Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Millennials’ Willingness To Payfor Socially Responsible Investmentand Its Institutional And Individual Antecedents – Evidence From Italy, Poland, And Ukraine, Anna Doś, Monika Foltyn-Zarychta, Matteo Pedrini, Iryna Shkura

Journal of Banking and Financial Economics

The readiness to sacrifice profit while making socially responsible investments among millennials, as future investors and managers, was examined. Specifically, a multi-level perspective on willingness to pay for socially responsible investment was assumed to understand how nationality, personal values and investment knowledge affect millennials’ readiness to sacrifice profit to achieve sustainability goals. Using survey data of 521 business students from Italy, Poland and Ukraine, it is showed that a considerable share of millennials prefer social and environmental performance of investment over financial return and that their nationality is the most powerful factor in explaining willingness to pay for socially responsible …

The Cost Of Cheap Talk: How Campaign Promises And Default Contributions Affect Donation-Based Crowd Funding Success, Tianci Leon Qiu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Non-profit organisations (NPOs) find it increasingly harder to engage donors and raise funds from the public. Post-pandemic: the emphasis on tactics to raise funds online through donation-based crowdfunding (DCF) platforms has surged in importance for both NPO survival and continued beneficiary aid. However, unlike equity-based crowdfunding platforms where campaign organisers are obligated to provide investors with tangible returns based on funding milestones, NPOs on DCF platforms do not have to adhere to any funding milestones or are beholden to any tangible obligations towards donors. Consequently, NPOs are greatly incentivised to deploy cheap talk – non-binding, unverifiable messages and claims to …

Do Hacker Groups Pose A Risk To Organizations? Study On Financial Institutions Targeted By Hacktivists, Mikko Samuli Niemelae

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Publication date: 5 September 2023

In the digital era, technological progress has been shadowed by an escalation in cybersecurity threats, notably impacting the financial sector. This research critically examines the influence of hacktivist campaigns—particularly those led by groups like Anonymous—on the cyber exposure of financial services firms listed on the NYSE. Employing Synthetic Controls and analyzing 22 treated firms, the study found that such campaigns significantly enhance the target institutions' deep and dark web exposure, with an average increase of 65% per annum in the subsequent two years from the campaign initiation. Crucially, smaller firms display a heightened susceptibility to …

What Drives The Value Of Financial Analysts’ Advice? The Role Of Earnings And Growth Forecasts, Ohad Kadan, Leonardo Madureira, Rong Wang, Tzachi Zach

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We offer a parsimonious index at the individual analyst level to measure the extent to which an analyst relies on earnings and long-term growth forecasts in producing her advice. Using this index, we evaluate the contribution of earnings and growth forecasts to the investment value of analysts’ stock recommendations. We find that the fraction of analysts’ advice attributed to forecasts varies considerably across analysts and sectors. The investment value of recommendations is higher for analysts who rely less on their forecasts and more on other sources of information when forming investment advice. Investors recognize the superiority of recommendations from analysts …

Does Abstract Thinking Facilitate Information Processing? Evidence From Financial Analysts, Frank Weikai Li, Rong Wang, Yang Yu, Gloria Yang Yu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study whether abstract thinking – an essential cognitive trait established by psychological and neuroscientific studies – facilitates analysts’ information processing. Exploiting analysts’ questions during earnings calls, we construct an Abstract Thinking Index (ATI) that measures their tendency to involve abstract words, logical reasoning, broader topics, and future outlooks. We find that abstract thinking improves analysts’ forecast accuracy and recommendation informativeness. Consistent with abstract thinking featuring identifying central characteristics and comprehending intangible things, ATI has stronger effects for firms with fundamentals co-moving more with peers and less tangible information. Additional analyses suggest that ATI captures analysts’ cognitive traits rather than …

Exploring Occupational Therapy’S Role In Foster Care: A Mixed Methods Study On Financial Literacy Education For Foster Youth, Ashley Carmichael, Karen Park

Summer 2023 Virtual OTD Capstone Symposium

Background: Foster youth are children under 21 years old who have been removed from their homes due to neglect or abuse and are susceptible to early adversity and trauma (Alternative Family Services, n.d.; AOTA, 2017). Financial literacy is the knowledge and skills to take control of finances (National Financial Educators Council, n.d.). In the foster care setting, occupational therapists (OTs) provide client-centered care that traditionally focuses on transitional life skills, such as seeking employment (American Occupational Therapy Association [AOTA], 2017).

