Business Commons^™

Learning From Las Vegas: Gambling, Technology, Capitalism, And Addiction, David T. Courtwright

Occasional Papers

Gambling has always led to addictive behavior in some individuals. However, the number and types of addicted gamblers have changed over time and in response to specific gambling environments. Recent work by historians, journalists, and anthropologists, reviewed in this paper, suggests that the situation worsened during the modern era, and that it has become worse still during the last half century. Technological, organizational, and marketing innovations have “weaponized” gambling, increasing both the likelihood that people will gamble and that they will gamble compulsively—a phenomenon with parallels to several other consumer products, including processed food, digitized games, and psychoactive drugs.

The Effects Of Social Media & Web Development On Product Promotion & The Effects Of Branding On Sales And Building A Startup, Scott Toshiro Burns, Galen Quan Tran

Graphic Communication

The purpose of this study was to identify the key components needed to make a startup. This included created making a landing page and also driving traffic to the page through Facebook. On the landing page section, there was a test to see what would provide the best user experience using Squarespace. This entailed looking into different layouts and using analytics to determine how effective the landing page was in converting customers. In terms of Facebook research, went into looking into creating a method into driving leads into the prospect pipeline. A campaign was run to gather all the data …

How Hackers Think: Understanding The Mental Models And Cognitive Patterns Of High-Tech Wizards, Timothy C. Summers

Student Scholarship

Hackers seek out weaknesses in computers and networks that can be used to steal data or impact the functionality of the Internet. In the general sense, a hacker is a technologist with a love for computers and a "hack" is an inventive solution executed through non-obvious means. Hackers speak the language of code which propels the evolution of our information technology. This makes hackers the solvers of our largest, most complex issues facing technological systems. In consequence, they are experts at solving poorly understood and challenging technical problems in a variety of settings requiring deep understanding of technical detail and …

Electronic Student-Form Management System, Donia I. Alsayed

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The development of technology has made the world a smaller place where communicating instantaneously irrespective of the geographical location is a way of life. Electronic Forms (E-FORMS) are an easy way to communicate efficiently with students. At present, universities are still using old systems for communication where efforts to improve the system is a lethargic process. As most of these universities are still using student forms manually, the introduction of E-FORMS will speed up the whole process and positively impact in communicating efficiency. In addition, the inconvenience of making numerous visits to the university is sometimes seen as a hassle …

Multi-Criteria Decision Modeling For Best Value Selections In Target Value Design Integrated Project Delivery, Brent Patrick Griffis

Master's Theses

Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) combined with Target Value Design (TVD) is a better way to deliver value for the client than traditional guaranteed maximum price (GMP) methods. With traditional GMP delivery methods, the interests of the parties are often at odds. The goal of IPD is to align all party interests in order to achieve a win-win scenario. Due to the aligning nature of IPD and the fact that each party’s success is dependent on achieving the project objectives as a whole; a non-biased, transparent, decision-making process is necessary in order to deliver the project objectives within the constraints of …

City Of Los Angeles Arts District Form-Based Code, Ryan Jupiter Banuelos

Master's Theses

Los Angeles is experiencing a loss of inventory with Industrial land due to adaptive reuse and property conversion. The primary factors behind the conversions are

inconsistent land use regulations and a strong market

demand for residential property. In an effort to streamline land use regulation,

the city will create a new zoning code. In conjunction with the zoning update,

the purpose of this project will be to develop a form-based code for the Los

Angeles Arts District. The new land use regulation will explore methods to

preserve job producing industrial space and accommodate the growing

residential market in the area. …

Future Of Payment Platforms, Salim Benjamin Youssefzadeh

Master's Theses

With the vast increase in smartphones, there have been an increasing number of opportunities growing in the app industry. One in particular is the way we deal with money. There are huge overheads in the current payment systems around the world particularly in the United States, many of which include large transaction fees. Many new businesses have grown to solve these inefficiencies and create a new platform that provides a new user experience, security, and convenience among many other things. However, many of these platforms are still centralized, making them more susceptible to attacks. This thesis goes over the various …

Montana Nonresident Traveler Expenditures And Economic Contribution: 2012, Kara Grau

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

This report shows the economic contributions, expenditures, and average daily spending of nonresident visitors to Montana during 2012.

