Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Effectively Hedging The Interest Rate Risk Of Wide Floating Rate Coupon Spreads, Thomas Schröder, Kwamie Dunbar

WCBT Working Papers

Bond issuers frequently immunize/hedge their interest rate exposure by means of interest rate swaps (IRS). The receiving leg matches all bond cash-flows, while the pay leg requires floating rate coupon payments of form LIBOR + a spread. The goal of hedging against interest rate risk is only achieved in full if the present value of this spread is zero. Using market data we show that under a traditional IRS hedging strategy an investor could still experience significant cash flow losses given a 1% shift in the underlying benchmark yield curve.

We consider the instantaneous interest-rate risk of a bond portfolio …

Should Individual Investors Use Technical Trading Rules To Attempt To Beat The Market?, Thomas S. Coe, Kittipong Laosethakul

WCBT Faculty Publications

Problem statement: Despite widespread academic acceptance of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis, some stock traders still use technical trading rules in an attempt to beat the market. Approach: This study looked at four trading rules, namely, the arithmetic moving average, the relative strength index, a stochastic oscillator and its moving average. These trading rules compare the relationship of current prices to past price patterns to generate a signal when to buy and sell stocks. The trading rules were tested over the years 2000-2009, a period of time that exhibited bull and bear markets, to determine if traders could actively …

Teaching The Budgeting Process Using A Spreadsheet Template, Benoit Boyer

WCBT Faculty Publications

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how to use a template to teach the budgeting process and how to use the same template to do a sensitivity analysis once the budget process is completed. The template can be used as-is by non-accounting majors. They just have to fill in all of their assumptions by replacing the red numbers. The template can be locked so that students cannot modify the formulas by mistake. Simply protect the worksheet (Review tab > Protect Sheet) and students will be able to only change the assumptions. Accounting majors are shown how to build their …

Proliferation Of Tail Risks And Policy Responses In The Eu Financial Markets, Lucjan Orlowski

WCBT Faculty Publications

This study draws attention to the proliferation of tail risks in financial markets prior to and during the course of the recent global financial crisis. It examines the level of tail risks in selected equity, interbank lending and foreign exchange markets in selected EU Member States in relation to the United States. The extent of tail risks is assessed by applying general error distribution (GED) parameterization in GARCH volatility tests of the examined variables. The empirical tests prove that tail risks were pronounced across all of the examined European financial markets throughout the crisis. They were also significant prior to …

Risk Modelling In Finance, Dave Allen

ECU Research Week

Examines the measurement of risk in finance and the shortcomings of the various approaches to this measurement.

Do Analyst Earnings Beta Explain Growth Anomaly?, Sophie Phuong Thanh Doan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Using a measure of cashflow risk derived from analyst forecasts, I find that cashflow risk offers a partial explanation for the value – growth anomaly. In particular, the lowest asset growth portfolio has a higher earnings beta than the highest asset growth portfolio. Approximately cashflow risk measured by earnings beta carries a significant positive risk premium of 1.24% with a t-value of 3.51.

Auditor Choice, Audit Fees And Internal Governance In Family Firms, Shaohua He

Lingnan Theses

I study the role of auditing in mitigating agency concerns in family firms. Family firms face less severe agency problems due to the separation of ownership and control (Type 1) but more severe agency problems between controlling and noncontrolling shareholders (Type 2). As family firms make up a large part of most free enterprise economies it is important to examine these two agency problems with respect to auditor choice and audit effort. I find that family firms are more likely to choose a specialist auditor than nonfamily firms, consistent with the argument that family firms need to signal their non-expropriating …

A Comparative Analysis Of The Entrepreneurial Styles Of Second, Third, And Fourth Generation Overseas Chinese And Filipinos In The Philippines, Gerley Q. Po

DLSU Business & Economics Review

This study used the multiple case study research approach and presents a comparative analysis of the similarities and differences in entrepreneurship styles among second, third and fourth generation overseas Chinese and Filipinos in the Philippines. Specifically, it aimed to compare the entrepreneurs’ entrepreneurial characteristics, leadership styles, and value orientation. The results indicate that the two groups are heterogeneous even though they operate business in the same country. However, slowly, the influence of Filipino culture is seen in the fourth generation overseas Chinese. The study hopes to provide new generation of entrepreneurs insights on entrepreneurial styles that need to change to …

Human Resource Management Practices: Drivers For Stimulating Corporate Entrepreneurship In Large Companies In The Philippines, Divina M. Edralin

