Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Manchester Center: A Comparative Analysis Of Similar Local Nonprofits Using Financial Ratios, Brittani Wilson

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

The Manchester Center is a nonprofit agency located in Lexington, KY whose mission is "to enrich lives in our neighborhood through educational, recreational, and social activities." A project team from the University of Kentucky studied the Center's finances, internal business processes, employee development, and services to customers to develop a balanced scorecard. It became evident to the team that the center was strained financially and additional funds would be beneficial to the organization However, before any suggestions could be made it was important to determine where the Manchester Center stood financially compared to similar nonprofit organizations in the Lexington area. …

Growth And Stability Of Local Government Taxes: An Analysis Of The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government’S Tax Revenue Portfolio, Nathan Phelps

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Adequate tax revenues are critical for a government to operate and maintain the delivery of services that its citizens depend. The stability of these revenues is necessary for a government to accurately forecast future revenue growth and to ensure that balanced-budget requirements are met. The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government (LFUCG) depends upon five primary tax sources for nearly 95% of its tax revenue. These taxes comprise the city’s tax revenue portfolio and include the business net profits tax, employee withholdings tax, franchise tax, insurance premiums tax, and the property tax. Each of tax possesses unique characteristics that dictate their susceptibility …

Chaos And Uncertainty, M. Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The end of 2008 in the finance industry can be summarized in two words – chaos and uncertainty. The subprime crisis, where everybody lost; the dizzying commodity price movements; the pink slip syndrome; the spectacular bank busts; and the gargantuan bail-outs all vouch for it.

An Analysis Of The Intra-Regional Trade In The Middle East And North Africa Region, E. M. Ekanayake, John R. Ledgerwood

Publications

This paper analyzes the intra-regional trade and investment flows in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region using an augmented gravity model applied to panel data. The study uses annual trade and investment data for the period 1980-2006. There is a growing awareness among countries in the MENA region regarding the importance of international trade and foreign direct investment for stimulating growth and integrating into the world economy. The research will attempt to achieve the following objectives: (a) analyze the intra-regional trade and investment flows in the MENA region; (b) identify the major determinants of trade and investment flows …

The Financing And Reform Of The United States Healthcare System, Sarah Georgeau Bernheisel

Honors Theses

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, approximately forty-five million people in the United States, including nearly nine million children, were without health insurance in 2007 ("Fast Stats A to Z" 1). Additionally, in 2007, nearly 30% of young adults, ages 18-24, in the United States were uninsured ("Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage" 22). Sadly, none of these figures includes the countless individuals who have insufficient healthcare coverage caused by their high out-of pocket costs compared to their wages.

Regenerative Patterning In Swarm Robots: Mutual Benefits Of Research In Robotics And Stem Cell Biology, Michael Rubenstein, Ying Sai, Cheng-Ming Chuong, Wei-Min Shen

Finance Faculty Works

This paper presents a novel perspective of Robotic Stem Cells (RSCs), defined as the basic non-biological elements with stem cell like properties that can self-reorganize to repair damage to their swarming organization. "Self" here means that the elements can autonomously decide and execute their actions without requiring any preset triggers, commands, or help from external sources. We develop this concept for two purposes. One is to develop a new theory for self-organization and self-assembly of multi-robots systems that can detect and recover from unforeseen errors or attacks. This self-healing and self-regeneration is used to minimize the compromise of overall function …

Exchange Rate Pass-Through For Selected Southeast Asian Countries, Stephanie L. Chan

DLSU Business & Economics Review

Long- and short-run exchange rate pass-through coefficients were estimated for Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines using a simple model based on absolute purchasing power parity. Results were lower than 0.30 for all four countries. Cointegration tests confirmed the existence of a long-run relationship between CPI, GDP, exchange rate, and the U.S. PPI for the countries studied. However, the post-estimation tests showed that a more comprehensive model may need to be developed. The low coefficients reflect the success of the countries in stabilizing their inflation levels, though implying that exchange rate interventions may be less effective in restoring trade balance.