Industry-Based Style Investing, Russell Jame, Qing Tong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Motivated by the style investing model of Barberis and Shleifer (2003), we examine the industry-wide investment decisions of retail investors. We find that retail investor industry demand is highly correlated and strongly related to past industry returns. Moreover, industries heavily bought by retail investors over the past year significantly underperform industries heavily sold over the subsequent year. Similarly, stocks in industries heavily bought by retail investors underperform stocks in industries heavily sold, even after controlling for firm-level demand. Our results suggest that industry-wide categorization influences the investment decisions of retail investors and has a significant impact on asset prices.

Getting Into The Minds Of Consumers, Hannah H. Chang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Under what circumstances are our decisions influenced by emotions? And when are we more likely to make rational, logical choices? Assistant Professor Hannah Chang of the SMU Lee Kong Chian School of Business studies the science behind how consumers make decisions.

Of Accessibility And Applicability: How Heat-Related Primes Affect Belief In “Global Warming” And “Climate Change”, Jonathon P. Schuldt, Sungjong Roh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Research shows that exposure to heat-related cues (e.g., warm temperatures, “fry” and “boil”) influences the belief that global warming exists and poses a serious threat to humans. Drawing on social-cognitive principles of concept accessibility and applicability, we hypothesized that these effects may depend on how the issue is framed, given that heat-related concepts are more compatible with “global warming” than “climate change.” Exploring this possibility, we asked campus passersby about their belief in global warming or climate change shortly after a real-life unseasonably cold weather event (i.e., snowfall during Spring; Study 1). A controlled Web experiment …

Parasocial Relationship Via Reality Tv And Social Media: Its Implications For Celebrity Endorsement, Siyoung Chung, Hichang Cho

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The purpose of this study was to explore the ways in which audiences build parasocial relationships with media characters via reality TV and social media, and its implications for celebrity endorsement and purchase intentions. Using an online survey, this study collected 401 responses from the Korean Wave fans in Singapore. The results showed that reality TV viewing and SNS use to interact with media characters were positively associated with parasocial relationships between media characters and viewers. Parasocial relationships, in turn, were positively associated with the viewers’ perception of endorser and brand credibility, and purchase intention of the brand endorsed by …

Climate Change And Management: From The Editors, Jennifer Howard-Grenville, Simon J. Buckle, Brian J. Hoskins, Gerard George

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges we confront in the 21st century. On current trends, by the end of the century, the warming effect of our greenhouse gas emissions will have taken us far away from pre-industrial climatic conditions. In fact, our climate will be as different from pre-industrial conditions as it was when the Earth emerged from the last ice age some 20,000 years ago. In other words, just over 200 years of human and industrial activity will have wrought fundamental change to our climate system. The rise of organizations and industrialized production has set us on …

Agile Business Model Innovation, Adam J. Bock, Gerard George

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Business model innovation (BMI) is risky, but when companies do it with agility, they thrive. This article looks at how Return Path, the global leader in email marketing, met the challenge of applying BMI successfully. The authors interviewed up to 700 CEOs to better understand BMI drivers.

Modeling Queues With Simulation Versus M/M/C Models, Kum Khiong Yang, Joyce M. W. Low, Cayirli Tugba

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper examines the performance of single-queue service systems using a combination of computer simulation and M/M/C queuing models. Our results show that the accuracy of M/M/C models is significantly affected by the assumptions supporting the models. Managers should therefore exercise caution in using the M/M/C models for designing queuing systems when the models’ assumptions are violated. Our results show that cost-centric and servicecentric firms should manage their queues differently. While cost-centric firms should target higher arrival load, single service session, and front-loaded arrival pattern for higher efficiency, service-centric firms should strive for lower arrival load, multiple short sessions and …

Self-Exciting Jumps, Learning, And Asset Pricing Implications, Andras Fulop, Junye Li, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

The paper proposes a self-exciting asset pricing model that takes into account cojumps between prices and volatility and self-exciting jump clustering. We employ a dence of self-exciting jump clustering since the 1987 market crash, and its importance Bayesian learning approach to implement real time sequential analysis. We find evidence of self-exciting jump clustering since the 1987 market crash, and its importance becomes more obvious at the onset of the 2008 global financial crisis. It is found that learning affects the tail behaviors of the return distributions and has important implications for risk management, volatility forecasting and option pricing.

