Business Commons^™

Local Ipos And Retail Investor Trading, Guanhuan Wang

Doctoral Dissertations

This paper examines how salient events affect retail investors’ trading behavior. Using data on households’ trading records from a large discount broker between 1991 and 1996, I find that Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) significantly increase the trading activities of local retail investors of stocks in the same industry over the subsequent year. The effect is stronger for less sophisticated investors and investors who live closer to the IPO firm’s headquarters, consistent with salience as the channel. I also find that retail investors are net buyers of stocks right after the local IPOs and become net sellers after a year and …

Hospital-Physician Integration And Physician Collaboration: Implications For Care Efficiency And Outcomes, Hui Jia

Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis focuses on healthcare operations management and consists of two essays that investigate empirically how the relationship between physicians and hospitals and the relationship between peer physicians, respectively, affect clinical care outcomes and care efficiency.

In the first essay, I study hospital-physician integration as a type of organization-service provider relationship. Many prior studies have provided insights into the benefits of a tight collaboration between hospitals and physicians. However, neutral and even negative effects of this relationship on healthcare performance have been observed and discussed in the literature. This mixed evidence points to a need for further study to elucidate …

Kitchen Invasion: Restaurants’ Business Model Innovations During The Covid-19 Crisis, Jaewoo Jung

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation explores how and why firms facing the same exogenous threats react differently, leading to different business model innovation (BMI) processes. I examine BMI in a context that has been hard-hit by COVID-19 pandemic restrictions—the restaurant industry. Employing a mixed-method research design, I conducted a longitudinal, inductive comparative case study of 17 restaurateurs in the same geographic region to explore how they have responded to the pandemic and how their BMI unfolded over time. To generalize my understanding of these processes, I then analyzed large-scale media data about the restaurant industry using topic modeling. In this quantitative analysis, I …

Playing The Game: Video Games And Video Game Streaming Platforms As Marketing Communication Channels, Roman Welden

Doctoral Dissertations

While video games are generally viewed as a form of entertainment for a small subset of people, in reality they provide a channel for nearly 3.2 billion people to interact with others and offer multiple pathways for marketers to interact with consumers. Pair this alongside 140 million unique consumers who consumer nearly 24 billion hours of content on video game streaming platforms (VGSPs), such as Twitch, and there is a deep need for marketers to understand how to engage consumers in these environments. This dissertation provides a conceptualization of the video game ecosystem as well as the types of influencers …

The Unexplored Impacts Of Communication Elements In Marketing, Can Trinh

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation includes two essays that examine how the use of different marketing communication approaches influences consumers. In the first essay, I propose that the use of human silhouettes, when compared to images of attractive human models, enhances marketing communication effectiveness by reducing the extent to which consumers experience self-threat when viewing an ad. In addition, I predict this effect holds for appearance-related products only and strengthens as consumers’ level of appearance-related self-esteem decreases. Five studies reported in this essay provide converging evidence in support of these expectations.

In the second essay, I investigate into how the use of puns …

Optimal Stocker Production Strategies For Spring And Fall Calving Cow Herds, Cora Beth Key

Masters Theses

This thesis consists of two chapters discussing the economics of raising stocker beef cattle in the southeast United States. The objective of the first chapter is to estimate supplemental feed cost for spring-calving cows, spring-born stockers, cows calving in the fall, and fall-born stockers, while considering the seasonality of forage production and nutritional needs. The chapter explores ways producers can lower their feed costs and demonstrates the importance of managing hay expenses for cattle producers to control cost. The objective of chapter two is to determine the profit-maximizing stocker period in an integrated cow-calf and stocker operation with both fall- …

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 …

“It's Like You're Trying To Get A Meeting With The Pope”: A Narrative Inquiry On Experiences Of Social Work Field Staff Establishing Field Placements In Sport, Lauren Beasley

Doctoral Dissertations

Social work in sport is a growing subspecialty of social work practice. However, there is limited research on the training of social work students to work in a sport setting. As field education is considered the signature pedagogy of social work education, more insights are needed on social work field internships in sport organizations. To fill this gap in the literature, the purpose of this narrative inquiry was to understand social work field staff's narratives of their experiences establishing sport-specific field placements through their lived stories. The study was guided by three research questions: (1) What narratives do social work …

Shareholder Beware? Examining Nol Poison Pill Adoptions, Danielle Stanley

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines whether or not a specific and unilateral action taken by the board of directors, the adoption of a net operating loss (NOL) poison pill, promotes shareholder interests, by examining the factors that are influential in the adoption decision. NOL poison pill adoptions are unique in that the board of directors cites the need to protect a firm’s ability to use its NOL carryforwards in the future, rather than to protect the firm from a specific takeover threat. To address my research question, I examine the firm characteristics associated with NOL poison pill adoptions and find that the …

Do Big 4 Auditors Provide Higher Audit Service Quality Than Second-Tier Auditors In Small And Mid-Sized Initial Public Offerings?, Stefan K. Slavov

Doctoral Dissertations

Big 4 auditors perform most audits of companies that issue initial public offerings (IPOs). Regulators have expressed interest in increasing IPO audit market competition and a growing body of evidence suggests that Second-Tier auditors could provide IPO audit service quality comparable to that of Big 4 auditors. However, there exists limited empirical evidence on whether IPO audit service quality varies with auditor type. I investigate whether IPO audit service quality differs between Big 4 and Second-Tier auditors for a sample of small and mid-sized IPOs from 2005 through 2019. I find that Big 4 clients are associated with lower pre-IPO …

Effects Of Economic Development Status And Eco-Product On Consumption Values: From The Perspective Of Us Consumers, Mostafa Zaman

Doctoral Dissertations

Consumers select a product based on numerous product characteristics. Numerous studies conducted earlier revealed that consumers in developing countries preferred products made in western or developed countries because their product quality is better than the quality of local products (Lee & Nguyen, 2017; Dao & Heidt, 2018; Rodrigo et al., 2019). Moreover, consumers are increasingly concerned about manufacturers’ environmental issues. Although ethical consumers believe that eco-products could save the environment, some consumers are not concerned about the eco-products and thus select products based on other product attributes (Joshi & Rahman, 2015). Hence, it becomes very challenging for retailers to select …

Fintech Lending In Consumer Credit Market During Risky Times: Evidence From The Marketplace Lending Platforms, Miaoyin Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation uses evidence from Marketplace Lending (MPL) platforms to examine how newly emerged Fintech lending performs during risky times. In the first chapter, I use the COVID-19 pandemic as a setting to examine the role of marketplace lending (MPL) as an alternative credit provider during a long-term and market-wide economic crisis. Using data from LendingClub, I find that marketplace lenders extend more credit to counties with larger COVID-19 exposure, as measured by its local economic impact and an area’s infection rate. This relation is more prominent in areas with fewer banks, suggesting that marketplace lenders fill borrowing needs in …

Wingcups: Product Launch Digital Marketing Strategy, Sean M. Dolan

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Improving The Quality Of Life In Low-Income Countries, Anita Bhasin

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Public Accounting Firm Statement Analysis: A Predictive Model To Identify Semantic Criteria To Enhance Firm Discussion Addressing Racial Injustice, Courtney Rochelle Lam

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

The Faceid Canine Door Business Plan, Oliver Maxwell Martins

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.