Corporate Finance Commons^™

Vertical Mergers In A Model Of Upstream Monopoly And Incomplete Information, Serge Moresi, David Reitman, Steven C. Salop, Yianis Sarafidis

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

We examine the role of private information on the impact of vertical mergers. A vertical merger can improve the information that is available to an upstream monopolist because, after the merger, the monopolist can observe the cost of its downstream merger partner. In the pre-merger world, because the costs of the downstream firms are private information, the monopolist has incomplete information and cannot implement the monopoly outcome: The expected pre-merger equilibrium price of the downstream product is lower than the monopoly price. After a vertical merger, the equilibrium input price that is charged to the downstream rival can either increase …

Stock Trend Prediction Using Candlestick Charting And Ensemble Machine Learning Techniques With A Novelty Feature Engineering Scheme, Yaohu Lin, Shancun Liu, Haijun Yang, Harris Wu

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Faculty Publications

Stock market forecasting is a knotty challenging task due to the highly noisy, nonparametric, complex and chaotic nature of the stock price time series. With a simple eight-trigram feature engineering scheme of the inter-day candlestick patterns, we construct a novel ensemble machine learning framework for daily stock pattern prediction, combining traditional candlestick charting with the latest artificial intelligence methods. Several machine learning techniques, including deep learning methods, are applied to stock data to predict the direction of the closing price. This framework can give a suitable machine learning prediction method for each pattern based on the trained results. The investment …

Less Commute Miles. Decreased Tire Wear. What Would You Do?, Dylan Schwarz, Brendon M. Ford, Brandon D. Hadinger, Abbie N. Pearce, Jacinta M. Pikunas

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

With the flagrant recognition of the coronavirus as one of those most impactful viruses in the history of the world, it is important to study how the effects of such a disease can create troublesome ripple effects in the world. Covid-19 has caused the death of hundreds of thousands of individuals and has negatively impacted the lives of American’s all across the country during the nationwide lockdown. Decreased work commuters, minimal road travel, and little need for car repairs hit the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company hard. The University of Akron has teamed up with Goodyear to explore such effects …

Spotify: Strategic Plan And Analysis, Riley T. Sletten

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Spotify is a worldwide music and podcast streaming company. Spotify has the most active users of any audio streaming company in the world and is a key competitor in a growing industry. It is important to evaluate the external environment and internal forces that impact Spotify’s strategic decision-making to identify opportunities and threats that could change the audio streaming landscape. Drawing on industry research, company financial statements, and media reports, this paper analyzes the external and internal environment of Spotify to identify a strategic recommendation for the company going forward. I analyze different business frameworks to evaluate the competitive landscape …

The New Public/Private Equilibrium And The Regulation Of Public Companies, Elisabeth De Fontenay, Gabriel Rauterberg

Faculty Scholarship

This Symposium Article examines how the public/private divide works today and maps out some of the potential implications for major issues in securities law. Classic debates in securities law were often predicated on the idea that public companies are a coherent class of firms that differ markedly from private companies. For more than fifty years after the adoption of the federal securities laws, this view was justified. During that period, the vast majority of successful and growing private firms eventually accepted the regulatory obligations of being public in order to access a wider and deeper pool of capital, among other …

Accounting Quality And Debt Concentration, Ningzhong Li, Yun Lou, Clemens A. Otto, Regina Wittenberg-Moerman

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine the relation between accounting quality and debt concentration in corporate capital structures (i.e., firms’ tendency to rely predominantly on only a few types of debt). Motivated by theoretical and empirical research that supports a strong link between debt concentration and creditors’ coordination costs and the importance of accounting quality in reducing these costs, we hypothesize that firms with higher accounting quality have less concentrated debt structures. Measuring accounting quality with a comprehensive index based on the occurrence of material internal control weaknesses, accounting restatements, SEC AAERs, and firms’ reliance on small auditors, we find that higher accounting quality …

How Do Accounting Practices Spread? An Examination Of Law Firm Networks And Stock Option Backdating, Patricia M. Dechow, Samuel T. Tan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We hypothesize that one way accounting practices spread is through law firm connections. We investigate this prediction by examining companies that avoided reporting compensation expense by engaging in stock option backdating. We hypothesize that executives engaged in backdating because they were desensitized to its inappropriateness when they learned through their legal counsel that other companies were engaging in this practice. We identify backdating companies through backdating-related restatements of earnings. Using network analysis, we find that backdating companies are highly connected with other backdating companies via shared law firms. Logistic regressions reveal that the odds of a company backdating are 53 …

Don’T Get Screwed: What Factors Determine The Inclusion Of J. Crew Blockers?, Michael Sill

