Business Commons^™

Lazy Thinking: How Cognitive Easing Affects The Decision Making Process Of Business Professionals, Gianmarco Armenia

Honors College Theses

This paper examines how business and financial decision making are influenced by behavioral biases such as cognitive ease, overconfidence, herding and the endowment effect. I do this in two ways. First, I show historical examples of irrational decisions and the detrimental effects on the individual, society, the company, and shareholders from these decisions. Second, I conduct a survey of business students to examine how susceptible they are to behavioral biases. I find that most students are in fact allowing cognitive easing to alter their decisions negatively.

Achieving Change In Students' Attitudes Toward Group Projects By Teaching Group Skills, Lawrence Hamer, Robert O'Keefe

College of Business Faculty and Staff Works

Despite the many positive benefits which can be derived from group assignments, faculty members frequently report that students generally dislike being assigned to a group project. This paper reports a quasi-experiment which presented students with information about the relevance and importance of group skills during the time in which they were working on an assigned group project, and then measured the students' attitudes toward group projects. The reported study demonstrates that instructors can alter students' perceptions of group work by incorporating instruction about group skills into group assignments.

Do Mutual Fund Managers Outperform By Low-Balling Their Benchmarks?, Matthew James Scala

Financial Analyst

Do mutual fund managers outperform through a bias toward smaller-cap stocks than represented by the benchmark index? This study attempts to explain mutual fund outperformance through testing the average market cap (AMC) of mutual funds relative to their respective benchmark indexes. If outperforming funds show a bias toward smaller average holdings, then outperformance may be attributed to the value premium associated with small-cap stocks. Using Morningstar Direct, excess returns and average market cap of Holdings were collected on a quarterly basis for 1542 actively managed funds citing the S&P 500, S&P MidCap 400 and Russell 2000 as their primary benchmark. …

Going Green In The Coffee Business: A Stock Market Perspective, Jeffrey Spiletic

Accounting

Concern for the environment has been freely expressed by many individuals across the globe. Research has shown that customers, employees, and stockholders are more trustworthy of a company that practices socially responsible behavior. This paper will examine whether investors will prefer to invest in a company that has committed itself to reducing its environment footprint over a company that has done little or nothing to reduce its environmental impact. This will be done by comparing and contrasting the beta coefficients, share price movement, and the price to earnings ratio of two companies that differ in their attitude towards the environment. …

Does Going Green Mean Losing Green? Bank Of America Vs Jpmorgan Chase, Heather Goldstein

Accounting

This research thesis is an investigation into whether companies implementing a “going green” strategy will compromise their financial performance. The primary focus was on two large financial institutions, one clearly committed to going green and the other less interested in doing so: Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase. The assessment centered on specific financial measurement points for the fiscal years of 2010 and 2011. Concern for health and wellbeing of the earth is growing exponentially, however, in order to sustain the movement it is imperative that companies join the green initiatives. Nevertheless, companies must achieve specific thresholds of financial performance …

An Empirical Investigation Into The Informativeness Of Earnings, Joyce Tseng

Accounting

Accounting earnings are widely used by investors, creditors and financial analysts as a measure of operating performance in valuing firms. However, accountants trade off relevance in decision making in favor of reliability in computing earnings. This study uses an analysis based on stock prices to examine the effectiveness of the earnings number in measuring the operating performance of a firm under different situations where it may be less accurate: when Research and Development Expense, Pension Expense, Special Items, and Income from Discontinued Operations are disproportionately large in magnitude. The results are generally consistent with my hypotheses. The results of this …

Restaurants: Do Healthy Menus Mean Positive Financial Performance? A Case Study Of Chipotle Mexican Grill, Cara N. Veneziano

Accounting

The purpose of this study is to assess the consequences of offering healthy menus versus providing historically popular fast foods. Healthier foods are better for society and being able to understand how serving healthier menus will impact the financial performance of a company is crucial. I focus my attention on Chipotle Mexican Grill since it has been making a concerted effort to provide healthier foods. I have selected McDonald’s Corporation as a benchmark comparison. My specific investigative question is: Does a healthier menu translate into greater profits. My study begins with a comparison of Chipotle and McDonald’s meal options and …

The Underpricing Of M/A-Com Technology Solutions, Inc. At The Ipo That Leads To Long-Term Underperformance, Joseph Doramus