Problem/Purpose: The lack of resources for foster youth to gain financial literacy skills leads to a disadvantage in …

Determinants Of Net Interest Margin For Banks Operating In Pales-Tine, Islam Abdeljawad, Ajyad Bahlaq

An-Najah University Journal for Research - B (Humanities)

The goal of this research is to identify the factors that influence the net interest margin (NIM) for Palestinian conventional banks. Palestine is a unique country with poor governance, political uncertainty, and regulatory insufficiency, adding higher information asymmetry to the decision-making process. The sample is comprised of unbalanced panel data from 15 commercial banks for the period 2011–2020. The research used a pooled OLS, a fixed-effect model, a random effect model, a robust pooled OLS, a difference GMM, and a system GMM estimators. Evidence collected supports that net interest margin is positively influenced by risk aversion, operating costs, and loan-to-deposit, …

Cash Usage In Poland In 2020: Insights Into The Role Of The Covid-19 Pandemic And Spatial Aspects, Radosław Kotkowski, Arkadiusz Manikowski

Journal of Banking and Financial Economics

The study explores the factors likely to induce Polish customers to pay by cash, instead of payment cards, for goods and services they are purchasing. The basis of our investigation is microdata obtained in 2020, during the “Payment Habits in Poland in 2020” study, which was conducted by Narodowy Bank Polski (National Bank of Poland) in 2020. The analysis is performed using the two-stage Heckman approach. In the first stage, card adoption factors are analyzed using a probit model; then, in the second stage, the OLS model is employed to analyze the propensity to pay by cash, despite having a …

Seeking Better Sharpe Ratio Via Bayesian Optimization, Peng Liu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Developing an excellent quantitative trading strategy to obtain a high Sharpe ratio requires optimizing several parameters at the same time. Example parameters include the window length of a moving average sequence, the choice of trading instruments, and the thresholds used to generate trading signals. Simultaneously optimizing all these parameters to seek a high Sharpe ratio is a daunting and time-consuming task, partly because of the unknown mechanism determining the Sharpe ratio. This article proposes using Bayesian optimization to systematically search for the optimal parameter configuration that leads to a high Sharpe ratio. The author shows that the proposed intelligent search …

An Empirical Research On The Financial Distress Risk In The Garden And Construction Industry, Jianlin Guan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In recent years, the garden and construction industry has faced significant financial distressdue to the downward pressure on the macro economy. This financial distress not onlyposesrisks to the financial stability and management of enterprises but also has far-reachingimpactson society.

This paper utilizes various analytical methods such as case analysis, empirical analysis, andevent analysis to derive the following conclusions:(1)The participation of garden constructionindustry enterprises in public-private partnership (PPP) projects leads to increased financial distress.(2)The higher the debt ratio of the local government where listed gardenandconstruction enterprises are located, the greater the financial distress theyexperience.(3)Enterprises in the garden and construction industry, whose …

Essays On Stakeholder Economy, Hanyu Zhang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The dissertation consists of two chapters on stakeholder economy. It looks at how firms interact with the stakeholders, including not only investors, employees, customers, governments, but also the broader community and society at large, and examines how such interactions affect corporate behavior in China and the global setting. The first chapter studies how societal culture shapes firm behavior and growth by analyzing the trade-off of relying on trust in acquiring stakeholder resources, and testing with data on the number of historic Confucian schools surrounding a current firm’s location in China. Companies more exposed to Confucianism have greater social contributions and …

Essays On Tax Impacts On Corporate Finance, Corporate Governance And Regional Disparity, Mei Li

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters that cover topics on tax impacts on corporate finance, regional disparity and corporate governance.

