Business Commons^™

Policy Frameworks And Citizens’ Use Of Fintech Solutions: The Pros And Cons In Egypt, Salma Al-Mohamady

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of the significant influence of financial technology (FinTech) on the banking industry, consumer finance, and economic growth. It specifically concentrates on the swiftly changing FinTech environment in Egypt. The study investigates the impact of incorporating advanced technologies on worldwide financial practices, which has significantly transformed traditional banking models and facilitated the emergence of inventive financial services. The transition is clearly apparent in Egypt, where the expansion of FinTech has been driven by advances in regulations, adaptation to technology, and a population that is becoming more comfortable with digital solutions.

Using a combination of quantitative …

Using Hybrid Machine Learning Models For Stock Price Forecasting And Trading., Ahmed Khalil

Theses and Dissertations

Trading stocks of publicly traded companies in stock markets is a challenging topic since investors are researching what tools can be used to maximize their profits while minimizing risks, which encouraged all researchers to research and test different methods to reach such a goal. As a result, the use of both fundamental analysis and technical analysis started to evolve to support traders in buying and selling stocks. Recently, the focus increased on using Machine learning models to predict stock prices and algorithmic trading as currently there is a huge amount of data that can be processed and used to forecast …

Consumers' Acceptance To Buy And Dispose Of Recycling Textile Products, Roa Alsayed

Theses and Dissertations

The textile industry is the second most polluting worldwide, following food manufacturing. It is one of the industries that is rarely scrutinized in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This work analyzes the fashion industry from the perspective of consumer attitudes towards the purchase and disposal of clothing, and their behavior with regards to old garments. The study was conducted in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, two countries that achieved similar results in the fashion industry. The methodology is divided into three phases. First, the manuscript begins with a review of topics such as sustainability, consumer behavior in the …

Valuing Circularity: Sustainable Finance With Real Options Methodology, Mostafa Alloub

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents an enhanced framework for valuing circular investments based on the Value Hill model using real options analysis. We propose a new flexible numerical methodology for valuing circularity using the Least Squares Monte Carlo simulation (LSMC) method of Longstaff and Schwartz (2001). The Value Hill model of circularity represents the course followed by the value of an asset, specifically after primary use. To validate the efficiency of our model, we conduct an empirical study on the smartphone business using the case of Apple. Results of our empirical analysis show that investing in circularity enhances financial value. Our model …

Assessing Adoption Barriers Of Sustainable Packaging In Egypt, Carol Ramses Morgan

Theses and Dissertations

Sustainable packaging has become an essential part of business decisions and corporate directions. With the rise of environmental damages due to improper waste management and unsustainable practices, businesses have a major responsibility to analyze their products’ life cycles and redesign them with sustainability in mind. Applying sustainable packaging could save companies large amounts of resources, therefore cutting costs, while also achieving the legal and social duty as a corporation towards society and the environment. Many developing countries, with specific focus on Egypt, have recently focused on legislative and corporate decisions in order to encourage more sustainable practices. Egypt’s new Waste …

Is Esg A Determinant Of Banks’ Resilience And Growth Everywhere? A Response From An Ai-Aided Approach, Mohamed Elklawy

Theses and Dissertations

There are many calls for banks to expand their contribution to the transition towards a sustainable world by sponsoring initiatives that promote the United National Sustainable Development Goals. This role is more materialized in developing countries as banks are the key source of funding; thus, they have the power of money to mutate the DNA of businesses to operate responsibly with respect to the surrounding environment and society. Various studies consider the reflection of adopting sustainable approaches by banks, though focusing on developed countries who took the initiative to lead this change. As the banks in developing countries try to …

An Examination Of The Determinants Of Ease Of Doing Business: Perspectives From World Economies, Omar Eldarawy

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis’ purpose is to explore the correlation between Ease of Doing Business sub-scores and the overall Ease of Doing Business score. The study includes a detailed quantitative study into the previously mentioned relationship. The Ease of Doing Business sub-scores comprise of scores representing starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, and resolving insolvency. This is conducted via a series of diagnostic tests to identify an appropriate regression model. These tests include the Hausman Test, RESET Test, and Breusch-Pagan Test. Based on the tests, …

The Effect Of Esg On Indices’ And Firms’ Performance. A Global And An Egyptian Context., Demiana Abdelmalak