The Customer Is King : Mutual Fund Relationships And Analyst Recommendations, Ping Liu

Lingnan Theses

I investigate whether the business relations between mutual funds and brokerage firms influence sell-side analyst coverage and recommendations. Using a comprehensive sample of analyst recommendations in China over the 2004-2008 period, I find that the likelihood of analyst coverage and analysts’ relative recommendations, benchmarked against consensus recommendations, are positively associated with the mutual fund business relationship. I measure the business relation by the weight of a stock in the mutual fund client’s portfolio and the commission revenue generated from the mutual fund clients. My results show that mutual funds take advantage of these optimistic recommendations by selling the stocks. I …

Exploring The Use Of Exchange Market Pressure And Rmu Deviation Indicator For Early Warning System (Ews) In The Asean+3 Region, Marvin Raymond F. Castell, Lawrence B. Dacuycuy

DLSU Business & Economics Review

Although macroeconomic and financial surveillance mechanisms have been in place both at the global level and at the Asia regional level, the results of the empirical analysis provide some evidence that a regional monetary unit (RMU) can be used to supplement existing surveillance tools for improved crisis detection and prevention. In particular, this study showed that the RMU may be useful as a tool for macroeconomic consultation.

An Excerpt From The Sec Commissioned Report: A Balance Sheet Disclosure Compliance Check Of Ten Publicly-Listed Companies, Ma. Gina T. Manaligod

DLSU Business & Economics Review

This study is an excerpt of a SEC-commissioned report. It investigated the extent of compliance of 10 publicly-listed finance companies with regard to the provisions of relevant PFRS/PAS on balance sheet disclosure requirements. This was accomplished by examining the balance sheet and the related note disclosures of the 10 companies. It was found the all 10 companies had deficiencies in their balance sheet disclosures. It can be implied from this study that deficiencies in disclosure requirements stem from the standards themselves. Recommendations for the improvement of disclosure compliance were provided.

Essays On Corporate Governance, Minhua Yang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is composed by two essays that explore the changes in corporate governance around the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) 2002. In the first essay, I examine the relation between board structure and compensation as a bargaining game between the board and the CEO. Bargaining game theories describe an endogenous process of determining the structure of director and CEO compensation. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) altered the equilibrium of power between the board and CEO by changing the monitoring role of the board. SOX essentially provides a natural experiment to test how a shock to the bargaining game alters the balance …

Learning Style Differences Between Students And Facultyo Title, Thomas Berry, Amber Settle

College of Business Faculty and Staff Works

Learning styles refers to the different ways that people process and retain information. Our interest is in discerning differences in learning styles between faculty and students. Just as students vary in learning styles, instructors differ in the methods they use to convey information. Any disconnect between the learning styles of instructors (and hence the methods used to teach material) and the predominant learning styles of the students may result in greater learning difficulties for students. We test the learning styles of three groups: students in the introductory finance course, finance majors, and finance faculty. Significant differences are found between each …

What Does Islamic Finance Want To Be When It Grows Up?, Karen Ahmed

College of Business Faculty and Staff Works

No abstract provided.

"Islamic Banking And Finance: Moral Beliefs And Business Practices At Work", Karen Ahmed

College of Business Faculty and Staff Works

The religion of Islam has existed for 1400 years but Islamic economic theory and its financial institutions emerged as an industry only in the 1970s. Islamic financial institutions (IFIs) are designed to help Muslims conduct business internationally while simultaneously upholding traditional Islamic values related to trade finance and currency movement. The basis for their existence is the Islamic moral prohibition on charging interest—interest is a central component of capitalist banking—yet IFIs conduct billions of dollars of business annually in the world economy and the de facto Islamic banking transaction is—in most cases—virtually identical to a capitalist banking transaction. Business practices …

New Algorithms For Optimal Portfolio Selection, Tanja Magoc

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Over the past four thousand years, numerous techniques have been developed and used to address problems in Finance. These techniques include simple arithmetic calculations and probabilistic methods as well as intelligent systems techniques such as neural networks, genetic algorithms, multi-agent systems, and support vector machines. The techniques have been developed to accurately and quickly collect, validate, analyze, and integrate data that change dynamically.

The particular problem that we address in this Dissertation is the construction of efficient algorithms for the problem of an optimal portfolio selection, that is, algorithms that would accurately and in real time determine the best distribution …

Three Essays On The Interest Rate Forward-Futures Differential 1. Empirical Investigation Of The Size And The Nature Of The Eurodollar Futures-Foward Differential 2. Decomposition Of The Interest Rate Forward-Futures Price Differential 3. How Much Premium Is There For Interest Rate Futures?, Andrei Shynkevich