DLSU Business & Economics Review

Leading companies in the Philippines have realized that nurturing an entrepreneurial culture through the implementation of various strategic human resource management (HRM) practices will enhance their firm’s ability to gain competitive advantage and achieve superior performance. This study attempted to determine the degree to which various HRM practices stimulate corporate entrepreneurship and which HRM function is the most significant driver of corporate entrepreneurship (CE) in large companies in the Philippines. Findings reveal that the companies are extensively implementing different practices related to HRM functions that cultivate CE. Employee relations, training and development, and recruitment and selection HRM functions are found …

Exploratory Market Survey Of Tuba In Tacloban City, Arturo Pacho

DLSU Business & Economics Review

This research note explores the market condition of tuba in Tacloban City in the Philippines. It examined the market viability of tuba as a source of income for small retailers as well as coconut farmers. To determine whether there is any commercial value to tuba, and to what extent, a survey was made on the type of tuba sold, the price it is sold for, the quantity sold, the age of tuba, and the source of tuba. This report provides basic information as to the commercial value of tuba to small store retailers in the city.

Discretionary Deletions From The S&P 500 Index: Evidence On Forecasted And Realized Earnings., Stoyu Ivanov

Faculty Publications

The literature in the area of index changes finds evidence that index changes are information free events. However, Denis, McConnell, Ovtchinnikov and Yu (2003) find evidence contrary to this theory. This study extends the work of Denis, McConnell, Ovtchinnikov and Yu (2003) in an attempt to complete the assessment of the information hypothesis of index changes. Denis, McConnell, Ovtchinnikov and Yu (2003) address only index additions and do not examine index deletions in their study. Our contribution is in filling this void in the literature by examining forecasted and realized earnings of firms discretionary deleted from the S&P 500 index …

Esops And Corporate Officers' Compensation., Stoyu Ivanov

Faculty Publications

In the literature two major hypotheses have been developed for Employee Stock Ownership Plans used as a takeover defense, the management entrenchment and shareholder interest hypotheses, with the existing research not finding conclusive evidence for either one. In this paper we provide evidence that the entrenchmenthypothesis is not supported by finding that Employee Stock Ownership Plan firms pay less to their managers than non-Employee Stock Ownership Plan firms. If managers were truly entrenched they would have been able to expropriate wealth from the existing shareholders, which appears not to be the case for Employee Stock Ownership Plan firms.

Essays On The Effect Of Financial Institution’S Dual Holdings Of Debt And Equity Securities, Jiun-Lin Chen

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes the effects on the stock markets when institutional investors hold their client firms’ stocks. The first essay examines the trading impact around earnings announcements and the second essay studies the effect on stock liquidity. In the first essay, we find that relationship institutions (that have lent/underwritten and hold shares of clients) support their clients when these client firms have negative earnings shocks. Their support not only mitigates the negative abnormal return around earnings announcements but also reduces the post-earnings-announcement-drift, thus, earnings momentum profits. In the second essay, we find that client firms held by relationship institutions suffer …

Pakistan’S Experience With The International Monetary Fund (Imf) 2000 – 2004, Ishrat Husain

Business Review

Pakistan’s relationship with the International Monetary Fund during the 2000 – 2004 period was quite unique and distinctive. Unlike the earlier eight agreements that were concluded with the IMF during 1988-99 and were never implemented beyond the first tranche release it was only in this period that two successive agreements – a nine month Stand-by Arrangement (SBA) in the year 2000 followed by a three year Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) were successfully completed. All the sixteen reviews by IMF staff were completed and eleven successive tranches were drawn on time without any extension or interruption 1 . The …

Comparative Analysis Of Islamic And Conventional Banking Performance, Mirza Ali Huzaifa Sultan, Muhammad Zahid Siddique

Business Review

This paper analyzes the performance of Islamic banks compared to that of conventional banks in Pakistan. This comparison is based on the financial performance, product services and customer perception. We have selected two Islamic banks, namely Meezan Bank limited & Albaraka Bank, and two conventional Banks, Soneri and My Bank. This selection was made because of the similar size of these banks in terms of their deposits. The paper shows that Islamic Banking is falling behind the conventional one both in terms of its business as well as customer perspective. The research is divided into three parts. First part covers …

Book Review Of: Meezan Bank’S Guide To Islamic Banking By Muhammad Imran Ashraf Usmani, Javed A. Ansari

Business Review

Islamic banking has been seriously effected by the financial crisis of 2007- 2010. The impending collapse of financial institutions in the Gulf, specially in Dubai and the growing threat of sovereign debt repudiation and default by oil exporting countries has had a particularly severe impact on global Islamic finance growth. Forecasts for Islamic finance transactions have been revised downwards several times during 2009 and riskiness and illiquidity of leading Islamic finance institution are perceived as having increased due to the growing instability of the Gulf economies.