Chapter 1 - How Do Net Operating Loss Carryforwards Affect Tax Impact on Corporate Capital Structure? This paper examines the impact of net operating loss (NOL) carryforwards on the tax implications of corporate capital structure. Leveraging the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA), the largest tax reform in four decades, this paper investigates the effect of NOL carryforwards on firms' sensitivity to tax reforms. As NOL carryforwards have become increasingly significant since 2000, but not widely researched due …

Disagreement In Market Index Options, Guilherme Salome, George Tauchen, Jia Li

Research Collection School Of Economics

We generate new evidence on disagreement among traders in the S&P 500 options market from high-frequency intraday price and volume data. Inference on disagreement is based on a model where investors observe public information but agree to disagree on its interpretation; disagreement among investors is captured by the volume–volatility elasticity. For options, there are two natural variables related to disagreement: moneyness and tenor, which we relate to disagreement about the distribution of the market index at different quantiles and times. The estimated volume–volatility elasticity equals unity for options near the money and close to expiration, which is consistent with the …

Stock Splits And Corporate Peer Effects, Albert J. Saad

Theses and Dissertations

We find that a company’s decision to execute a stock split is affected by the number of stock splits carried out by its peers. Through the use of a broad peer group construction methodology, we also reveal the presence of asymmetric effects with regard to companies of different market capitalization size. In the periods of 1983–1996 and 1997–2009 we find that firms are more likely to split their stock if more of their peers have recently done so. However, in the period of 2010–2019 we see that the opposite is true. These results provide further evidence on social learning from …

Lobbying – A Financial Perspective, Sean Byrne

Theses and Dissertations

U.S. based bank holding companies (BHCs) exert influence at every step in the legislative process where financial regulatory reforms are enacted into law, such as the Dodd-Frank Act, to promulgation of regulations. In Chapter II, we maintain that BHCs, upon facing salient regulation, lobby regulators to have their opinions heard with the goal of favorable regulatory change and to increase non-traditional revenues. We undertook a novel collection of political and financial data from 2003 to 2018, matching 180 pairs of parsed proposed and final regulations. BHCs that participated in commenting on proposed rules are highly successful at having their views …

Two Essays On Industry Tournament Incentives, Sarah Almisher

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

A large body of literature has developed on the disparities in compensation among chief executive officers. Financial media has highlighted the fact that CEOs in the United States receive excessive pay and that the gap among executive compensation is soaring. High compensation creates incentives for CEOs to take higher risk in firm policies to land a more attractive position managing another firm and attaining higher pay which is considered the ultimate prize (Kale, Reis, and Venkateswaran 2009; Coles, Daniel, and Naveen 2006). This creates a tournament in the managerial labor market. We define this tournament as the pay differential between …

Cbdc: Context, Challenges, And Conditions For A Successful Adoption, Charlie Nhuc Hiang Lay

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Central bank digital currencies (CBDC) are the digital version of physical notes and coins. They are the latest milestone in the evolution of money over the centuries due to technological advancements. This digitalisation of physical money primarily serves as a medium of exchange that has a central bank anchor. There are two versions of CBDC, wholesale and retail. This thesis focuses on retail CBDC, which targets the general public and small daily transactions. It discusses the issues and the plausible implementation of a retail CBDC. A CBDC will preserve monetary sovereignty, foster financial stability, and counter private network effects, i.e., …

Perceptions Of Student Loan Debt: A Phenomenological Study Exploring Black Undergraduate Students' Experiences., Pilar Prather

