need for more advanced models to capture traits and behaviour of risky assets is crucial. In this spirit, the state-of-the-art 4/2 stochastic volatility model was recently proposed by Grasselli in 2017 and has gained great attention ever since. The 4/2 model is a superposition of a Heston (1/2) component and a 3/2 component, which is shown to be able to eliminate the limitations of these two individual models, bringing the best out of each other. Based …

Public Acceptance Of Medical Screening Recommendations, Safety Risks, And Implied Liabilities Requirements For Space Flight Participation, Cory J. Trunkhill

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The space tourism industry is preparing to send space flight participants on orbital and suborbital flights. Space flight participants are not professional astronauts and are not subject to the rules and guidelines covering space flight crewmembers. This research addresses public acceptance of current Federal Aviation Administration guidance and regulations as designated for civil participation in human space flight.

The research utilized an ordinal linear regression analysis of survey data to explore the public acceptance of the current medical screening recommended guidance and the regulations for safety risk and implied liability for space flight participation. Independent variables constituted participant demographic representations …

Understanding Consumers' Use Experience On Electrically Heated Jacket: A Study On Online Review Using Topic Modeling, Md Nakib-Ul Hasan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The demand for heated jackets is anticipated to be fuelled by frequent temperature drops, severe winter weather, and increasing outdoor activities. Electrically heated jackets (EHJ) are primarily marketed through online distribution channels and expansion of online sales channels is expected to boost the global market. Consumers are increasingly relying on online reviews from other consumers to help them decide what to buy. Businesses also actively monitor and manage their online reviews to build trust in their brand and make it more likely that customers will buy. Traditional approaches for assessing customer behavior, such as market research surveys and focus groups, …

An Analysis Of Weighted Least Squares Monte Carlo, Xiaotian Zhu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Since Longstaff and Schwartz [2001] brought the amazing Regression-based Monte Carlo (LSMC) method in pricing American options, it has received heated discussion. Based on the research done by Fabozzi et al. [2017] that applies the heteroscedasticity correction method to LSMC, we further extend the study by introducing the methods from Park [1966] and Harvey [1976]. Our work shows that for a single stock American Call option modelled by GBM with two exercise opportunities, WLSMC or IRLSMC provides better estimates in continuation value than LSMC. However, they do not lead to better exercise decisions and hence have little to no effect …

Sparse Model Selection Using Information Complexity, Yaojin Sun

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation studies and uses the application of information complexity to statistical model selection through three different projects. Specifically, we design statistical models that incorporate sparsity features to make the models more explanatory and computationally efficient.

In the first project, we propose a Sparse Bridge Regression model for variable selection when the number of variables is much greater than the number of observations if model misspecification occurs. The model is demonstrated to have excellent explanatory power in high-dimensional data analysis through numerical simulations and real-world data analysis.

The second project proposes a novel hybrid modeling method that utilizes a mixture …

A Machine Learning Approach To Stochastic Optimal Control, Pablo Ever Avalos

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Merton's portfolio optimization problem is a well-renowned problem in financial mathematics which seeks to optimize the investment decision for an investor. In the simplest situation, the market consists of a risk-less asset (i.e. a bond) that pays back a relatively low interest rate, and a risky asset (i.e. a stock) that follows a geometric Brownian motion. The optimal allocation strategy of the investor's wealth is found by optimizing the expected utility along the stochastic evolution of the market. This thesis focuses on several different applications of this optimization problem. We look at pre-constructed analytical solutions and showcase the results. We …

How Blockchain Solutions Enable Better Decision Making Through Blockchain Analytics, Sammy Ter Haar

Information Systems Undergraduate Honors Theses

Since the founding of computers, data scientists have been able to engineer devices that increase individuals’ opportunities to communicate with each other. In the 1990s, the internet took over with many people not understanding its utility. Flash forward 30 years, and we cannot live without our connection to the internet. The internet of information is what we called early adopters with individuals posting blogs for others to read, this was known as Web 1.0. As we progress, platforms became social allowing individuals in different areas to communicate and engage with each other, this was known as Web 2.0. As Dr. …

Forecasting Razorback Baseball Game Outcomes, Austin Raabe

Information Systems Undergraduate Honors Theses

Despite the disappointing end to the 2021 Arkansas Razorback baseball year, the team’s success provided hog fans something to look forward to next season. While they will be without the 2021 Golden Spikes Award winner, Kevin Kopps, and four All-SEC team selections, the 2022 roster has promising new and returning talent. With fifty percent of the players who played significant time last year coming back (minimum ten hits or ten innings pitched), the arrival of several impact transfers from major conferences, and a recruiting class ranked in the top five according to Perfect Game, there is reason to believe that …