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes a series of issues that surround both the theoretical modeling and the empirical estimation of the forward-futures differential, commonly known as the convexity adjustment. Opposite to theoretical implication, I find that the magnitude of the forward-futures rate differential is much smaller than what was expected, and that its sign is negative on many occasions. Neither asynchronicity bias, nor the unconventional feature of the Eurodollar futures pricing can explain the observed phenomena. The term structure interpolation error and the two business day lag between the fixing (settlement) date and the transaction (value) date to which the implied forward …

Essays On Management Quality, Ipo Characteristics And The Success Of Business Combinations, Haksoon Kim

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) is a blank check company with no business operation but management quality. It raises money through unit IPO and put proceeds in a trust account for future business combination. In the post IPO market, the market price would reflect the value of trust account and management quality of profitably acquiring a firm with business operation. Thus, SPACs provide a unique setting to examine the pricing of management quality. Compared with regular IPO firms, SPAC management has more industry experience and the market put a higher value for SPACs with better management experience. SPACs with …

Foreign Direct Investment (Fdi) - Destination India, Muhammad Shakil Khan

Business Review

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is becoming more and more revolutionary and happening phenomenon across the globe. The FDI is giving new hope and height to the economy of the nations across the frontiers of the countries. It is adding extra pace of economic growth and sustainability in terms of capital, human skills, machineries and equipment. FDI is not only enriching the Balance of Payments (BOP) but at the same time helping the nations in establishing the social bonds with other nations. The recent approval made on March7’2008 by the Ministry of Finance, Govt. of India, clearing 18 FDI proposals worth …

Panel Data Models: An Appraisal Of Lead-Lag Relation In The Kse-30, Muhammad Ayub Siddiqui

Business Review

The lead-lag relation between index futures and the underlying index has been at the core of discussion of the researchers in the developing and the developed world. This study examines the lead-lag relationship between spot and future prices of 21 companies from the KSE-30 Index for the monthly data of the period from October 2004 to February 2008. It applies panel data estimation techniques of common constants, fixed effects and random effects. These estimations are considered to be the most recent and efficient analytical methods in handling econometric data. The data is balanced; therefore, no additional assumption has been employed. …

International Evidence On Analyst Monitoring And Earnings Management: The Roles Of Corporate Disclosure And National Culture, Soongsoo Han, Tony Kang, Gerald Lobo, Yong Keun Yoo

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine country-level determinants of private information search incentives, and whether analysts’ role in constraining managers’ opportunistic earnings management varies across countries. In a sample of 31,312 firm-year observations originating from 30 countries, we document that: (1) analyst coverage is negatively (positively) related to the level of corporate disclosure (how secretive the national culture is); (2) the negative association between analyst coverage and earnings management is observed in stronger investor protection countries but not in weaker investor protection countries; and (3) analyst monitoring fails to mitigate culturedriven earnings manipulations in countries with more individualistic and uncertainty-tolerant cultures. Taken together, financial …

Hedging: Scaling And The Investor Horizon, Jim Hanly, John Cotter

Articles

This paper examines the volatility and covariance dynamics of cash and futures contracts that underlie the Optimal Hedge Ratio (OHR) across different hedging time horizons. We examine whether hedge ratios calculated over a short term hedging horizon can be scaled and successfully applied to longer term horizons. We also test the equivalence of scaled hedge ratios with those calculated directly from lower frequency data and compare them in terms of hedging effectiveness. Our findings show that the volatility and covariance dynamics may differ considerably depending on the hedging horizon and this gives rise to significant differences between short term and …

Does Vc Reputation Affect Function Of Lockup Agreement?, Kejia He

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Instead of perceiving lockup agreement and VC-backing as exogenous variables, this paper employs the VC-backed IPO data and takes a closer examination on the specific effect of VC reputation, which impacts the choice of lockup length and return and volume abnormality around lockup expiry. Contrary to the commitment hypothesis proposed by previous literatures, the data suggests that less VC-backed companies tend to choose a longer lockup agreement as a compensation device and those companies backed by more reputable VC experience less negative abnormal return and less abnormal volume around lockup expiry.