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The rising cost of higher education concerns many families in the United States, especially those from historically underrepresented backgrounds. The purpose of this study is to explore the phenomenon of Black students' perception of their student loan debt and how their financial knowledge influences their decisions at a public institution. This qualitative research provides space to empower individuals to share their stories through semi-structured interviews to get an account of their experiences. Grounded in Yosso's (2005) Community Cultural Wealth Theory, the study seeks to capture the unique ways Black students make financial decisions. The dissertation is divided into five chapters: …

Bridging The Chasm Between Fundamental, Momentum, And Quantitative Investing, Allen Hoskins, Jeff Reed, Robert Slater

SMU Data Science Review

A chasm exists between the active public equity investment management industry's fundamental, momentum, and quantitative styles. In this study, the researchers explore ways to bridge this gap by leveraging domain knowledge, fundamental analysis, momentum, crowdsourcing, and data science methods. This research also seeks to test the developed tools and strategies during the volatile time period of 2020 and 2021.

Liquidity Constraints, Consumption, And Debt Repayment: Evidence From Macroprudential Policy In Turkey, Sumit Agarwal, Muris Hadzic, Changcheng Song, Yildirim Yildiray

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using account-level credit card data from a large Turkish bank, we study the impact of a unique credit card policy that increases minimum payment on consumption and debt repayment. We show that the policy reduces credit card spending and debt, boosts existing debt repayment, and reduces credit card delinquency. The credit card debt of affected consumers falls on average by 50% two years into the policy’s implementation. An increase in minimum payment has a stronger effect than does a decrease of a similar magnitude. We build a benchmark life cycle model with soft liquidity constraint to explain the reduction in …

Hedging Cryptos With Bitcoin Futures, Francis Liu, Natalie Packham, Meng-Jou Lu, Wolfgang Karl Haerdle

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

The introduction of derivatives on Bitcoin enables investors to hedge risk exposures in cryptocurrencies. Because of volatility swings and jumps in cryptocurrency prices, the traditional variance-based approach to obtain hedge ratios may not be suitable for hedgers. In this work, we consider two extensions of the traditional approach: first, different dependence structures are modelled by different copulae, such as the Gaussian, Student-t, Normal Inverse Gaussian and Archimedean copulae; second, different risk measures, such as value-at-risk, expected shortfall and spectral risk measures are employed to find the optimal hedge ratio. Extensive out-of-sample tests using the data from the time …

Exchange-Traded Funds And Real Investment, Constantinos Antoniou, Frank Weikai Li, Xuewen Liu, Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, Chengzhu Sun

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate the link between exchange-traded funds and real investment. Cross-sectionally, higher ETF ownership is associated with an increased sensitivity of real investment to Tobin's q and a heightened ability of stock returns to forecast future earnings. Inclusion of stocks in industry ETFs enhances investment-q sensitivity and implies greater incorporation of earnings information into prices prior to public releases. Greater nonmarket ETF ownership leads to increased (reduced) reliance of real investment on own (peers') stock prices. Overall, the evidence is consistent with ETFs positively affecting real investment efficiency via greater flows of information.

Assessing The Odds Of A Us Recession, Thomas Lam, David Fernandez

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

In this commentary, SMU Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics (SKBI) Principal Researcher Thomas Lam and SKBI Director SMU Professor of Finance (Practice) Dave Fernandez offer their perspectives on the current multifaceted and highly charged US recession debate. While America is currently not in a downturn, the near-term odds of one have edged up, according to models based on key monthly and weekly indicators.

