Business Commons^™

Essays In Asset Pricing, Muhammed Yonac

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three essays in asset pricing with the common theme of return predictability.

Chapter 1: This chapter introduces the motivation, results, and structure of the dissertation.

Chapter 2: I examine the relation between the social ties between firms' headquarters locations and co-movements between their fundamentals and stock returns. The evidence indicates that firms in the same industry with socially connected locations exhibit co-movement in fundamentals and stock returns that exceed those without socially connected locations. However, the stock returns reflect the location information with a lag. To exploit this lagged relationship, we form portfolios that buy (sell) …

Innovation Culture Assessment: An Exploratory Diagnosis Of A Taiwanese Manufacturing Company, Yong Keong Tay

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The purpose of this research study is to better understand how manufacturing firms in Asia are trying to make innovation work and the challenges they are facing in creating and capturing new value. Based on a real-life case study of a medium-sized OEM lock manufacturer in Taiwan (“3ST”), the study sheds light on key building blocks of a robust corporate innovation culture with focus on ‘Values’, ‘Behaviours’, ‘Climate’, ‘Resources’, ‘Processes’, and ‘Success’, using a valid and reliable diagnostic innovation culture framework developed by Rao & Weintraub (2013).

Besides the identification of critical gaps in 3ST’s innovation culture based on Rao …

A Study On The Impact Of Technological Innovation Attributes On Listing Success Rate And Post-Listing Performance, Yijun Xu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

"Key and core technology" enterprises form the backbone of great powers. China’s STAR Market (technological innovation board) is committed to implementing strategies that will lead to technological innovation-driven sustainable development and strengthen the country by building a secure and independent industrial chain that can support the development of cutting-edge technology. From the outset, the STAR Market put forward clear requirements for "key and core technology" enterprises. The technological innovation attributes of the enterprises listed on the STAR Market are the most essential core characteristics, but a question arises as to how best to evaluate their technological innovation attributes. Are these …

Nudging Social Online Referrals: Evidence From A Randomized Field Experiment, Qian Zeng

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

With the rise of social commerce platforms and customer engagement in online products and services, firms are focusing their attention on effective social online referral program to encourage customers’ online referral behaviors to grow their customer base. Hence, how to influence customers to participate in online referral is a matter of the utmost importance to firms. However, little empirical research has examined the impact of online referral program on customers’ online referral on social commerce platform. To close this research gap, this dissertation investigates the effectiveness of digital nudging for consumers’ social online referral on social commerce platforms.

Working with …

Research On A Suitable Upstream Traceability Model For The Natural Rubber Supply Chain In Thailand, Specifically For Rib-Smoke-Sheet (Rss), Beh Kok Fong

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Traceability is the first step to gain visibility in the supply chain and can be used to meet different purposes. Similar to other agriculture crops, the natural rubber industry faces reputational damage due to deforestation, land grab, loss of biodiversity and non-compliance with environmental standards occurring in the upstream. The introduction of new social and environmental regulations accelerates the need for traceability. Reflecting on the importance of environmental and social considerations, this industry is looking at traceability to identify the historical trends leading to the present sustainability state and any ongoing sustainability risks in the upstream to enable downstream users …

Cost-Benefit Analysis Of The Saudi Land Bridge Project, Faris J. Alotaibi

Theses and Dissertations

Projects are the backbone of economic thrive of nations, especially infrastructure projects. It’s counted as the base layer of allowing economic trade between beneficiaries. Railway projects have always been a huge element in increasing trade operations between Saudi Arabia and the rest of the world, by providing an efficient and environmentally friendly way that is capable of hauling large loads of exports all the way to the seaports and from there to the rest of the world. The Saudi land bridge project will cost about $11 billion and will provide a new link between the existent railway in the eastern …

Evaluating Performance Competencies In The Royal Saudi Air Force Engineering Directorate And Squadrons, Faisal A. Al Dawood

Theses and Dissertations

The effectiveness of tasks performed by the directorate of aeronautical engineering and squadrons in RSAF directly impacts flight safety, which in turn influences the organization either positively or negatively. Therefore, improving engineers' competencies will improve the overall performance of the organization. The study refined and reconstructed a model, namely a T-shape competency model, to assess the engineers' competencies which revealed some management and competency-related deficiencies and concluded with managerial recommendations.