Intraday Algorithmic Trading Using Momentum And Long Short-Term Memory Network Strategies, Andrew R. Whitinger Ii

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Intraday stock trading is an infamously difficult and risky strategy. Momentum and reversal strategies and long short-term memory (LSTM) neural networks have been shown to be effective for selecting stocks to buy and sell over time periods of multiple days. To explore whether these strategies can be effective for intraday trading, their implementations were simulated using intraday price data for stocks in the S&P 500 index, collected at 1-second intervals between February 11, 2021 and March 9, 2021 inclusive. The study tested 160 variations of momentum and reversal strategies for profitability in long, short, and market-neutral portfolios, totaling 480 portfolios. …

Statistical Applications To The Management Of Intensive Care And Step-Down Units, Yawo Mamoua Kobara

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis proposes three contributing manuscripts related to patient flow management, server decision-making, and ventilation time in the intensive care and step-down units system.

First, a Markov decision process (MDP) model with a Monte Carlo simulation was performed to compare two patient flow policies: prioritizing premature step-down and prioritizing rejection of patients when the intensive care unit is congested. The optimal decisions were obtained under the two strategies. The simulation results based on these optimal decisions show that a premature step-down strategy contributes to higher congestion downstream. Counter-intuitively, premature step-down should be discouraged, and patient rejection or divergence actions should …

Análisis De Los Días De Mora Para La Cartera De Un Producto Financiero En Colombia, Una Aproximación A Partir De Las Series De Tiempo (2013 - 2018), Eleny Kottaridis Fernandez

Economía

La morosidad sobre la cartera de consumo evidencia un patrón que debe ser considerado en la toma de decisiones de las entidades financieras para una adecuada administración del riesgo crediticio teniendo en cuenta su alta volatilidad. En efecto, un desempeño económico desfavorable relacionado con algunos sectores financieros, las bajas tasas de crecimiento económico y mayores niveles de desempleo, incrementa la probabilidad del incumplimiento de las obligaciones de los hogares debido a la menor capacidad de pago por la reducción de sus ingresos. De acuerdo con estos impactos, las entidades financieras necesitan contar con mecanismos para abordar el pronóstico sobre el …

Realtime Event Detection In Sports Sensor Data With Machine Learning, Mallory Cashman

Honors Theses and Capstones

Machine learning models can be trained to classify time series based sports motion data, without reliance on assumptions about the capabilities of the users or sensors. This can be applied to predict the count of occurrences of an event in a time period. The experiment for this research uses lacrosse data, collected in partnership with SPAITR - a UNH undergraduate startup developing motion tracking devices for lacrosse. Decision Tree and Support Vector Machine (SVM) models are trained and perform with high success rates. These models improve upon previous work in human motion event detection and can be used a reference …

Exploring Cyberterrorism, Topic Models And Social Networks Of Jihadists Dark Web Forums: A Computational Social Science Approach, Vivian Fiona Guetler

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This three-article dissertation focuses on cyber-related topics on terrorist groups, specifically Jihadists’ use of technology, the application of natural language processing, and social networks in analyzing text data derived from terrorists' Dark Web forums. The first article explores cybercrime and cyberterrorism. As technology progresses, it facilitates new forms of behavior, including tech-related crimes known as cybercrime and cyberterrorism. In this article, I provide an analysis of the problems of cybercrime and cyberterrorism within the field of criminology by reviewing existing literature focusing on (a) the issues in defining terrorism, cybercrime, and cyberterrorism, (b) ways that cybercriminals commit a crime in …

Estimating The Statistics Of Operational Loss Through The Analyzation Of A Time Series, Maurice L. Brown

Theses and Dissertations

In the world of finance, appropriately understanding risk is key to success or failure because it is a fundamental driver for institutional behavior. Here we focus on risk as it relates to the operations of financial institutions, namely operational risk. Quantifying operational risk begins with data in the form of a time series of realized losses, which can occur for a number of reasons, can vary over different time intervals, and can pose a challenge that is exacerbated by having to account for both frequency and severity of losses. We introduce a stochastic point process model for the frequency distribution …

Containing Compounding Container Congestion, Curtis Salinger

CMC Senior Theses

The Covid-19 pandemic caused major disruptions throughout the container shipping supply chain. Professor Dongping Song of Liverpool University wrote a paper discussing the logistical vulnerabilities in the supply chain, including the issue of congestion in ports. This paper examines the Port of Los Angeles from 2018-2021 as it relates to Song’s paper to see how its operations were impacted during the Covid-19 timeframe. It is found that labor shortages, chassis shortages, and change in trade behavior each contributed to the congestion. Unfortunately, the implemented policies were insufficient to bolster the port against sustained challenges and congestion continues to worsen.