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

The underpricing of initial public offerings leads to long-term underperformance. There are many reasons why this may happen, but for this study, the focus is on the lower offering price investors are granted for taking on the high risk of investing in an initial public offering as well as an investment bank keeping a good reputation. The stock return for M/A-Com Technology Solutions Holding, Inc. on the first day shows the underpricing. Underperformance follows after the initial public offering date for M/A-COM Technology Solutions, Inc. This is shown by the comparison of MTSI to the MTSI Index as well as …

Institutional Distance And Entry Mode: How Do Emerging-Market Multinational Companies Overcome Competitive Disadvantages In A Developed Market?, Ru-Shiun Liou

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As latecomers to global business competition, emerging-market multinational companies (EMNCs) utilize cross-border merger and acquisitions to swiftly acquire strategic assets, such as brands and distribution channels, compensating for their competency deficiency. Developed markets with well-established firms and well-developed market-supporting institutions become important destinations for EMNCs' strategic asset-seeking investments. Institutional distance, national differences in the institutional environment, constitutes a major source of competitive disadvantage for foreign firms competing with indigenous firms. Foreign firms need to overcome the challenges of unfamiliarity, relational, and discriminatory hazards to establish legitimacy in the host market. Compared to established multinationals that originate from other advanced markets …

Adaptive Selling: A New Direction For The Pharmaceutical Industry, Kristin M. Chmelicek

Honors Theses

The pharmaceutical industry is moving towards more adaptive selling methods for their sales people. This means that the scripted sales pitch must be adjusted for the personality of the customer. Doctors were interviewed to understand their opinions of the sales people that come into their offices. Through the case studies, it was found that the doctors liked the adaptive selling methods with the combination of relational and scripted aspects for the sales presentation. Doctors found that the most successful sales calls were those that were a good combination of relational aspects as well as the education that is within the …

Perceptions Of Bp: Successes Of Post 2010 Oil Spill Recover Effort, Jordan R. Mathews

Honors Theses

This purpose of this project was to determine peoples’ opinions of BP’s post 2010 oil spill recovery effort. The researcher examined 65 faculty at the University of Southern Mississippi in order to determine their beliefs, attitudes, and intentions concerning different elements of the BP oil spill recovery effort. The researcher found that there is an overall negative opinion concerning the economic, ecological, and overall recovery effort aspects of the spill. This research suggests that BP still has some work to do in order to restore the gulf coast like they promised.

Facebook As A Job Screening Tool: Are Sales Employers Discriminating Against Job Applicants Based On Their Facebook Profiles?, Jocelyn M. Lockhart

Honors Theses

Social media networking sites are an exceptionally popular resource of self-expression in modern society. They allow friends, families and lovers across the globe to connect and stay in touch with one another. It has become increasingly common for hiring employers to utilize these sites as job-screening platforms. This research will explore how sales employers specifically examine job candidates’ Facebook profiles. Furthermore it will examine whether or not they are discriminating against these applicants based on their Facebook content.

As Seen In Vogue: An Analytical Observation Of Nudity In French And American Vogue, Elizabeth A. Kiehn

Honors Theses

For centuries, Europe has been the leader in fashion production and innovation. At the heart of this continent lies the fashion capital of the world—France. French designers have always been on the cutting edge of fashion. Setting trends, shocking consumers, and enticing the world have been normal everyday activities for them as if it is in their blood. French culture is much more daring and open about sexuality in comparison to American culture, however, American designers and retailers are still heavily influenced by French fashion designs. This begs the question then: Are French fashion magazines equally influential on American fashion …

Scheduling Arrivals To A Stochastic Service Delivery System Using Copositive Cones, Qingxia Kong, Chung-Yee Lee, Chung-Piaw Teo, Zhichao Zheng

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this paper we investigate a stochastic appointment-scheduling problem in an outpatient clinic with a single doctor. The number of patients and their sequence of arrivals are fixed, and the scheduling problem is to determine an appointment time for each patient. The service durations of the patients are stochastic, and only the mean and covariance estimates are known. We do not assume any exact distributional form of the service durations, and we solve for distributionally robust schedules that minimize the expectation of the weighted sum of patients' waiting time and the doctor's overtime. We formulate this scheduling problem as a …

The Unfulfilled Promise Of Management Education (Me): The Role, Value And Purposes Of Me, Howard Thomas, Lynne Thomas, Alex Wilson

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper aims to review the evolution of management education primarily over the last 50 years and seeks to identify the challenges and lessons learned in management education and to assess the potential for change. To gain insight into these issues the authors draw on the perspectives of around 40 key individuals from academia, professional bodies, media, business and students.