A Case Study Of The Efficacy Of Model-Based Requests For Information, Kyle J. Arruda

Theses and Dissertations

The Department of Defense (DoD) has encouraged the transition to digital engineering, yet there are limited guides for how to transition and there is limited data to show where an organization like a program office can reap the most benefit from the transition. To identify areas where potential benefits may be realized, this thesis compares two Requests for Information (RFIs), one document-based and one model-based, from generation to response. A survey was developed and administered to 7 members of a single program office to grade the RFI responses. The survey was based on the 43 benefit categories identified in the …

Social Attention In Realistic Work Environments, Theodore Charles Masters-Waage

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Social attention – the process by which individuals select which aspect of the social world to mentally process – is a key antecedent to all organisational behaviour in groups. This central role of attention has long been appreciated by organisational theorists, but our understanding of this core cognitive process has been hampered by a lack of empirical evidence. To create a method through which organisational scholars can study social attention, this dissertation combines cognitive science measures of attention with recent innovations from social and applied psychology using virtual reality to study naturalistic social behaviour (Chapter 1). This method is then …

Baseball Eclipsed: No Longer America’S Pastime, Travis Shumate

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

This paper will discuss the reasons for the decline in Major League Baseball (MLB) attendance levels and what might be done to stop this decline. It will also introduce an idea that the decline in attendance might not be as much of an issue as fans might perceive it to be. Along with being a super fan of a team, marketing and promotion play a big role in game-to-game attendance. Various ways that marketing is used and might be used better to gain interest for baseball are talked about in this paper. The argument made is that baseball has lost …

Optimizing Incentives For Systems With Heterogeneous Agents, Chen Chen

Dissertations

This dissertation explores new models and applications based on the game theory of incentives. This exploration starts with controlling an invasive insect problem to address one of the most significant challenges facing our forests, the invasion of the Emerald ash borer (EAB), a non-native, wood-boring insect that threatens to kill most ash trees in North America, through designing two new cost-sharing programs between the landowners and local governments. Ash trees are one of North America’s most widely distributed tree genera and a vital part of the green infrastructure of cities, where they provide residents with numerous social, economic, and ecological …

Passive Interpretable Deep Learning From Cell Phone Activity For Optimal Patient Care, Pelin Ayranci

Dissertations

The majority of individuals in need of mental healthcare fail to seek it, and the diagnosis of those who do is driven predominantly by the patient's subjective self-assessment. There is a need for mental illnesses trackers that measure psychological and physiological symptoms and provide alerts and interpretable data for therapeutic interventions. We present a system that complements existing protocols to detect distress in mental health, passively monitor patients, and quickly alert authorized parties on possible mental health distress. We evaluate modeling a person's mental health from the sensors and activity logs of her/his cell phone using logistic regressions, LSTM, and …

Critical Mass Of Women On Biotech Corporate Boards And Its Implication For Firm Performance: A Mixed Method Explanatory Sequential Study, Shesh Sharma

Dissertations

This study examined the influence of demographic, functional, and cognitive diversities on firm performance of North American Biotech companies using a mixed method explanatory sequential approach. One-year cross-sectional data of 100 companies was analyzed followed by purposeful semistructured interviews with eight board members from the dataset. The combined results resolved several ambiguities present in the literature regarding board selection, composition, and the correlation of board diversity with firm performance. This study used the well-known market-based financial metric Tobin’s Q to measure firm performance.

The quantitative results showed a dichotomous relationship between gender ratio and Tobin’s Q based on a theoretically …

Three Essays On Corporate Governance, Executive Compensation, And Corporate Social Responsibility, Hong Zhou

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation includes three related essays investigating corporate governance structures, specifically, how firms leverage corporate social responsibility (CSR) related initiatives (providing CSR-linked compensation and establishing a sustainability committee) and the relevant corporate outcomes. This dissertation also examines the relationship between executive compensation and one dimension of CSR, diversity, in boardrooms. The first essay examines the relationship between CSR-linked executive compensation and corporate risk. Results from OLS and firm fixed effects regressions show that CSR-linked compensation reduces both total and idiosyncratic risks. Results also indicate that CSR-linked compensation reduces risk only when risk is well above the optimal level and has …

Two Essays On Corporate And Institutional Investors’ Usage Of Options, Financial Constraints, And Firm Performance, Bharat Patil

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation consists of two major parts. Essay I examines the relationship between the firm’s derivative risk management and its financial constraint. Firms face a wedge between their internal and external financing for their investments. I test whether this wedge reduces the firm’s financial constraint when it hedges using interest rate, foreign currency, and commodity derivatives. Using a difference-in-difference framework around the implementation of Financial Accounting Standard (FAS) 123R, this study shows a strong causal relationship between hedging intensity and the financial constraint. I find that net debt increases for the derivative hedging firms, on the other hand, cash holding …