Finding The Best Predictors For Foot Traffic In Us Seafood Restaurants, Isabel Paige Beaulieu

Honors Theses and Capstones

COVID-19 caused state and nation-wide lockdowns, which altered human foot traffic, especially in restaurants. The seafood sector in particular suffered greatly as there was an increase in illegal fishing, it is made up of perishable goods, it is seasonal in some places, and imports and exports were slowed. Foot traffic data is useful for business owners to have to know how much to order, how many employees to schedule, etc. One issue is that the data is very expensive, hard to get, and not available until months after it is recorded. Our goal is to not only find covariates that …

Integration Of Blockchain Technology Into Automobiles To Prevent And Study The Causes Of Accidents, John Kim

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Automobile collisions occur daily. We now live in an information-driven world, one where technology is quickly evolving. Blockchain technology can change the automotive industry, the safety of the motoring public and its surrounding environment by incorporating this vast array of information. It can place safety and efficiency at the forefront to pedestrians, public establishments, and provide public agencies with pertinent information securely and efficiently. Other industries where Blockchain technology has been effective in are as follows: supply chain management, logistics, and banking. This paper reviews some statistical information regarding automobile collisions, Blockchain technology, Smart Contracts, Smart Cities; assesses the feasibility …

Modeling And Solving The Outsourcing Risk Management Problem In Multi-Echelon Supply Chains, Arian A. Nahangi

Master's Theses

Worldwide globalization has made supply chains more vulnerable to risk factors, increasing the associated costs of outsourcing goods. Outsourcing is highly beneficial for any company that values building upon its core competencies, but the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and other crises have exposed significant vulnerabilities within supply chains. These disruptions forced a shift in the production of goods from outsourcing to domestic methods.

This paper considers a multi-echelon supply chain model with global and domestic raw material suppliers, manufacturing plants, warehouses, and markets. All levels within the supply chain network are evaluated from a holistic perspective, calculating a total …

Stock Markets Performance During A Pandemic: How Contagious Is Covid-19?, Yara Abushahba

Theses and Dissertations

Background and Motivation: The coronavirus (“COVID-19”) pandemic, the subsequent policies and lockdowns have unarguably led to an unprecedented fluid circumstance worldwide. The panic and fluctuations in the stock markets were unparalleled. It is inarguable that real-time availability of news and social media platforms like Twitter played a vital role in driving the investors’ sentiment during such global shock.

Purpose:The purpose of this thesis is to study how the investor sentiment in relation to COVID-19 pandemic influenced stock markets globally and how stock markets globally are integrated and contagious. We analyze COVID-19 sentiment through the Twitter posts and investigate its …

Statistical Analysis Of 2017-18 Premier League Match Statistics Using A Regression Analysis In R, Bergen Campbell

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

This thesis analyzes the correlation between a team’s statistics and the success of their performances, and develops a predictive model that can be used to forecast final season results for that team. Data from the 2017-2018 Premier League season is to be gathered and broken down within R to highlight what factors and variables are largely contributing to the success or downfall of a team. A multiple linear regression model and stepwise selection process is then used to include any factors that are significant in predicting in match results.

The predictions about the 17-18 season results based on the model …

Retail Trading And Stock Volatility: The Case Of Robinhood, Cooper Jones

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

We examine the relation between Robinhood usership and stock market volatility. We show that daily fluctuations in Robinhood usership, which is used to proxy retail trading, significantly influence various measures of volatility. These results might suggest that Robinhood users contribute to noise trading as they are generally individuals trading on name recognition, media coverage, popularity, and familiarity of products, rather than on fundamental values. In our empirical approach, we find that the percentage increase in Robinhood usership Granger causes increases in daily stock volatility.

Cointegration And Statistical Arbitrage Of Precious Metals, Judge Van Horn

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

When talking about financial instruments correlation is often thrown around as a measure of the relation between two securities. An often more useful or tradeable measure is cointegration. Cointegration is the measure of two securities tendency to revert to an average price over time. In other words, cointegration ignores directionality and only cares about the distance between two securities. For a mean reversion strategy such as statistical arbitrage cointegration proves to be a far more reliable statistical measure of mean reversion, and while it is more reliable than correlation it still has its own problems. One thing to consider is …