Robust Two-Stage Stochastic Linear Programs With Moment Constraints, Sarah Yini Gao, Lingchen Kong, Jie Sun

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We consider the two-stage stochastic linear programming model, in which the recourse function is a worst case expected value over a set of probabilistic distributions. These distributions share the same first- and second-order moments. By using duality of semi-infinite programming and assuming knowledge on extreme points of the dual polyhedron of the constraints, we show that a deterministic equivalence of the two-stage problem is a second-order cone optimization problem. Numerical examples are presented to show non-conservativeness and computational advantage of this approach.

Service Systems With Finite And Heterogeneous Customer Arrivals, Rowan Wang, Oualid Jouini, Saif Benjaafar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We consider service systems with a finite number of customer arrivals, where customer interarrival times and service times are both stochastic and heterogeneous. Applications of such systems are numerous and include systems where arrivals are driven by events or service completions in serial processes as well as systems where servers are subject to learning or fatigue. Using an embedded Markov chain approach, we characterize the waiting time distribution for each customer, from which we obtain various performance measures of interest, including the expected waiting time of a specific customer, the expected waiting time of an arbitrary customer, and the expected …

Credit Watch Placement And Security Price Behavior Around Bond Rating Revisions, Chiraphol N. Chiyachantana, Eakapat Manitkajornkit, Nareerat Taechapiroontong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines the informational role of credit watch placement in the overall bond rating process from 1992 to 2006. The paper uses standard event study to examine the market reaction of the whole process of credit rating change which includes credit watch placement, transitional period, and actual rating change. The authors find that the act of a company’s bond being put on both positive and negative credit watch placements are associated with significant abnormal returns in the company’s stock while negative credit watch placement helps reduce the negative market reaction on the actual rating downgrade. The paper shows that …

State Of Nonprofits Annual Report: 2014, Mary Jo Schumann, Jennifer Amanda Jones, Kim Hunt, Christina Mitchell, Svetlana Krasynska, Laura Deitrick

State of Nonprofits and Philanthropy in San Diego

For the second consecutive year, the State of Nonprofits Annual Report chronicles the capacity, contributions, and overall economic health and well-being of the San Diego nonprofit sector over time.

It also documents the current state of the nonprofit sector in San Diego County based on perspectives of local nonprofit leaders in 2013.

The findings presented in this report are a culmination of various sources and represent different perspectives. Together, they help tell the story of the nonprofit sector in San Diego County (subsequently referred to as San Diego).

Cost Growth And Stock Returns, Dashan Huang, Fuwei Jiang, Jun Tu, Guofu Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this paper, we examine the valuation implications of cost behavior, and find that firms with high growth rate in operating costs generate substantially lower future stock returns than those with low cost growth. A spread portfolio of long stocks with low cost growth and short stocks with high cost growth earns an average abnormal return of 12% per year. This strategy is robust over time, across market capitalization, and to control for alternative anomalies and risks. Cost growth is strongly associated with deterioration in a firm’s future profitability, which investors appear failing to incorporate into valuation. In addition, the …

Engaging Youth: Linking Design And Implementation Choices Of Out-Of-School Time Programs In Boston To The Development Of Political Engagement Attitudes In Youth Age 14 To 18, Felicia M. Sullivan

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Tens of thousands of youth in communities across the United States are engaged every day in out-of-school time (OST) programs. These young people seek opportunities to recreate and socially engage, enhance academic and leadership skills, express themselves creatively, explore important issues in their communities, and work toward affecting change. These programs provide important institutional learning environments in which young people begin to assimilate their roles as political actors and citizens. As the delivery of social services and public programs has increasingly devolved from the government to the nonprofit sector, these programs also shape how young people come to understand their …

Smarter Teamwork: System For Management, Assessment, Research, Training, Education, And Remediation For Teamwork, Matthew W. Ohland, Richard A. Layton, Daniel Michael Ferguson, Misty L. Loughry, Hal R. Pomeranz

Management: Faculty Publications

The rapid adoption of Team-Maker and the Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness (CATME), tools for team formation and peer evaluation, make it possible to extend their success to have a significant impact on the development of team skills in higher education. The web-based systems are used by over 700 faculty at over 200 institutions internationally.