The Financialization Of Cryptocurrencies, Lei Huang, Tse-Chun Lin, Fangzhou Lu, Jian Sun

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We show that change in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust premium is the single most significant predictor of Bitcoin daily return. This sentiment measure is similar to the closed-end fund discount measure as in Baker and Wurgler (2006), but more likely to reflect the excess demand from traditional investors than from blockchain specialists. Although there is a substantial variation in Bitcoin price quotes worldwide, this Grayscale premium and discount predict Bitcoin daily return for the most liquid Bitcoin exchanges. Using K-means clustering and LDA analysis, we find that this predictability is especially significant when there is a large variation in bullish and …

Impact Of Geographical Diversification And Limited Attention On Private Equity Fund Returns, Victor Ong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This article analyzes the effect of geographical diversification on global private equity (PE) fund returns. We find that there is a negative correlation between geographical diversification and PE fund returns. To establish the causality between geographical diversification and PE fund returns, we employ an instrumental variable analysis where the instrument used is the stock market capitalization of the host country where the PE fund is based. Our results apply to Net IRR, TVPI and DPI as dependent variables used to proxy for PE fund returns in the main regression model. A one standard deviation increase in geographical diversification results in …

Assessing The Impact Of Financial Obstacles On Manufacturing Firm's Capacity Utilization: Bayesian Approach, Arab Dahir Hassan, Razim Ozcan

The Indonesian Capital Market Review

This study aims to investigate the relationship between financial obstacles and the capacity utilization of manufacturing firms. This study departs from previous studies in the literature by employing Bayesian linear regression analysis. The results demonstrate that financial constraints have a considerable negative effect on the capacity utilization of manufacturing enterprises, but access to credit lines has a positive effect. The sample consists of 1,494 private manufacturing firms in 31 Europe & Central Asian countries. Financial obstacles were perceived as the major impediment to business operations by 65% of the enterprises in the survey. Furthermore, 52% of enterprises in the sample …

When Does Csr Payoff?, John A. Doukas, Rongyao Zhang

Finance Faculty Publications

We investigate whether firms engaging in corporate social responsibility (CSR) can preserve firm value during normal and unprecedented exogenous adverse events. Our evidence shows, in regular times, a negative relation between CSR engagement and firm value, but under adverse economic conditions, CSR protects firm value by decreasing firm risks. We also find that firms with high managerial attributes engage in greater CSR activities that benefit shareholders in both normal and aberrant financial times. Despite the controversy surrounding CSR, our evidence points out that CSR can be viewed as a set of intangible assets that can improve firm value across good …

Evaluating The Degree Of Using Islamic Financing Instruments Based On The Concept Of Indebtedness And Its Developmental Importance (A Case Study Of Palestine Islamic Banks 2013-2019), Azmi Awad

Journal of the Arab American University مجلة الجامعة العربية الامريكية للبحوث

This study aimed to shed light on the Islamic financing instruments based on the concept of Indebtedness and indicate the degree of the use of those instruments in the Islamic banks during 2013-2019. This could be achieved by indicating the size and degree of concentration of the use of those instruments and the fairness of their distribution to various economic sectors on the one hand, and explaining the developmental importance of those financing instruments in the economy on the other hand. The researcher used the descriptive analytical approach and the comparative approach. To test the validity of the hypotheses, Pearson …

Lessons Learned: Gaurav Vasisht, Sandra Ward

Journal of Financial Crises

Gaurav Vasisht served as assistant counsel, banking and financial services, to the governor of New York during the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2009 (GFC). In his role, Vasisht set the governor’s agenda for banking and financial policy and oversaw the regulatory and legislative priorities of the state banking and insurance departments. Vasisht played a pivotal role in developing and drafting consumer protection legislation, particularly as it related to housing foreclosures at the time of the crisis. This Lessons Learned is based on an interview with Vasisht that occurred on September 27, 2019.

Lessons Learned: Kevin Stiroh, Mercedes Cardona

Journal of Financial Crises

Kevin Stiroh was head of the Financial Sector Analysis Supervision Group at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) during the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2009 (GFC). At the FRBNY, Stiroh was a leader in the design of the “stress test” for the banking system, the Supervisory Capital Assessment Program (SCAP). In the aftermath of the GFC, members of the FRBNY, including Stiroh, drafted a report on systemic risk and bank supervision, laying out lessons learned from the crisis and their recommendations. In February 2021, Stiroh transitioned from the FRBNY to a leadership position with the Federal Reserve Board …