Business Commons^™

Socially Responsible Investment In A Changing World, Desheng Wu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Socially responsible investment funds make up a growing segment of the investment world. This work considers the impact of including SRI in an investor portfolio both normally and during crisis times. Regimes are identified using Markov switching models. This study is based on return data of four indices, namely, the MSCI World Index, S&P 500, Eurostoxx 50, and the socially responsible index - Advanced Sustainable Performance Index (ASPI). The approaches used are portfolio optimization, GARCH and Markov switching models. Our work shows that a socially responsible index is a good asset to keep in a portfolio. Our simulation results suggest …

The Smartest "Guise" In The Room: Why America Is Doomed To Repeat An Enron-Like Scandal, Shayne Reddington

Honors Theses

There is no question that Enron has brought change to the landscape surrounding business practices both domestically and globally. After the Emon Scandal occurred, Congress passed a very controversial and groundbreaking legislative act known as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act as a means of stopping the conditions that made this widespread scandal possible. There are several reasons why another Emon-type Scandal is prone to repeat itself in the near future. One of the reasons is that Sarbanes-Oxley is not the perfect bill. Although the controversial Sarbanes-Oxley is a valiant effort to reform the environment that fostered Enron, there are major gaps and …

Does Money Matter? Investigating The Financing Of Emerging Firms, Casey Frid

All Dissertations

In this dissertation I investigate start-up financing by nascent entrepreneurs in the United States between 2005 and 2010. By nascent entrepreneur, I mean individuals who are in the process of creating a new business, but the business itself is not yet affecting prices and quantities in the market. Nearly all research on financing has focused on established firms. Little work, however, has been done on how entrepreneurs acquire and use financial resources during the earliest stages of the firm creation process. The availability of financial resources has been linked to firm growth and survivability, and understanding how entrepreneurs use and …

Feasibility Study For Building A Tasting Room In Napa Valley, Trevor Mitchell

Agribusiness

This study was undertaken to determine if it would be financially feasible for Altamura Winery to build and operate a wine tasting room in Napa Valley over the course of a 30 year period.

This report used a feasibility study to examine the investment of the tasting room. The study used the cost approach of valuation to value the construction costs. Then capital budgeting was used as a method to determine if the tasting room should be constructed. The capital budgeting methods of this study include the use of a cash flow budget, break-even analysis, and a net present value …

Ownership Structure, Board Characteristics, And Tax Aggressiveness, Ying Zhou

Theses & Dissertations

Tax aggressiveness, as commonly proxied by the effective tax rate (ETR), measures a firm’s effort spent on minimizing its tax payments. It is suggested that more tax aggressive firms have greater incentives to allocate resources to minimize taxes and thus have lower ETRs. Corporate governance has been continuously receiving attention in literature across different fields and can affect a firm’s tax strategy through its control mechanism. This thesis investigates how corporate governance influences a firm’s tax aggressiveness. The main hypothesis of this thesis is whether firms with good corporate governance will have less incentives and opportunities to manage tax aggressively. …

Life Planning For Nfl Players, Ryan Pedersen

CMC Senior Theses

With players in the National Football League (NFL) making what seems to be the most money out of any entry-level position, it might come as a shock to many people to hear that so many players end up in financial distress afterwards. Sports Illustrated has put this number at 78% of players filing for bankruptcy or are in serious financial trouble within only two years of leaving the league (Torre).

The problems that the players run into are their short careers, which average 3 ½ years, their poor financial decisions and their very optimistic approach to life. The 3 ½ …

Effect Of Lockup Agreements On Buyout Backed Initial Public Offerings, Grant B. Heffernan

CMC Senior Theses

Using a sample of 279 buyout backed firms, I examined the effect of lockup agreements on the firm’s stock returns. I found there to be a negative .8 percent cumulative abnormal return for the three-day period surrounding lockup expiration. Consistent with my hypothesis the CAR for the three-day period surrounding lockup expiration was less negative for buyout backed IPOs compared to venture capital backed IPOs. In addition, I found there to be an abnormal 24.24 percent increase in trading volume for the three days surrounding lockup expiration.

An Analysis Of The Effects Of The Probability Of Informed Trading (Pin) On Corporate Diversification Discount And Ceo Pay-Performance Sensitivity : Evidence From China, Man Jin

Theses & Dissertations

This thesis includes estimating the probability of informed trading, PIN, developed by Easley, Kiefer and O’Hara (1996, 1997a, 1997b), for a large sample of listed firms in China from 2002 to 2008, and I use PIN to explore two independent research questions in corporate finance.

First, the probability of informed trading is applied to explain the discount in value for firms with diversified business operations. Although aiming to increase firm value, the corporate diversification decision usually results in a firm value discount, for a variety of reasons, one of which is the transparency problem. My study directly tests the relation …

The Influence Of Budget Allocation By Function On Student Retention Of Public Community Colleges In The Sixteen States In The Southern Region Education Board, Clayton Clendenin Burton

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Stakeholders of higher education expect a positive return for their investment. One of the measures of success for higher education is persistence; one of the measures of persistence is retention rate. One segment of higher education, community colleges, receives a significant outlay of public resources in terms of government appropriations, student financial aid, and individual investment. This study follows the framework of Ryan (2004) and Gansemer-Topf and Schuh (2006) who successfully created models using the allocation of financial resources to predict graduation and retention rates for four-year colleges. Using data from the U. S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education …

Psychological Correlates Of Investor Risk, John Laurin Vaughn

Theses Digitization Project

The present study explores the efficacy of a standardized psychological test known as Rotter's Internal/External Locus of Control Scale in predicting investor's level of risk aversion.