Immigrant Entrepreneurs And The Contingent Value Of Personal Legitimacy, Kurian George

Dissertations - ALL

Despite growing recognition of the importance of the founder’s personal legitimacy for successful venturing, various questions remain with respect to what founder legitimacy is and how it is achieved. My review of the legitimacy literature reveals that founder legitimacy can be conceptualized as both a characteristic and a process, and that the entity signaling the founder’s legitimacy can be the founder, an organization, or even an industry or region. My review also shows that the expertise needed for founder legitimacy is taken for granted in most studies. To develop a better understanding of how founders acquire and signal personal legitimacy, …

Commonality In Two-Dimensions: An Empirical Investigation, Zhaoque Zhou

Dissertations - ALL

In this thesis, I follow Hasbrouck and Seppi (2001)’s work and use reduced-rank regression to model the commonality in Chapter Two. The literature on the study of return commonality generally attributes its source to the order flow. But I find that return and order flows are endogenous and use the new exogenous Twitter sentiment dataset to show that return commonality may be due to sentiment and attention. Furthermore, I observe the non-linear (linear) relationship between sentiment (attention) and return commonality. Finally, I may export the non-linear relationship using the same reduced-rank regression framework in future research.

I also follow Korajczyk …

Understanding Consumers' Use Experience On Electrically Heated Jacket: A Study On Online Review Using Topic Modeling, Md Nakib-Ul Hasan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The demand for heated jackets is anticipated to be fuelled by frequent temperature drops, severe winter weather, and increasing outdoor activities. Electrically heated jackets (EHJ) are primarily marketed through online distribution channels and expansion of online sales channels is expected to boost the global market. Consumers are increasingly relying on online reviews from other consumers to help them decide what to buy. Businesses also actively monitor and manage their online reviews to build trust in their brand and make it more likely that customers will buy. Traditional approaches for assessing customer behavior, such as market research surveys and focus groups, …

Exploring The Roles Of The Craft Trainer In The Construction Industry, Mary M. Chatham

Human Resource Development Theses and Dissertations

The construction industry is a significant contributor to the overall U.S. economy. Since the early 1980’s the industry has been suffering from a workforce shortage at the individual contributor level, craft employees. This sector of the workforce comprises between 40-50% of the workforce, and contributes significantly to the revenue stream. Given this, the craft workforce shortage continues to pose a significant threat to the overall sustainability of the industry. Training and the transfer of knowledge are important concepts across all industries given the investment in training that has been reported. It is of heightened importance when labor shortages exist, such …

Developing Marketing Strategies To Enhance Students’ Perception Of Service Within The Thompson Scholarship Program, Emileigh Kleps

Honors Projects

Understanding the perceptions of Thompson Family Scholars to suggest improvements of marketing strategies within the Thompson Scholarship Program for the benefit of current and future Thompson Family Scholars.

Public Sector Unions And Government Financing, Qian He

Lingnan Theses (MPhil & PhD)

Unions play a significant role in the U.S. public sector. Most studies focus on unions in the private sector, but their role in the public sector is much more significant. According to the latest Current Population Survey (CPS) by the U.S. Census Bureau, more than one-third of public sector employees are union members, whereas private sector union membership is around 6%. In this paper, we examine the impact of public sector unions on the financing costs of government because the cost of financing is one of the major concerns of governments.

We employ an exogenous shock induced by the Supreme …

Essays On The Consequences Of Auditor Regulatory Oversight : Evidence From Pcaob International Inspections, Solomon Wise Dodzidenu Adza

Lingnan Theses (MPhil & PhD)

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) was created in 2002 in response to widespread perceived audit failures with the mandate to oversee and inspect all auditors of SEC-registered firms. Though the PCAOB inspection is for the benefit of US-listed firms, it also has consequences for non-US-listed firms. Using a sample of firm-year observations from 35 countries that allow PCAOB international inspections, I examine the implications of the PCAOB international inspections for non-US auditors and non-US-listed firms. The dissertation consists of two chapters. The first chapter examines the effect of the PCAOB international inspections on industry specialization for inspected non-US …

Performance Of Actively Managed Exchange Traded Funds, Xuan None Li

Olin Business School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Investors who want access to active asset management can choose to invest in actively managed exchange traded funds (AMETFs), actively managed non-transparent ETFs (ANETFs) or mutual funds. Three major differences of AMETFs, ANETFs and mutual funds are the venues funds are traded on, tax liabilities, and disclosure requirements. This paper exploits the 2019 SEC rulings on ETFs to study empirically which fund structure for active asset management delivers the best return performance and explores what are the driving forces behind the superior performance. I find that for equity funds, AMETFs is associated with 0.158% lower monthly returns than mutual fund, …

