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Colby College

Honors Theses

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Full-Text Articles in Business

The Impact Of Signing Bonuses, Age, And Country On Mlb Success: Evaluating Investment Returns In The Mlb International Amateur Free Agent Market, Elliot Wolf Jan 2024

The Impact Of Signing Bonuses, Age, And Country On Mlb Success: Evaluating Investment Returns In The Mlb International Amateur Free Agent Market, Elliot Wolf

Honors Theses

MLB’s International Amateur Free Agent Market provides teenagers across the world opportunities to sign, develop, and potentially fulfill their dreams of playing in the MLB. It also allows teams to sign players at young ages, increasing the amount of time players can develop within a team’s minor league system. While signing bonus decision-making is backed up by a team’s scouts and data, the signing bonus a player receives is rarely a reflection of their future value. I argue that teams are not spending this money optimally. However, in an environment where players have low acquisition costs and volatile performance outcomes, …


Dynamic Double Auctions: An Analysis Of Secondary Sneaker Market And Its Future As An Nft Marketplace, Chris Zhu Jan 2022

Dynamic Double Auctions: An Analysis Of Secondary Sneaker Market And Its Future As An Nft Marketplace, Chris Zhu

Honors Theses

A theoretical analysis of a dynamic double auction over time shows that greater market density can result in more aggressive trading strategies from buyers and sellers. In addition, my model suggests a fast price discovery period initially, with impatient investors having a more aggressive approach. I confirm these results using resale sneaker data from the StockX website for five deadstock sneakers. I find that market density is positively correlated with bid prices, and the bid-ask spread decreases over time during the price discovery period. However, the results also indicate that sellers price in additional transaction costs and lags in their …


“Green” Marketing In The Apparel Industry: The Spectrum Of Veracity, Stephanie R. Keane Jan 2022

“Green” Marketing In The Apparel Industry: The Spectrum Of Veracity, Stephanie R. Keane

Honors Theses

Apparel companies’ propensity for manipulation in their marketing of environmental initiatives contributes to immense environmental pollution from petrochemical textile material production. Public scrutiny pressures these businesses to adopt “green” initiatives to avoid losing devoted consumers. In some cases, these initiatives disguise the real operations of a company or claim benignity for the company when this is not the reality. Previous business ethics research analyzed the emergence of “greenwashing” in corporations and thus concluded that corporations market themselves as eco-friendly to portray commodification as sustainable. In the form of case studies, this paper scrutinizes four companies: Zara, Patagonia, Lululemon, and Pact. …


‘The Robinhood Effect’ - Digital Technology In Global Financial Markets And Its Effects On Investor Decision Making, Ben Steib Jan 2021

‘The Robinhood Effect’ - Digital Technology In Global Financial Markets And Its Effects On Investor Decision Making, Ben Steib

Honors Theses

We are currently experiencing a revolution that is larger, arguably, than the industrial revolution, it’s the Internet, also known as the World Wide Web. The Internet has transformed how we live — how we talk, how we work, how we go about our daily business, and how we manage our finances on a global and individual level. In the late 1990s, an investor would search the World Wide Web and, within seconds, find 3,372 websites with the term "investment,” today, the same search for “investment” yields 1,860,000,000 results. Today, as proven with GameStop and other popular ‘meme stocks,’ social media, …


Google Search Sentiment And Sector Etf Performance, Andrew J. Williamson Jan 2020

Google Search Sentiment And Sector Etf Performance, Andrew J. Williamson

Honors Theses

This paper utilizes data from Google searches in an attempt to utilize online investor sentiment as a predictor of sector exchange traded fund (ETF) performance. The paper tests the assumptions of the Efficient Market Hypothesis that all known information about a stock is incorporated into the price of the stock. With the emergence of ETFs as a popular form of investment for casual investors, there is a possibility that these investors may use Google as a way to collect information about potential stock picks. Thus, this paper investigates the association between online search interest and excess ETF returns by collecting …