Personal Financial Planning Attitudes - A Study, Scott A. Yetmar, D. Murphy

Business Faculty Publications

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report on a survey about the personal financial planning attitudes of MBA students in the USA. Design/methodology/approach – The study surveyed 206 MBA students about their attitudes to personal financial planning. Participants were asked about their level of knowledge, whether they had prepared components of a financial plan, where they might seek assistance in such a process and the criteria for selecting a financial planner. In addition, participants were asked to indicate their level of confidence in a financial plan's capacity to help them meet their long-term needs and the likelihood …

Systemic Risk Assessment Using A Non-Stationary Fractional Dynamic Stochastic Model For The Analysis Of Economic Signals, Jonathan Blackledge

Articles

This paper considers the Fractal Market Hypothesis (FMH) for assessing the risk(s) in developing a financial portfolio based on data that is available through the Internet from an increasing number of sources. Most financial risk management systems are still based on the Efficient Market Hypothesis which often fails due to the inaccuracies of the statistical models that underpin the hypothesis, in particular, that financial data are based on stationary Gaussian processes. The FMH considered in this paper assumes that financial data are non-stationary and statistically self-affine so that a risk analysis can, in principal, be applied at any time scale …

What's On The Menu? Included Versus Excluded Funds For Singapore's Central Provident Fund Investors, Seng Kee, Benedict Koh, Olivia S. Mitchell

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

As one of the oldest and largest national mandatory defined contribution pension systems, Singapore's Central Provident Fund (CPF) permits employees to invest their retirement accumulations in a variety of investment instruments rather than leaving them in a government-managed investment fund. Many plan participants avail themselves of this opportunity, selecting from a menu of more than 200 `included' funds that satisfy specific admission criteria set by the CPF Board. Nevertheless, many other funds are excluded from the list of eligible retirement system investments. This article shows that the `included/non-included' screening criteria have been effective, in that included fund managers earned higher …

Economic Risk Assessment Using The Fractal Market Hypothesis, Jonathan Blackledge, Marek Rebow

Conference papers

This paper considers the Fractal Market Hypothesi (FMH) for assessing the risk(s) in developing a financial portfolio based on data that is available through the Internet from an increasing number of sources. Most financial risk management systems are still based on the Efficient Market Hypothesis which often fails due to the inaccuracies of the statistical models that underpin the hypothesis, in particular, that financial data are based on stationary Gaussian processes. The FMH considered in this paper assumes that financial data are non-stationary and statistically self-affine so that a risk analysis can, in principal, be applied at any time scale …

Two Essays On Analyst Bias And Management Entrenchment, Bahar Ulupinar

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the interactions of corporate governance on analyst behavior. Analyst bias is well documented in the previous literature. However, the relationship between managerial entrenchment and analyst bias has not been explored. In my first essay, I hypothesize that while analysts strike a balance between personal reputation and revenue generation for their employers, entrenched managers of covered firms are more likely to induce analysts’ collaboration using management access and underwriting businesses. My hypothesis suggests that managerial entrenchment is a potential source of analyst bias. Consistent with my hypothesis, using the G-Index as a proxy for managerial entrenchment, I show …

Discounts And Termination Of Close-End Funds, Chen Chen

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Based on an extensive sample of U.S. closed end funds undergoing termination, this study offers a comprehensive analysis of closed end fund exiting behaviors. There are four ways for a fund to exit: merger into other closed-end fund, liquidation, conversion to open-end mutual fund and merger into open-end mutual fund. Closed-end funds that exit must choose the most efficient and optimal mechanisms corresponding to funds‟ characteristics and organizational forms. In this study, I find that closed-end funds exit optimally. First, funds with persistently larger discount and smaller size are more likely to exit and consistent with rational expectation, market incorporates …

Short-Selling Prior To Analyst Recommendations, Can Qu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This paper investigates short-selling five days prior to analyst recommendations by using a complete data set from Reg SHO database during January, 2005 to July, 2007. Empirical tests uncover the evidence that short-sellers significantly increase their short positions prior to negative analyst recommendations, which is consistent with the informed trading hypothesis. This finding is robust to model specification. Further, this paper also examines which of the two competing hypotheses-prediction and tipping-could better explain short-sellers’ informative front-running. The tests indicate that short-sellers use book-to-market ratio as a filter to narrow down their pool of candidates, while market capitalization doesn’t play a …