Theses and Dissertations

Over the years, ESG (environmental, social, and governance) investing has been increasingly adopted by the financial markets. In this paper, we aim to study the effect of ESG on Indices’ and Firms’ performance using Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) Indices as a global reference and Egypt’s indices as a national reference. We also study the effect of ESG scores on the Egyptian Firms’ performance over the past 16 years using econometrical models and Fama- French Five Factors Model. Our research shows mixed results which are aligned with the existing literature review. However, one can conclude that there is a positive …

Third Mission Accelerator Labs (Tmals): An Exploratory Study On The Strategic Evolution Of Sustainability In University-Business Incubators (Ubis), Abdalla Hassanein

Theses and Dissertations

Globally, higher education institutions (HEIs) are devoting rising resources in order to remain competitive, impactful and attractive within the ever-changing socio-economic developments and to well position and communicate their value among their stakeholders (Lafuente-Ruiz-de-Sabando, et al. 2018). Students today want to do more than just get a degree; they want to create businesses, develop new markets, and start social movements (Kay et al., 2010). Under the open innovation model, universities' third mission (TM) includes deeper linkages and engagements with the private and public sectors, emphasizing the development of entrepreneurial mindsets, skills, and incubation services to encourage new business ventures, in …

An Examination Of The Impacts Of Macroeconomic Indicators On Conventional And Islamic Equity Fund Returns: Perspectives From The Mena Region, Amr Elshabouny

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the performance of conventional and Islamic equity mutual funds in the MENA region, and the influence of major macroeconomic determinants on the two types, by analyzing 503 conventional and 128 Shariah-compliant funds. It incorporates three major macroeconomic variables using Generalized Linear Models (GLM). The findings indicate no significant superiority of Islamic funds over conventional ones. The study also notes that while market performance and foreign exchange rates positively affect both fund types, GDP growth and inflation have a negative impact. Islamic funds are less influenced by excess market returns, GDP growth, and inflation compared to conventional funds, …

Impact Of Environmental, Social, And Governance Disclosure On Firm Performance: A Case Of Listed Manufacturing Firms In Nigeria, Abdulbaki Ubandawaki

Theses and Dissertations

The traditional goal of companies is to maximize shareholders’ wealth. However, to achieve this objective, many complementary goals must be pursued alongside the traditional ones. To achieve corporate goals, businesses need to interact with the environment. The continual interaction of the corporation with the environment has definitely come with its costs and benefits, and the global interest in promoting sustainable development has made corporate ESG reporting a crucial issue. The aim of the study is to investigate the relationship between ESG reporting and firm performance among listed manufacturing firms in Nigeria. The data was collected from annual and standalone sustainability …

Optimizing Repayment Strategies For Egyptian Construction Companies With Multiple Loans, Moataz Elkady

Theses and Dissertations

Optimizing Repayment Strategies for Egyptian Construction Companies with Multiple Loans is of utmost importance to efficiently allocate monthly income for loan repayment. The conventional practice of paying the minimum balance due each month leads to increased interest charges and prolonged repayment periods. In response, this research proposes a model for multiple loan repayment that considers the computational complexity involved.

The model is built on the foundation of mixed integer linear programming and aims to establish an optimal repayment schedule by minimizing the total cash required to repay the loans, prioritizing the repayment of loans before personal expenses. The implementation of …

Assessing The Effect Of Fintech Adoption On Country's Productivity, Mai Metwally

Theses and Dissertations

The relationship between total factor productivity of countries, for both low-income and high-income countries, and Fintech adoption will be examined in this paper. Also, a background on Fintech history will be discussed and explored briefly along with Fintech future risks and opportunities. Starting off with the importance of TFP, it is also known to be "Solow residual" (named after American Economist "Robert Solow"). TFP shows and examines the performance along with efficiency of the entity or country. It shows how well and efficient the firm or country in transforming its inputs to the desired outputs. Moreover, it is the ratio …

Modeling The Financial Signaling Of Zero-Default Debt: Empirical Study On The Firms Listed In Djia30 And Nasdaq100, Ahmed Salah Zaki Saeed

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the financial factors that corporate planners must consider to reach a zero-default debt. The thesis examines the financial fundamentals associated with zero-default debt along with the size and industry effects. The data includes quarterly financial indicators for the non-financial firms listed in DJIA30 and NASDAQ100 for the period 1990-2018. The results conclude that the fixed assets turnover is the only robust variable that can be optimized to reach zero-default debt and has positive and significant signaling effect.