Arts Education: A Philanthropic Priority?, Clare Murray Jan 2018

Arts Education: A Philanthropic Priority?, Clare Murray

Honors Theses

Through restricted donations, donors to private, independent not-for-profit US art museums are able to affect the prioritization of museum activities. Using annual data from museums’ Form 990s and AAMD survey responses, I test whether restricted giving affects a museum’s educational programming by analyzing the effect of restricted assets on education department performance indicators. I find that a percentage point increase in permanently restricted assets as a proportion of total assets is associated with a 0.1876 percentage point increase in education expenses as a share of total expenses. Through qualitative informational interviews, I recognize this impact as evidence that arts education …


Defensive Ability And Salary Determination In Major League Baseball, Christopher B. Shorey Jan 2016

Defensive Ability And Salary Determination In Major League Baseball, Christopher B. Shorey

Honors Theses

The process of salary determination in Major League Baseball (MLB) includes multiple levels of bargaining power and performance determinants. Previous studies of MLB salary determination have used a variety of measures of player performance. This paper examines the effect defensive ability has on salary determination for arbitration eligible players and for free agent players. Specifically, it will analyze player salary/contract data negotiated during the 2012-2015 period along with performance data from past seasons to examine the extent to which fielding percentage, errors, and the more recently developed measures of defensive ability affect player salary. Particular attention is paid to matching …


Global Reach, Local Markets: The Challenges Of Leading Global Innovation, Sarah Higgins Jan 2016

Global Reach, Local Markets: The Challenges Of Leading Global Innovation, Sarah Higgins

Honors Theses

This Global Studies honors thesis addresses how managers and leaders of global firms manage innovation across multiple markets. Current research on multinational corporations provides an understanding of different kinds of innovation and the ways to attend to multiple markets. However, there is less documentation of how these innovation strategies are actually implemented on the ground and the tensions that these efforts might produce. Therefore, my research focuses in particular on the challenges and tensions faced by leaders of global firms as they implement transnational innovation strategies. This study is based upon in-depth interviews with 20 participants who held positions in …


Market Microstructure And Abnormal Returns: An Analysis Of Nyse And Sgx Securities, Alex Ng Jan 2015

Market Microstructure And Abnormal Returns: An Analysis Of Nyse And Sgx Securities, Alex Ng

Honors Theses

This paper investigates the differences in the abnormal returns of securities in the context of the earnings announcement in both the United States (NYSE) and Singapore (SGX) markets[1]. Despite the similarities between both exchanges, there exist two key market microstructure differences: the free float factor (i.e. the portion of listed share capital that is freely traded on the market) and lot size (i.e. the minimum number of shares that an investor can trade in a single transaction). While the difference in the lot size can be attributed to the intrinsic institutional differences between both exchanges, the involvement of …


The Chinese Social Enterprise: A Global Phenomenon With Chinese Characteristics, Amanda Jingtong O'Malley Jan 2014

The Chinese Social Enterprise: A Global Phenomenon With Chinese Characteristics, Amanda Jingtong O'Malley

Honors Theses

Social entrepreneurship, a concept that integrates business strategies with achieving social goals, is gaining traction in China. However, it is a distinctly Chinese variant of an approach exported by Western entrepreneurs. The purpose of this thesis to is analyze the Chinese social enterprise by identifying China’s socioeconomic and political forces that create the unique environment in which this trend is taking root. By examining how these factors are changing in China’s progressively more market economy, I conclude that key characteristics of the Chinese social enterprise are also shifting in response—moving from a civil society- originated model to a market‐based social …


Stock Markets And Household Wealth: Can A Stock Market Crash Cause A Recession In The U.S. Economy?, Ishan Singh Jan 2008

Stock Markets And Household Wealth: Can A Stock Market Crash Cause A Recession In The U.S. Economy?, Ishan Singh

Honors Theses

Stock market wealth effects on the level of consumption in the United States economy have been constantly debated; there is evidence for arguments for and against its prominence and its symmetry. This paper seeks to investigate the strength of its negative effect by creating models to analyze unexpected shocks to the Standard and Poor's 500 index. First, a transmission mechanism between the stock market and GDP is established through the use of second-order vector autoregressive models. Following which, theory from the life cycle model and adaptations of previous researchers' models are used to create a structural model. This paper finds …