This paper and its accompanying poster will describe strategies for broadening the scope of those tools into a complete system for the management of teamwork in undergraduate education. The System for the Management, Assessment, Research, Training, Education, and Remediation of Teamwork (SMARTER Teamwork) has …

Does Latitude Hurt While Longitude Kills? Geographical And Temporal Separation In A Large Scale Software Development Project, Patrick Wagstrom, Subhajit Datta

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Distributed software development allows firms to leverage cost advantages and place work near centers of competency. This distribution comes at a cost -- distributed teams face challenges from differing cultures, skill levels, and a lack of shared working hours. In this paper we examine whether and how geographic and temporal separation in a large scale distributed software development influences developer interactions. We mine the work item trackers for a large commercial software project with a globally distributed development team. We examine both the time to respond and the propensity of individuals to respond and find that when taken together, geographic …

Managers' Pay Duration And Voluntary Disclosures, Qiang Cheng, Young Jun Cho, Jae Bum Kim

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In this paper, we examine the effect of managers’ pay duration on firms’ voluntary disclosures. Pay duration refers to the average period that it takes for managers’ annual compensation to vest. We hypothesize and find that pay duration can incentivize managers to provide more bad news earnings forecasts. This result holds after controlling for the level of stock-based compensation and the endogeneity of pay duration. In addition, we find that the effect of pay duration is more pronounced for firms with weaker governance and for firms with a more opaque information environment, where the marginal benefits of additional disclosures are …

The Triangular Relationship Between Audit Committee Characteristics, Audit Inputs, And Financial Reporting Quality, Jae Bum Kim, Benjamin Segal, Dan Segal, Yoonseok Zang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using the exogenous reforms to audit committees mandated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and a difference-in-difference approach, we examine the impact of changes in audit committee attributes (financial expertise, size, and independence) on firms’ audit inputs and financial reporting quality. Firms directly affected by the reforms experienced a larger improvement in audit inputs (measured by audit fees and the appointment of an industry specialist auditor) and a larger increase in financial reporting quality (measured by restatements of financial reports) relative to firms that were already compliant. Importantly, we find that the decline in restatements is not related to the …

The Risk-Relevance Of Securitizations During The Recent Financial Crisis, Yiwei Dou, Yanju Liu, Gordon Richardson, Dushyantkumar Vyas

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We investigate changes in the risk-relevance of securitized subprime, other nonconforming, and commercial mortgages for sponsor-originators during the recent financial crisis. Using the volatility of realized stock returns, option-implied volatility, and credit spreads, we observe a pronounced increase in the risk-relevance of subprime securitizations as early as 2006. Furthermore, reflecting the evolution of the financial crisis in waves, we find that investors recognized the increased credit risk of other nonconforming and commercial mortgage securitizations as the financial crisis progressed. Additional analyses show that risk-relevance varies cross-sectionally with structural characteristics such as monoline credit-enhancement and the presence of special servicers for …

Activist Directors: Determinants And Consequences, Ian D Gow, Sa-Pyung Sean Shin, Suraj Srinivasan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This paper examines the determinants and consequences of hedge fund activism with a focuson activist directors, i.e., those directors appointed in response to demands by activists.Using a sample of 1,969 activism events over the period 2004–2012, we identify 824 activistdirectors. We find that activists are more likely to gain board seats at smaller firms and thosewith weaker stock price performance. Activists remain as shareholders longer when they haveboard seats, with holding periods consistent with conventional notions of “long-term” institutionalinvestors. As in prior research, we find positive announcement-period returns of around4–5% when a firm is targeted by activists, and a 2% …

Taking Flight – June 2014 Edition, Georgia Southern University

College of Business: News & Publications

• Message from the Dean
• Alumni Spotlight: Stephen Bruce
• Business After Hours @ Georgia Southern University City Campus
• The City of Hinesville Partners with BBRED
• LaunchSAVANNAH Celebration
• Savannah Chamber Small Business Council SMART Luncheon
• Renew Merchandise, Georgia Southern University Partner to Create Cutting Edge Apparel From Recycled Bottles
• Georgia Southern University College of Business Hosted 21st Annual Golf Tournament
• Senior Accounting Student Earns Prestigious International Scholarship
• Continuing Education @ Georgia Southern

Paths Of Influence For Innovations In Financial Is And Technology Ecosystems, Jun Liu, Robert John Kauffman, Dan Ma

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Predicting technological innovations in financial information systems (IS) and technology ecosystems has been challenging for technology forecasters and industry analysts due to their underlying complexity. Technology-based financial innovations over the past four decades, such as programmed trading in the 1980s, risk-adjusted return on capital-based financial risk management systems in the 1990s, high-frequency trading and Internet banking in 2000s, and now mobile payments in the 2010s, have all led to transformations in the financial services industry. What basis can be identified to predict such new innovations? And what areas of financial services will they affect? This study applies the technology ecosystem …