Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Personal Financial Knowledge Of College Students, Adam Moehn

Honors Program Theses

This research is about looking at what affects the personal financial knowledge and behaviors of college students. Primarily this research is focused on the effects of taking a personal financial course by answering the following questions.

- Does taking a personal finance course increase personal financial knowledge?

- Does taking a personal finance course improve financial behaviors?

- Does an increase in personal financial knowledge improve financial behaviors?

The answers to these questions will help to determine how important personal finance courses and personal financial knowledge are. This research will also look at other areas which may affect personal financial …

The Financial Fiasco: What Started It And How Long Will It Last?, Jodi Sweeney

Honors Program Theses

Throughout my college career, I have been able to watch something quite phenomenal unfold within my fields of study, real estate and finance. In the fall of 2005, the real estate market was still hot and booming. As the months and years have gone on, something happened that very few saw coming: A financial crisis that caused such turmoil Wall Street as we knew it will be dramatically changed. What caused this inevitable downturn? How much damage will it cause before it stops? What changes are needed to bring an end to this financial predicament? After thoroughly analyzing the critical …

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 …

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 …

Idiosyncratic Risk And The Cross-Section Of Expected Stock Returns, Fangjian Fu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Theories such as Merton (1987, Journal of Finance) predict a positive relation between idiosyncratic risk and expected return when investors do not diversify their portfolio. Ang, Hodrick, Xing, and Zhang (2006, Journal of Finance 61, 259-299) however find that monthly stock returns are negatively related to the one-month lagged idiosyncratic volatilities. I show that idiosyncratic volatilities are time-varying and thus their findings should not be used to imply the relation between idiosyncratic risk and expected return. Using the exponential GARCH models to estimate expected idiosyncratic volatilities, I find a significantly positive relation between the estimated conditional idiosyncratic volatilities and expected …

Investor Reaction To Women Directors, E. Kang, David K. Ding, C. Charoenwong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Existing studies on women directorships present equivocal results on the association between appointing women directors and firm performance. These studies tend to focus on western countries and largely ignore investors' reactions to such appointments. This paper applies the financial event study method and finds that investors generally respond positively to the appointment of women directors in Singaporean firms. Regression analyses also reveal that investors are most receptive when the women are independent directors and are least receptive when the directors assume the CEO role. This study not only tests the theory of gender diversity in an Asian context but also …

Business Aggression, Institutional Loans, And Credit Crisis: Evidence From Lending Practices In Leveraged Buyouts, Xiaping Jerry Cao, Wei-Ling Song, Joe Mason

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper investigates the lending practices related to leverage buyouts (LBOs) market between high and low write-down institutions. The write-downs, which are a proxy for business aggression of institutions, are mainly related to credit crisis from the beginning of 2007 to August 10, 2008. We find that high (low) write-down institutions increase (decrease) loan market share dramatically during the period of 2001-2006. The increase is mainly driven by the segment of loans sold to institutional investors, such as collateralized loan obligations vehicle, hedge fund, and insurance companies. Institutional loans originated by high write-down institutions carry significantly fewer covenants and higher …

Does Size Matter In The Hedge Fund Industry?, Song Wee Melvyn Teo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We document a negative and convex relationship between hedge fund size and future risk-adjusted returns. Small hedge funds outperform large hedge funds by 3.65 percent per year after adjusting for risk. This over performance is not driven by fund age, leverage, serial correlation, or self-selection biases. The capacity constraints manifest across various investment styles and regions. In particular, they are strongest for funds managed by multiple principals who trade small, illiquid securities, suggesting that the observed diseconomies can be traced to price impact and hierarchy costs (Stein, 2002). While investors direct disproportionately more capital to smaller funds, they do not …

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.

Learning By Trading, Amit Seru, Tyler Shumway, Noah Stoffman

Faculty Publications

Using a large sample of individual investor records over a nine-year period, we analyze survival rates, the disposition effect and trading performance at the individual level to determine whether and how investors learn from their trading experience. We find evidence of two types of learning: some investors become better at trading with experience, while others stop trading after realizing that their ability is poor. A substantial part of overall learning by trading is explained by the second type. By ignoring investor attrition, the existing literature significantly overestimates how quickly investors become better at trading.

Mental Accounting In Portfolio Choice: Evidence From A Flypaper Effect, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian

Faculty Publications

Consistent with mental accounting, we document that investors sometimes choose the asset allocation for one account without considering the asset allocation of their other accounts. The setting is a firm that changed its 401(k) matching rules. Initially, 401(k) enrollees chose the allocation of their own contributions, but the firm chose the match allocation. These enrollees ignored the match allocation when choosing their own-contribution allocation. In the second regime, enrollees simultaneously selected both accounts’ allocations, leading them to mentally integrate the two. Own-contribution allocations before the rule change equal the combined own- and match-contribution allocations afterwards, whereas combined allocations differ sharply …

Optimal Defaults And Active Decisions, Gabriel D. Carroll, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian, Andrew Metrick

Faculty Publications

Defaults often have a large influence on consumer decisions. We identify an overlooked but practical alternative to defaults: requiring individuals to make an explicit choice for themselves. We study such “active decisions” in the context of 401(k) saving. We and that compelling new hires to make active decisions about 401(k) enrollment raises the initial fraction that enroll by 28 percentage points relative to a standard opt-in enrollment procedure, producing a savings distribution three months after hire that would take 30 months to achieve under standard enrollment. We also present a model of 401(k) enrollment and derive conditions under which the …

Earnings Management In Ipos: Post-Engagement Third-Party Mitigation Or Issuer Signaling?, James C. Brau, Peter M. Johnson

Faculty Publications

Initial public offering (IPO) firms typically hire auditors, underwriters, and attorneys to assist in the IPO process. Many firms that take the IPO route are also backed by venture capitalists. In the extant literature, these four specialists (auditors, underwriters, attorneys, and venture capitalists) are termed third-party certifiers. In this study, we examine 3900 IPOs from 1985 to 2005 and document a significant negative and robust correlation between IPO firm earnings management and the presence of prestigious third-party certifiers. Next, we test if this correlation is driven by (1) IPO firms attempting to signal firm quality or (2) third-party certifiers mitigating …

Hdtv Division Of Global Electronics, Inc., Alan J. Kirkpatrick, Leonard K. Gashugi

Faculty Publications

CASE DESCRIPTION: The primary objective of this case is to describe realistic capital budgeting issues within a large organization. The case illustrates ways that staff inside a corporate finance department (and in related departments) position themselves in the capital planning process. The case also stresses steps that a large firm can take to leverage its size to gain the maximum benefit of investment projects. Further,, the case demonstrates sensitivity analyses in the capital budgeting process, and the resulting internal rates of return. We suggest the case be used to follow the related case “HDTV Systems”, which shows the firm as …

Investor Flows And Stock Market Returns, Brian H. Boyer, Lu Zheng

Faculty Publications

This study simultaneously analyzes the relation between aggregate stock market returns and cash flows (net purchases of equity) from a broad array of investor groups in the United States over a long period of time from 1952 to 2004.We find strong evidence that quarterly flows are autocorrelated for each of the different investor groups.We further document a significant and positive contemporaneous relation between stock market returns and flows of Mutual Funds and Foreign Investors.