Fintech Companies Valuation Using Real Options: Fawry Empirical Study, Yassmen Abou Elwafa

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents an improved valuation approach for Fintech companies, which are high-growth technology-based firms. We first identify the shortcomings of traditional valuation methods in valuing high-growth technology firms. Then, an alternative valuation technique based on real options theory is discussed to value fintech companies. The relevance and validity of using real options valuation to value fintech firms are also discussed. We propose a new flexible framework for valuing fintech companies by extending the Schwartz-Moon (2001) model to include various types of real options. To validate the practical application of the Extended Schwartz-Moon model, we conduct an empirical study to …

Navigating Uncertainty: The Role Of Gold, Silver, Oil, Cryptocurrency, And Esg Indices In The Mena Region, Rahaf Zakaria Sakr

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the effectiveness of various financial instruments as hedges and safe havens during different market conditions in the MENA region. It compares traditional safe-haven investments ( gold, silver, and oil) and non-traditional safe-havens (cryptocurrencies and ESG stocks) to determine which investments function better as hedges and safe havens during different market conditions. The data covers eight years, starting in 2015 and ending in early 2023. DCC GARCH is utilized to examine time variation in conditional correlations. This study finds that Gold, Silver, and cryptocurrency can be considered strong hedges to the MENA market on average and weak safe …

Factors Affecting Consumers’ Purchase Intentions Towards Recycled Products, Sherine Esmat

Theses and Dissertations

The work executed addresses the status of recycling industry in Egypt and its relation to the current sustainability trends as well as climate change issues. It also identifies the main concerns of consumers when purchasing recycled products. Consequently, identifies the key pillars that need to be applied or communicated with the target consumers to enhance the concept of selling recycled products and increase its market share. Since this industry is significantly broad, the focus of the study was only on recycled PET plastic bottles (rPET), this is to ensure attaining accurate and reliable results.

An interview and a site visit …

The Effect Of Climate Change On Firm Level Costs With Focus On Mena Region, Farah Osama Saieed

Theses and Dissertations

This paper has a main objective of identifying the relationship between environmental factors and climate change on operating costs incurred by firms. This paper also attempts to compare the direction and intensity of the effect on different sectors in order to analyze whether climate change effect differs based on the nature of the business operations. Several papers have previously addressed the relationship between climate change factors ad profits. This literature will add to previous studies by observing the effect on the cost rather than the profits. In addition to providing results that minimize endogeneity, which is found in a large …

Entrepreneurial Orientation Impact On Micro And Small Enterprises In Egypt, Fayrouz Negm

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of the proposed study is to test and analyze the impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) on micro and small enterprises’ growth in Egypt, measured by three growth indicators: sales revenue, profit margin, and employment. The growth rates are measured over four periods (past three years, past year, next year, and next three years) to examine the historical and potential impact of EO on growth rates.

EO is defined as the process which organizations use to renew themselves and their markets by innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking (Miller, 1983). While EO is considered one of the crucial factors in determining …

Can Blockchain-Supply Chain Announcements Create Shareholder Value? Evidence From An Event Study For International Initiatives, Alyaa Saleh

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates how Blockchain based Supply chain (BC-SC) announcements impact the stock market performance of the announcing firms. Using a sample of 104 news and firm announcements between 2016 and July 2021, we conduct an international event study to determine the effect of BC-SC announcements on the market performance. We find that an overall significantly positive market reaction of 1.45% to all BC-SC announcements on the announcement day. In addition, we find that the stock market reaction slightly differs when different SC challenges are targeted by the announcing firm. When blockchain is used for traceability purposes, the market response …

Trading The Days Vs. Days Of Trading: An Empirical Literature Survey On Calendar Anomalies Across Markets, Mariam Ashraf Kiryakos

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a comprehensive theoretical and empirical review of over five decades of research on two of the most examined calendar anomalies: the day-of-the-week and weekend effect. The expansive literature is classified into five different phases to demonstrate and review the evolution of research on these two seasonal anomalies. It also reconciles empirically the seemingly contradicting evidence documented by prior studies by adopting the lens of Adaptive Market Hypothesis (AMH) and conducting a cross-market analysis on the two calendar anomalies using the headline stock market indices of the ten largest economies by GDP as of 2019. The main methodology …

Return Migration And Entrepreneurship In Egypt, Shorouk Fouda

Theses and Dissertations

Many Egyptians are currently choosing to emigrate in pursuit of benefits such as; education, professional development, acquisition of new skills and accumulation of savings. Although this was previously viewed as having a damaging effect to a country’s economy through the loss of most talented and ambitious nationals, more pertinent economic views suggest possible instances of brain circulation and gain upon the return of a national to their home country. In some cases, gains of return migration are unlocked in the form of entrepreneurial behavior; as a result of accumulation of financial and human capital. In this research, both quantitative and …