Origin Of Value Creation: The Role Of Delayed Intuition In Entrepreneurial Problem Framing, Chan Hyung Park

Olin Business School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Highly successful entrepreneurial ventures often result from solving problems that have not been solved before (i.e., entrepreneurial problems). The problem-solving and entrepreneurship literatures indicate that individuals need to develop novel problem frames—uncommon interpretations of observable needs or pain points (i.e., symptoms) signaling the problems—to create solutions that other people would not typically think of and generate unique value that is key to entrepreneurial success. However, developing novel frames of entrepreneurial problems is difficult for two reasons. The symptoms of the problems are ambiguous and unstructured, and the structured information to find the right frame of problems is costly to acquire. …

The Effect Of Off-Site Examination: A Natural Experiment After Covid-19, Whan Kyu Shin

Olin Business School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

I examine the effectiveness of off-site bank examinations by using the natural experiment during COVID-19. Exploiting the difference in the amount of soft information and in the effect of the change to off-site examination between the banks far from the supervisory field office and those near the field office, I find that distant banks increase asset risk regarding RWA to asset ratio and become less conservative in anticipating or preparing for future losses from loan portfolios. I also show that distant banks that adjust the loan portfolio to be riskier are less profitable, and the effect is prominent among the …

A Rule-Based Automatic Data Validation Framework For Enterprise Asset Management In The Power And Utilities Industry, Kennedy O. Oyoo

Theses and Dissertations

Every industry has significant data output as a product of its working processes. Power and utilities (P&U) are no exception. Power and utilities organizations generate a lot of data from different business operational systems that provide diverse inputs to a central enterprise asset management (EAM) system tasked with supporting management of physical assets over their life cycles. Physical assets which cover a range of asset types are used in the generation, transmission, and distribution of power. Asset data quality is one area which is often overlooked during the implementation of EAM systems because the focus is primarily on the final …

Three Essays On Insider Trading, Haoyang Xiong

Theses and Dissertations

In the first essay we study whether and how personal off-the-job managerial indiscretions impact corporate insiders’ trading behavior. We find that executives accused of personal indiscretions earn significantly higher abnormal returns from their insider purchases and sales in a 15-day window around each trade. The results are robust to matched sample analyses. Further, insiders’ historical trading pattern or corporate culture has less explanatory power than personal attributes. We also document that exposure of these indiscretions to the public provides a disciplinary effect, as insider trading profits significantly drop following the announcement of an indiscretion, despite this drop being temporary. Corporate …

Essays On Insider Trading, Innovation, And Political Economy, Jiawei Chen

Theses and Dissertations

I study how insider trading interacts with the political economy, regulators, and other corporate governance mechanisms. In the first section, I examine the impact of insider trading restriction enforcement on firm innovation. U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement actions are intended to protect investors and limit expropriation by firm insiders, but enforcement could impact insiders’ incentives to contribute to value enhancing activities. Therefore, I explore how corporate innovation and performance respond to insider trading restrictions imposed by firms and regulators. Using manually collected data on SEC indictments against corporate insiders, I document more innovative activity following external insider trading …

Essays On International Banking Regulation, Wenqing Gao

Theses and Dissertations

The first chapter analyzes the impact of macroprudential policies on bank systemic risk worldwide. Using data from 63 countries over 2001-2017, I find strong evidence that macroprudential policies are effective in reducing systemic risk at the country level. The effectiveness of macroprudential policies differs across countries in the sample. Macroprudential policies are more effective in reducing systemic risk in countries with more advanced economic development, with a higher degree of concentration in the banking sector, and with less stringent micro-prudential regulations. Bank-level evidence suggests that bank size matters. The impact of macroprudential policies on constraining bank systemic risk is more …

Essays On The Performance Of Option Trading Strategies, Zhuo Li

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of two parts. In the first chapter, we examine the relative performance of four options-based investment strategies versus a buy-and-hold strategy in the underlying stock. Specifically, using ten stocks widely held in 401(k) plans, we examine monthly returns from strategies that include a long stock position as one component. These strategies are long stock, covered call, protective put, collar, and covered combination. Ignoring early exercise for simplicity, we find that the covered combination and covered call strategies generally outperform the long stock strategy, which in turn generally outperforms the collar and protective put strategies regardless of the …