The Impact Of Employer Matching On Savings Plan Participation Under Automatic Enrollment, John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian

Faculty Publications

Companies have used a variety of approaches to encourage participation in employer- sponsored savings plans. The most common approach, the provision of an employer matching contribution, is now offered by the vast majority of large fi rms (Profi t Sharing Council of America 2006). Even with a match, however, savings plan participation rates are often surprisingly low (Choi, Laibson, and Madrian 2005), and empirical studies of matching contributions’ effect on plan participation have uniformly found relatively small effects (Andrews 1992; Papke and Poterba 1995; Papke 1995; Bassett, Fleming, and Rodrigues 1998; Kusko, Poterba, and Wilcox 1998; Choi et al. 2002; …

Micro-Ipos: An Analysis Of The Small Corporate Offering Registration (Scor) Procedure With National Data, James C. Brau, Gardner Gee

Faculty Publications

In this study we examine every Small Corporate Offering Registration available from the United States. Using 339 micro-IPOs from 33 states, we find support for the relevance of (1) offering marketing mechanisms and expenses; (2) geographic characteristics; (3) offering characteristics; (4) ownership and governance characteristics; (5) business characteristics; (6) firm marketing mechanisms; and (7) signaling factors.

Could Decision Trees Help Improve Farm Service Agency Lending Decisions?, Benjamin P. Foster, Jozef Zurada, Douglas K. Barney

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This study examines whether a statistically derived decision tree could serve as a means to improve U.S.A. Farm Service Agency lending decisions. The study is a substantial extension and reanalysis of an earlier work by Barney, Graves and Johnson, (1999). Results indicate that a decision tree could be a valuable tool for Farm Service Agency employees in their lending decisions. The decision tree provides as good or better predictive accuracy than neural networks and logistic regression models at reasonable cutoff levels of Type II to Type I costs of lending. The decision tree also meets the transparency criteria for Farm …

Risk And System-Of-Systems: Toward A Unified Concept, C. Ariel Pinto, Michael K. Mcshane, Rani Kady

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The scope of this paper is the survey of both fundamental and most recent publications in system-of-systems, business and insurance, as well as risk analysis, modeling, and management for the purpose of better describing the concept of risk in recognition of emergence and complexity which characterizes many systems within the concern of engineering and business managers. The ultimate goal is to provide engineering and business managers the necessary perspective on the concept of risk and in its management for the next generation of sustainable systems - including various descriptions of risk and discussion of the relevance of properties of system-of-systems …

The Premium, Breakeven, And Discount Exchange Rates Of The Mexican Peso In The El Paso Retail Sector, Raul Anton Munoz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This paper studies the exchange rates at which Mexican pesos are accepted by different retail sectors in El Paso, Texas. A random sample of 1,155 firms was surveyed to examine two aspects of reverse dollarization in the El Paso/Juarez border region. The first is to determine the percentage of retail businesses in El Paso that accept foreign currency in the form of Mexican pesos. The second is to calculate the effective exchange rate at which firms accept Mexican pesos. Out of 1,155 retail firms surveyed, 586 responses were obtained. The results of this investigation suggest that less than 14 percent …

Is Regime Switching In Stock Returns Important In Asset Allocations?, Jun Tu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The stock market displays regime switching between upturns and downturns. This paper provides a Bayesian framework for making portfolio decisions that takes this regime switching into account, together with asset pricing model uncertainty and parameter uncertainty. The findings reveal that the economic value of accounting for regimes is substantially independent of whether or not model and parameter uncertainties are incorporated: the certainty-equivalent losses associated with ignoring regime switching are generally above 2% per year, and can be as high as 10%. These results suggest that the more realistic regime switching model is fundamentally different from the commonly used single-state model, …

Why Does The Law Of One Price Fail? An Experiment On Index Mutual Funds, James J. Choi, Xavier Gabaix, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian

Faculty Publications

Experimental subjects review four S&P 500 index fund prospectuses and then allocate $10,000 across those funds. We randomly select subjects to be paid for their subsequent portfolio performance. Subjects cannot access any non-portfolio services such as financial advice from their selected funds. Nevertheless, they overwhelmingly fail to minimize their index fund fees. When we make fund fees salient and transparent, subjects’ portfolios shift towards lower-fee index funds, but over 80% still do not invest all of their money in the lowest-fee fund. When funds’ annualized returns since inception are made salient, portfolios shift towards index funds with higher returns since …