How Important Are Earnings Announcements As An Information Source?, Sudipta Basu, Truong Duong, Stanimir Markov, Eng Joo Tan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In a competitive information market, no single information source is likely to dominate all other sources collectively, but a single source can dominate all or most other sources individually. We explore whether earnings announcements constitute such a dominant source using Ball and Shivakumar’s R2 metric: the proportion of the variation in annual returns explained by earnings announcement returns. We find that earnings announcement R2 is 11% -- higher than the corresponding R2 of returns on days with dividend announcements, management forecasts, preannouncements, 10-K and 10-Q filings and amendments. Only the four largest realized absolute daily returns in a year match …

Too Small To Forget: An Analysis Of The Changing Banking Industry And The Continuing Importance Of Smaller Institutions, Michael A. Flaherty

Honors Scholar Theses

Since the early 1980s, the United States banking industry has undergone a variety of structural changes. In 1980, there were over 14,000 banking institutions; now, there are about 6,000 institutions remaining. In addition to the declining number of institutions, industry assets have become more highly concentrated in several very large institutions. For example, the percentage of industry assets held by banks with $10 billion or more in assets (adjusted for inflation) has increased from about 46% in 1992 to 80% in 2012.

Many of the structural changes came in response to a changing regulatory environment. Banking regulations began to shift …

An Examination Of The Statistical Significance And Economic Implications Of Model-Based And Analyst Earnings Forecasts, Kevin Ow Yong, M. Evans, K Njoroge

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We address the demand for model-based earnings forecasts by proposing a cross-sectional model which incorporates three salient ideas. First, firm performance converges to expected levels over time; second, amounts from current financial statements are robust predictors of future performance; and third, ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation is unreliable in samples including extreme values. Accordingly, we estimate a cross-sectional earnings forecasting model based on least absolute deviations analysis (LAD), and include profitability drivers derived from financial statements as predictors. In terms of statistical significance, we find that these forecasts are more accurate than forecasts from three extant prediction models and consensus …

The Liability Of Foreignness In International Equity Investments: Evidence From The U.S. Stock Market, Bok Baik, Jun-Koo Kang, Jin-Mo Kim, Joonho Lee

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using foreign institutional ownership data in the US from 1990 to 2007, we examine whether foreign institutional investors face liabilities of foreignness (LOF) in the US stock market. We find that foreign institutional investors prefer low information asymmetry stocks more than domestic institutional investors do, and this preference for low information asymmetry stocks is particularly strong among foreign institutional investors from countries with high LOF. More importantly, we find that a change in foreign institutional ownership is negatively related to future returns, whereas this relation does not exist for domestic institutional ownership. The negative relation between the change in foreign …

Education 2.0 In Indonesia: Inspiring Bamboo Innovators, Koon Boon Kee

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

No abstract provided.

Cracking The Tax Codes: How State Tax Laws Influence The Number Of Manufacturing Jobs Within Their Borders, Nick Lorenson

Political Science Theses and Capstones

With the recent economic downturn, jobs have been at the forefront of people’s concerns. Policy makers in every state have promised their constituents new jobs. Of particular importance are high paying jobs. Manufacturing jobs tend to be a well-paying and highly sought after form of employment. However, in recent decades, the percentage of manufacturing jobs has been declining in the United States. Also, manufacturing facilities have shown an increased likelihood of relocating to different states. I theorize that manufacturing facilities relocating and expanding in different states is primarily due to state tax policies. This phenomenon has increased within recent years …

Applications Of Search Theory In Finance, Hongyu Song

Finance - Dissertations

In this dissertation, I apply two types of search based theoretical models to interpret two important issues in finance, respectively. (1)The first essay belongs to the field of corporate finance, in which a random search model is set up to describe the pre-IPO market searching and matching process between private firms with intent to sell equity in an IPO and investment banks (IB) that underwrite the issue. Our model tightly links many IPO-related phenomena such as IPO underpricing and long run underperformance under one unified searching framework. (2) The second essay is related to market microstructure, i.e. bid-ask spread, in …

Studies In Income, Investment, And Stock Returns: The Permanent Income Hypothesis And The Overinvestment Puzzle, Insun Yang