CMC Senior Theses

A “J. Crew Maneuver” is a type of collateral-stripping event that transfers the value of a nearly insolvent company from the lender to the borrower. This concept matters to lenders because it exposes them to significant downside risk through the loss of hundreds of millions of pledged collateral. While credit analysts and debt lawyers have commented on the importance of preserving creditor value ex ante through lender-protective clauses embedded within debt documents, this paper breaks ground on empirically studying the determinants of these protective clauses known as “J. Crew Blockers”. I hypothesize that private equity backing, a contractionary credit environment, …

Zoom In, Class Out: An Event Study On Publicly Traded Ed Tech Firm Valuations During Covid-19, Matiss Ozols

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines how publicly traded Ed Tech firms reacted to negative announcements regarding COVID-19. Using an event study method, I document how an international portfolio of Ed Tech firms react across multiple event windows. The results show that Ed Tech firms reacted positively to the announcement of the first US death and negatively to the World Health Organization’s declaration that COVID-19 was a pandemic. Additionally, differences in geographical location did not impact cumulative abnormal returns across event windows. Finally, firm-specific characteristics such as volatility and financial leverage had little or no significance on stock returns.

Capm-Based Company (Mis)Valuations, Olivier Dessaint, Jacques Olivier, Clemens A. Otto, David Thesmar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

There is a discrepancy between CAPM-implied and realized returns. Using the CAPM in capital budgeting -- as recommended in textbooks -- should thus have real effects. For instance, low beta projects should be valued more by CAPM-users than by the market. We test this hypothesis using M&A data and show that bids for low-beta private targets entail lower bidder returns. We provide further support by testing several ancillary predictions. Our analyses suggest that using the CAPM when valuing targets leads to valuation errors (relative to the market's view) corresponding on average to 12% to 33% of the deal values.

Sentiment-Scaled Capm And Market Mispricing, John A. Doukas, Xiao Han

Finance Faculty Publications

This study explores the conditional version of the capital asset pricing model on sentiment to provide a behavioural intuition behind the value premium and market mispricing. We find betas (β) and the market risk premium to vary over time across different sentiment indices and portfolios. More importantly, the state β derived from this sentiment-scaled model provides a behavioural explanation of the value premium and a set of anomalies driven by mispricing. Different from the static β-return relation that gives a flat security market line, we document upward security market lines when plotting portfolio returns against their state βs and portfolios …

The Platform Architecture Of Health Insurance And Managed Care, Laurell G. Richardson

Doctoral Dissertations (DBA)

No abstract provided.

Cleaning Corporate Governance, Jens Frankenreiter, Cathy Hwang, Yaron Nili, Eric L. Talley

Faculty Scholarship

Although empirical scholarship dominates the field of law and finance, much of it shares a common vulnerability: an abiding faith in the accuracy and integrity of a small, specialized collection of corporate governance data. In this paper, we unveil a novel collection of three decades’ worth of corporate charters for thousands of public companies, which shows that this faith is misplaced.

We make three principal contributions to the literature. First, we label our corpus for a variety of firm- and state-level governance features. Doing so reveals significant infirmities within the most well-known corporate governance datasets, including an error rate exceeding …

Examining Indenture Trustee Duties, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

This Chapter examines the duties of indenture trustees appointed under bond indentures. Although their post-default duties generally are subject to a prudent-person standard, indenture trustees have relatively little legal guidance concerning pre-default duties. The rise of activist investors, however, is making it increasingly critical to identify and understand how to perform those duties. This Chapter seeks to provide that understanding.

The Sec's Shareholder Proposal Rule: Creating A Corporate Public Square, James D. Cox, Randall S. Thomas

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, we take advantage of this Symposium’s goals to think broadly about the future of Rule 14a-8 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the shareholder proposal rule. We set forth a vision for the rule to address boardroom insularity by likening the shareholder proposal rule as the public square for shareholders. The existence of such a forum would redound to the benefit of investors, officers, and boards of directors as a fount of current and useful information about their investors’ and stakeholders’ concerns.

Executive Compensation And Firm Performance In New Zealand: The Role Of Employee Stock Option Plans, David K. Ding, Ya Eem Chea

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine the role of employee stock option plans (ESOPs) in mitigating agency problems in New Zealand firms. We find that ESOPs have a significant and positive effect on firm performance relative to their non-ESOP counterparts. This relation appears within a year from the first ESOP announcement, and for two to four years after the announcement. Our results show that ESOPs improve corporate performance by 10 times the cost of the ESOPs’ adoption in the first year of issue. The improvement persists for four years after the first issuance. These findings confirm the effectiveness of employee stock option plans for …

Three Essays On Firm And Managerial Performance, Laszlo Z. Nagy

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The three essays of this dissertation examine managerial actions and strategies in response to firm-specific situations, and the resulting firm and managerial performance.