Illiquidity, Stock Return And Corporate Capital Structure: Evidence From Seasoned Equity Offering, Zhao Yu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The post-issue underperformance of seasoned equity offering (SEO) is generally explained by asymmetric information and deteriorating operating performance. We complement these traditional explanations with a new parameter, the liquidity, which results from the change of capital structure due to equity offering. The new issuing of equity lowers the debt to asset ratio, lowers the information asymmetry, thus increasing stock liquidity, which is in accordance with the hypotheses presented by Kyle(1985)'s model; Evidence that stocks become more liquid after SEO, thus lower the expected return, resulting to underperformance, combined with the high stock illiquidity before SEO, which coincides the high return, …

The Effect Of Concentrated Institutional Portfolio On Stock Returns, Hao Li Zhang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This paper examines whether stock return is related to the extent of portfolio concentration on the part of institutional fund managers. There is evidence that large firms are preferred for both concentrated and well-diversified funds. Also, a trading strategy based on concentrated ownership generates positive abnormal return. This implies that informational effect (implied in an increase in concentrated capital) has significant impacts and predictability on returns. Meanwhile, we do not find diversified ownership has predictability on future stock returns.

Asian Corporate Governance Or Corporate Governance In Asia?, Shaomin Li, Anil Nair

Management Faculty Publications

Corporate governance has become an important issue for Chinese and Indian firms as they increasingly interact with regulators and investors from developed markets. For instance, tapping into global capital markets to raise funds to finance their domestic and international growth requires firms from China and India to demonstrate strong corporate governance credentials, so that investors do not discount their stock (LaPorta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer, & Vishny, 2000). The swift action of Chinese and Indian authorities in response to recent corporate scandals – such as the one at Satyam Computers – reveals that even governments in emerging countries such as China and …

Mills B. Lane, Jr. And Enterprise In A New South, Randall L. Patton

Faculty Articles

For a century, Citizens & Southern Bank was a fixture in Georgia. In 1991, the C&S brand name disappeared in a merger with North Carolina National Bank. This was one of the bittersweet consequences of the slow, confusing swirl of bank deregulation after 1970, when institutions such as C&S simply disappeared, swallowed by the "winners" in the new competitive environment of interstate banking in the 1980s and 1990s. Even earlier, however, the Lane family had ceased to control the bank started by Mills Lane, Sr. in 1891. Mills B. Lane, Jr. was the last member of the Lane family to …

P/E Changes: Some New Results, Thomas S. Zorn, Donna M. Dudney, Benjamas Jirasakuldech

Department of Finance: Faculty Publications

The P/E ratio is often used as a metric to compare individual stocks and the market as a whole relative to historical valuations. We examine the factors that affect changes in the inverse of the P/E ratio (E/P) over time in the broad market (S&P 500 Index). Our model includes variables that measure investor beliefs and changes in tax rates and shows that these variables are important factors affecting the P/E ratio. We extend prior work by correcting for the presence of a long-run relation between variables included in the model. As frequently conjectured, changes in the P/E ratio have …

Evaluating Earnings Management With Derivatives And The Use Of Accounting Accruals: A Quasi Experimental Approach, Margot S. Geagon

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Most companies listed on the S&P 500 index have reported smoothed earnings since the 1990s inspiring questions from regulators about the accuracy of financial statements. In 1998, the Financial Accounting Standards Board issued SFAS No. 133 (Accounting for Derivative Instruments and Hedging Activities) to establish accounting and reporting standards for derivative instruments. In 2002, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was issued to eradicate earnings management activities and improve transparency in financial reporting. Although many studies have been conducted to evaluate changes in reporting requirements, much less is known about the effectiveness of these regulations on earning smoothing with discretionary accruals (DA) …

Determinants Of Vertical Integration: Financial Development And Contracting Costs, Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, Todd Mitton

Faculty Publications

We study the determinants of vertical integration in a new data set of over 750,000 firms from 93 countries. We present a number of theoretical predictions on the interactions between financial development, contracting costs, and the extent of vertical integration. Consistent with these predictions, contracting costs and financial development by themselves appear to have no effect on vertical integration. However, we find greater vertical integration in countries that have both greater contracting costs and greater financial development.We also show that countries with greater contracting costs are more vertically integrated in more capital-intensive industries.

Expected Idiosyncratic Skewness, Brian H. Boyer, Todd Mitton, Keith Vorkink

Faculty Publications

We test the prediction of recent theories that stocks with high idiosyncratic skewness should have low expected returns. Because lagged skewness alone does not adequately forecast skewness, we estimate a cross-sectional model of expected skewness that uses additional predictive variables. Consistent with recent theories, we find that expected idiosyncratic skewness and returns are negatively correlated. Specifically, the Fama-French alpha of a low-expected-skewness quintile exceeds the alpha of a high-expected-skewness quintile by 1.00% per month. Furthermore, the coefficients on expected skewness in Fama-MacBeth cross-sectional regressions are negative and significant. In addition, we find that expected skewness helps explain the phenomenon that …