Unlocking The Value Of Small And Medium Enterprises, Ahmed Taha

Theses and Dissertations

The role of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in economic growth and development is an undeniable fact in the global economy. In emerging and developed economies, SMEs may contribute to more than 90% of the total enterprises. These businesses are a dominant source of job creation, innovation and growth foundation stemming from their competitive structure, technological adaptability and resilience to economic crises. Despite their significant contribution to the economic development and growth, there is not sufficient research that covers SMEs’ financial activity, liquidity, profitability and valuations. In this thesis, I introduce an Electronic Valuation Platform that provides a sufficient research …

Stock Market Manipulation Detection Using Continuous Wavelet Transform & Machine Learning Classification, Sarah Youssef

Theses and Dissertations

Stock market manipulation detection is important for both investors and regulators. Being able to detect stock manipulation and preventing it gives investors the confidence in the market fairness and integrity. It also helps maintaining liquidity of the stocks and market efficiency. Implementing data mining algorithms in manipulation detection is a relatively recent technique but in the past few years there has been an increasing interest in it's applications in this domain. The benefit of monitoring manipulative trade behavior is that it can be implemented on live feed of stock data, which saves a lot of time in detecting stock price …

An Intelligent Market Cycle Detection System, Michael Azer

Theses and Dissertations

The detection of stock market cycles has attracted the attention of finance scholars and market practitioners. Accurately identifying the direction of a market can significantly increase the returns of investors. Despite this importance, conventional methodologies in the literature have predominantly attempted to evaluate the effect of subsets of factors as precedents to stock market cycles and with little agreement on what constitutes critical factors. There seems to be a lack in the literature for a comprehensive study that examines a multitude of factors at the same time on the S&P500 as the laboratory. Factors are categorized into: political events, economic …

An Examination Of The Determinants Of Optimal Corporate Credit Hegde: Perspectives From Firms Listed In Djia30 And Nasdaq100, Dina Rofael

Theses and Dissertations

Raising number of corporate defaults could threaten the financial stability, thus modelling credit risk is a key ingredient of financial stability analysis. This paper tries to answer a specific question regarding the drivers of this risk: idiosyncratic risk (industry-specific or firm-specific) and/or systematic risk (macro-economic specific). As a first step, the paper estimates the optimal hedge ratio based on the interest coverage ratio, that acts as a measure for the probability of default. Against this background, the paper applies one of the fundamental-based models of credit risk, known as hybrid model after estimating the proposed indicator variable. The suggested model …

Stock Prediction Using Natural Language Processing Sentiment Analysis On News Headlines During Covid-19, Mina Ibrahim

Theses and Dissertations

Stock prediction based on NLP sentiment analysis is one of the most researched topics due to the revenues they generate for investors. Researchers have used various tools to achieve this, especially fundamental and technical analysis based on historical data helped to achieve this target. Due to the technological advancement and abundance of data, the introduction of machine learning tools accelerated that approach. However, as the public mood affects the stock market, the need for another analysis emerged. Natural language processing sentiment analysis on data from various sources was able to capture public events and moods. NLP is one of the …

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 …

Impact Of Covid Responses On Brand Performance, Emy Rezkalla

Theses and Dissertations

The main objective of this study is to understand and evaluate whether COVID responses have a significant positive impact on brand performance. Accordingly, the proposed conceptual model focused on the top four COVID-19 responses: donations in cash, donations in kind, customer service, and employers/suppliers and evaluated the impact of each proposed response on brand value, brand growth, and brand ranking in 2020 versus 2019.

The research question of this paper is, Do COVID responses (customer service, employers/suppliers, donations in kind, and donations in cash) have a significant positive impact on brand performance (brand value, brand growth, and brand ranking vs. …

The Conceptualization Of Women’S Empowerment By Microlenders In Egypt And Its Link To Sustainable Development, Yasmina Abdellatif

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines how microlenders in Egypt conceptualize women’s empowerment and how they see it contributing to achievement of the UN sustainable development goals. Ten Egyptian microlenders were interviewed to understand how they defined and assessed empowerment, the strategies they used to support empowerment, and which sustainable development goals they felt their programs were addressing. Results revealed that, overall, microlenders sought to empower women in economic, social, psychological, and familial ways, and that they used indicators to measure empowerment under each area. They also supported empowerment through mentoring, training and follow-up with their beneficiaries, and by working to include men. …