Essay 1 disentangles managerial ability and firm efficiency and examines managerial ability conditional on firm efficiency. Prior research on managerial ability overlook under- lying firm efficiency. Observing that the two measures of quality are highly correlated, I disentangle managerial ability from firm efficiency and create new measures for innate (pure) managerial ability and relative managerial ability (conditional on firm efficiency). I categorize managers as underrated (high managerial ability, low firm efficiency), typical (managerial ability and firm efficiency …

Foreign Institutional Shareholders And Corporate Payout Policy, Rahmat Setiawan, Nova Christiana, Sanju Kumar Singh

Jurnal Akuntansi dan Keuangan Indonesia

This study examines the effect of foreign institutional shareholders (FIS) on corporate payout policy. The study employs 97 Indonesian manufacturing firms listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange period 2011-2015. Multivariate Tobit and Logit are employed to estimate the model. The result confirms the bird in the hand theory that FISs need assurance of their investments in the emerging market. FIS has a monitoring role over the firms since they have the ability to detect the firm’s quality and the agency problem within. The result confirms that the presence of the FIS in the firm has a positive and significant effect …

Relationship Between Foreign Direct Investment And Stock Market Development In A Small Southern Africa Economy, Duduzile Ngobe, Kalu O. Emenike

Jurnal Akuntansi dan Keuangan Indonesia

This paper investigates the relationship between foreign direct investment and stock market development in a small southern African economy. Specifically, the paper analyses long-run, short-run and causal relationships between foreign direct investment and stock market development in Eswatini for the 1990 to 2018 periods. Results of preliminary analyses of the variable show existence of positive skewness, fat-tailed, non-normal distribution, and I(1) order of integration for the foreign direct investment and stock market return series. Estimates from the ARDL model indicate evidence of a positive and statistically insignificant long-run relationship between foreign direct investment and stock market development in the kingdom …

Accounting Information In The Fama And French Three-Factors Model, Rianty Nikita Lotazia Pondaag, Erni Ekawati

Jurnal Akuntansi dan Keuangan Indonesia

The purpose of this study is to reexamine the ability of the Fama-French Three Risk Factor Model to explain stock portfolio returns in countries with different economic levels, as well as examine the effect of accounting information derived from book-to-market on stock portfolio returns. The sample used was a manufacturing company on the Indonesia Stock Exchange and the Tokyo Stock Exchange from 2013-2018. The results show that the three risk factors of the Fama-French model apply consistently to explain the variation in stock portfolio returns in developed markets. For the portfolio of shares in the emerging market, model Fama-French does …

Predictive Value Of Other Comprehensive Income: Evidence From Asean, Puji Rahayu, Indra Wijaya Kusuma

Jurnal Akuntansi dan Keuangan Indonesia

This paper examines the predictive value of other comprehensive income and its disclosure in ASEAN. Unlike value relevance, the predictive value of other comprehensive income has not been extensively addressed in the literature. We conduct the first study examining the predictive value of other comprehensive income and its disclosure to prove that not only fair value as relevant information, but also other comprehensive income reflecting the changes of fair value. We use hand-collected data taken from the financial reports. This study employs a panel regression model to test the ability of other comprehensive income and its disclosure to predict firms’ …

Feedback’S Effect On Budgetary Slack And Self-Efficacy As Moderation Variable, Aryani Intan Endah Rahmawati, Supriyadi ,

Jurnal Akuntansi dan Keuangan Indonesia

This study aimed to examine the effect of positive and negative feedback on budgetary slack and the interaction between feedback and self-efficacy on budgetary slack under a condition of information asymmetry. Preliminary researches have tested various ways of mitigating budgetary slack practices, which did not separate the effects of positive and negative feedback. This study hypothesized that positive feedback minimizes the potential for budgetary slack under conditions of information asymmetry—and vice versa. Additionally, high self-efficacy reinforces positive feedback in reducing budgetary slack under conditions of information asymmetry—and vice versa. By employing experimental data, this study documented the results that positive …

The Obstacle Factors Of Musharakah And Mudharabah Application In Pakistan, Muhammad Arsalan Khan, Dodik Siswantoro, Abid Ur Rahman