Finance - Dissertations

Increased sales drive earnings; increased earnings drive investment; and increased investment drives higher stock returns. In this dissertation, I studied the relationship of sales income, firm investment increase and stock returns. The first paper, titled "Permanent Income and Investment", investigates the relationship between changes in sales income and levels of investment. When firms experience increases in sales that they consider to be permanent, the present value of expected profits also increase, leading to increases in the firms' investments. Firm's investment behavior is primarily explained by permanent changes in sales incomes and not by transitory change. The second paper, titled "Firm …

Motivations Behind Traveling To Dark Tourism Destinations: A Qualitative Study For Future Marketing Campaign Targeting Dark Tourism To Chernobyl, Oleksandra Korotchuk

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

In 2011, the Ukrainian government granted tourist access to a place where one of the worst nuclear disasters in history occurred – Chernobyl. Since then, Chernobyl became the hottest Dark Tourism destination, attracting those who want to see the abandoned ghost-town of Pripyat, a place that 40,000 people used to call home. After the entire city was evacuated in a matter of hours, their belongings were left in pristine condition, disturbed only by the passage of time. Now, thousands of curious travel to Pripyat for guided tours of the Alienation Zone. These so-called Dark Tourists travel to destinations where death …

Oureconomy: Social Impact In Syracuse, Daniel Cowen

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

In today’s society we rely on non-profits and government institutions to ameliorate our most pressing problems. Everyday these organizations employees work tirelessly to help people most in need. Their efforts are recognized and commendable, but they are constantly limited by countless restraints like lack of funding, slow service innovation, and accurate impact measurement tools. Implementing a new sector that would effectively combat the problems that organizations battle when they are doing their best to solve other people’s problems would exponentially improve services.

In this paper I start by outlining the societal problems that are especially prevalent in Syracuse, but characteristic …

Wired Women: Understanding And Reaching The 18-24 Year Old Women Of Today, Jessica David

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Wired Women represent a segment of the larger millennial generation that has not previously been looked at as a singular target. Previous generational spans of 15-20 have until now successfully identified people of similar tastes, behavior and experience. The increased rate of technological discovery and innovation that has taken place over the past 25 years has caused a generational divide within millennials. It is necessary that this group of 18-24 year old women be examined separately from older millennial women as well as their same-aged male cohorts.

18-24 year old women represent an opportunity for advertisers to reach a group …

The Heteronormative Objectification Of Women In The Disney Princess Films: A Study Of Brand Advertising And Parents’ Perceptions, Melanie Greenblatt

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Although the Disney Princess franchise portrays its ten princess movies as tales of “happily ever after,” they are filled with negative stereotypes of all kinds; this study in particular focuses on those addressed towards females. Each of these princesses lives in a patriarchal society and her sole desire is to find a man who guides her to happiness. The Princess brand has immense popularity even with these unconstructive stigmatizations of women. This study explores these movies while investigating, through qualitative research, the potency of these stereotypes and whether the parents of the target audience (defined by Disney as ages three …

The Perfect Balance: Combining Global And Local Strategies For Effective International Public Relations, Anne Frances Krengel

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This paper discusses the benefits of using a combination of global and local public relations tactics to optimize global marketing activities and reach target publics. It also compares various cultures and public relations practices around the world, and offers examples of international public relations campaigns that have successfully reached their target markets by incorporating global strategies with cultural twists that are specifically tailored to local communities. In today’s progressively more globalized world, where people are connecting more quickly than ever before, it is vital that organizations know how to communicate correctly. While many theorists prefer either global strategies or local …

Israel’S Travel And Tourism Public Relations, Jillian Marom

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Israel’s geopolitical location and conflict with its surrounding neighbors has resulted in constant negative media coverage and poor public perception of the country. As a result of the ongoing turmoil and biased media reports, the country’s tourism industry has failed to live up to its dreams and expectations. In an attempt to fully understand Israel’s travel and tourism industry, the researcher wrote a case study analysis that analyzes Israel’s PR efforts and media campaigns that are created to brand the country and change its negative image in the media. Through online research, news articles, scholarly journals and in-person interviews, the …

Major League Soccer Case Study An Examination Into The Future Of The League, Matt Samost

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Major League Soccer has grown tremendously since its inception in 1996. The league, however, still is a work in progress. The overarching question of this case study deals with an examination into the future of the league. Will it continue to be a niche sport on the American sports landscape or will it challenge the big four leagues in the years to come? Broken into five subtopics, the case study looks to address this question by examining the league through multiple lenses in order to be able to take both an in-depth and wide look at the current condition of …