Business Commons^™

Two Essays On The Effects Of Organization Capital On Firm Behavior, Andrew Root

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

A growing stream of finance literature involves measuring the effects of organization capital (“OC”) on investment decisions, financial policy, and firm value. Li, Qui & Shen (2018) use the exogenous event of a merger or acquisition to determine whether high OC acquirers perform better. We extend the OC literature by considering economic policy uncertainty (“PU”)(Baker, Bloom & Davis, 2016), which is also exogenous to the firm, to determine the effect of OC on firms in the face of PU. Univariate tests show that high OC firms take more investment risk, have lower leverage, higher cash, lower total shareholder payouts, and …

Two Essays On Investor Attention, Investor Sentiment, And Earnings Pricing, Qiuye Cai

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

This dissertation proposes novel direct measures for both firm-level and market-level investor attention and investor sentiment and provides new empirical evidence on the effects of investor attention and investor sentiment on earnings pricing.

The first essay proposes novel direct measures for both market-level and firm-level attention using user activity data from StockTwits.com. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first direct measure of market-level attention. By measuring market-level and firm-level attention separately, I am be able to not only distinguish between attention allocated on market level and firm level but also detach attention from equilibrium outcomes. I document …

Three Essays On Ceo Characteristics And Corporate Decisions, Trung Nguyen

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Recent studies have stressed the importance of managerial fixed effects on firm investment decisions. Following this stream of research, this dissertation empirically investigates the potential effects of two major Chief Executive Officer (CEO) characteristics, i.e. risk preferences and potential mobility, on corporate decisions such as merger and acquisition (M&A) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) investments.

Essay 1 examines whether the variation of M&A stock returns around the 2008 financial crisis is associated with shareholders’ increased loss aversion as a result of undergoing financial losses. The results show that acquisitions carried out by CEOs with risk-averse inducing compensation (inside debt) before …