Jurnal Akuntansi dan Keuangan Indonesia

Islamic Banking is based on the Islamic financial system. It is a banking system whose fundamental rules and regulations are established on Shariah laws i.e., Islamic jurisprudence originated from the Quran and Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him. Its functions must comply with Shariah rules and must not violate any Shariah principle. The Islamic finance system is based on Profit-loss sharing financing namely, Musharakah and Mudharabah but there are numerous issues and challenges faced by Islamic bank during the implementation of Musharakah and Mudharabah financing contracts. The various paper has been revealed some of the internal and …

When Vertical Is Horizontal: How Vertical Mergers Lead To Increases In “Effective Concentration”, Serge Moresi, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article explains the inherent loss of an indirect competitor and reduction in competition when a vertical merger raises input foreclosure concerns. We then calculate a measure of the effective increase in the HHI measure of concentration for the downstream market, and we refer to this “proxy” measure as the “dHHI.” We derive the dHHI measure by comparing the pricing incentives and associated upward pricing pressure (“UPP”) involved in two alternative types of acquisitions: (i) vertical mergers that raise unilateral input foreclosure concerns (and the associated vertical GUPPI measures), and (ii) horizontal acquisitions of partial ownership interests among …

Corporate Sustainability, Rawan Barri

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of two essays that examine the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in finance. In the first essay, we examine the bondholder wealth effects of socially responsible firms. Using an extensive U.S sample from 2006 to 2016 and two methodologies – corporate yield spreads and bond credit ratings – we provide evidence that proactive environmental and social practices are reflected in the price of corporate bonds. Furthermore, we examine the impact of managerial ownership on the relationship between CSR and bondholder wealth effects. We postulate that higher equity ownership induces managers to take on more firm risk …

What Is The Riskfree Rate? A Search For The Basic Building Block, Aswath Damodaran

Journal of New Finance

In corporate finance and valuation, we start off with the presumption that the riskfree rate is given and easy to obtain and focus the bulk of our attention on estimating the risk parameters of individuals firms and risk premiums. But is the riskfree rate that simple to obtain? Both academics and practitioners have long used government security rates as riskfree rates, though there have been differences on whether to use short term or long- term rates. In this paper, we not only provide a framework for deciding whether to use short or long term rates in analysis but also a …

The Equity Premium In 150 Textbooks, Pablo Fernandez

Journal of New Finance

This article is based on a review of 150 textbooks on corporate finance and valuation published between 1979 and 2009 by authors such as Brealey, Myers, Copeland, Damodaran, Merton, Ross, Bruner, Bodie, Penman, Arzac etc. Analysis of the sample shows that the books’ recommendations regarding the equity premium range from 3% to 10%, and that 51 books use different equity premia on various pages. Moreover, the 5-year moving average is seen to have declined from 8.4% in 1990 to 5.7% in 2008 and 2009.

Some confusion arises from not distinguishing among the four concepts that the phrase equity premium designates: …

Otter Tail Corporation, Heather Strese

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

In my valuation model I gathered Otter Tail Corporation’s financial statements, historical and industry data, public information and ratio analysis from Mergent Online, Yahoo Finance and Otter Tail Corporation’s 2018 annual report. I discount the expected free cash flows at the WACC and estimate that Otter Tail Corporation’s stock is price is at USD 56.36 per share as of November 1^st, 2019, given the small difference between my estimated price per share and the current price per share in the market, and consistent with the EV/EBITDA multiple, I recommend a HOLD on the stock of the company.

Sustainability Balanced Scorecard Architecture And Environmental Investment Decision Making: The Mediating And Moderating Effects Of Knowledge And Risk Indicators, Suaad Jassem

Student Works (2020-2029)

According to a survey by Bain and Company, the majority of the sustainability programs undertaken by global companies fail to meet their objectives. A part of the reason for such a dilemma is possibly due to the dearth of sufficient research on how investment and performance evaluation tools such as sustainability balanced scorecards architecture impact decisions taken by managerial decision-makers. Hence, this doctoral research endeavor extends the literature on sustainability balanced scorecards (SBSC) architecture by examining how they influence decision-makers when they attempt to achieve environmental goals of their organization through evaluation of environmental investment options. An experimental research model …

Contracting And Reporting Conservatism Around A Change In Fiduciary Duties, Daniel Bens, Sterling Huang, Liang Tan, Wan Wongsumwai

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We exploit an influential 1991 Delaware court ruling to examine the impact of changes in managerial fiduciary duties on firms’ accounting and contracting choices. The ruling expanded directors’ fiduciary duties in favor of creditors and away from shareholders for a specific group of firms. Using a hand-collected sample of debt contracts around the ruling date, we find that, following the ruling, debt contracts of affected firms rely less on the use of income escalators (provisions in loan contracts which require changes in net worth to reflect losses in full, but only partially for gains and profits) and other conservative adjustments …