Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Analyzing Earnings Management For Cross-Listed Firms And Interaction Between Two Futures Exchanges, Chia-Sheng Chen

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The first essay examines the impact of investor protection, market monitoring, and liquidity on the firm-level and country-level earnings management using a sample of 432 firms from 34 countries cross-listed in the U.S. The major findings are as follows: First, cross-listed firms from countries with strong legal system, strong outside investor rights, more institutional investors, and higher financial transparency are less likely to engage in earnings management. In addition, in countries with strong investor protection or market monitoring, the level of earnings management is more pronounced for illiquid firms as compared to liquid firms. Second, cross-listed firms following IFRS have …

The Smartest "Guise" In The Room: Why America Is Doomed To Repeat An Enron-Like Scandal, Shayne Reddington

Honors Theses

There is no question that Enron has brought change to the landscape surrounding business practices both domestically and globally. After the Emon Scandal occurred, Congress passed a very controversial and groundbreaking legislative act known as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act as a means of stopping the conditions that made this widespread scandal possible. There are several reasons why another Emon-type Scandal is prone to repeat itself in the near future. One of the reasons is that Sarbanes-Oxley is not the perfect bill. Although the controversial Sarbanes-Oxley is a valiant effort to reform the environment that fostered Enron, there are major gaps and …

Similarities In Fan Preferences For Minor-League Baseball Across The American Southeast, Tyler Anthony, Tim Kahn, Briana Madison, Rodney Paul, Andrew Weinbach

Falk College Research Center

Three Minor League Baseball leagues across the Southeastern United States are studied in order to determine what drives fan attendance. Individual game attendance and game characteristics are examined for three leagues located in the American southeast, the Florida State League, the Southern League, and the South Atlantic League. Despite the three leagues encompassing different levels of play (from A to AA), the determinants of attendance are similar across leagues. Factors affecting attendance such as winning percentage, weather conditions, local income and population, and individual game promotions, such as fireworks, are explored.

Asset Gathering By Hedge Fund Firms, Melvyn Teo

Research Collection BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre

We explore agency issues within hedge fund firms. We find that firms that launch many funds tend to underperform other firms by between 3 to 5 percent per year after adjusting for risk. These findings are strongest for firms offering funds that pursue many distinct strategies, invest in a variety of geographical regions, locate in a gamut of countries, and offer different base currencies. Our results allow fund investors to distinguish, ex-ante, firms that focus on delivering alpha from those that focus on gathering assets.

Fund-Management Gender Composition: The Impact On Risk And Performance Of Mutual Funds And Hedge Funds, Angela Luongo

Fordham Business Student Research Journal

This paper examines gender differences in fund managers’ risk tolerance and performance. We explore these differences in both the universe of U.S. mutual funds and hedge funds using risk and performance metrics that cover one-year, three-year, and five-year horizons. We find that funds managed by women outperform those managed by men with less risky portfolios. The outperformance persists after adjusting for risk. Overall, the results indicate that female fund managers are severely underrepresented despite their quality performance. A workgroup comprised more equally of male and female managers is likely to lead to greater stability in the financial markets due to …

Building A Better Mousetrap: Enhanced Dollar Cost Averaging, Lee Dunham, Geoffrey C. Friesen

Department of Finance: Faculty Publications

This paper presents a simple, intuitive investment strategy that improves upon the popular dollarcost- averaging (DCA) approach. The investment strategy, which we call enhanced dollar-costaveraging (EDCA), is a simple, rule-based strategy that retains most of the attributes of traditional DCA that are appealing to most investors but yet adjusts to new information, which traditional DCA does not. Simulation results show that the EDCA strategy reliably outperforms the DCA strategy in terms of higher dollar-weighted returns about 90% of the time and nearly always delivers greater terminal wealth for reasonable values of the risk premium. EDCA is most effective when applied …

Opportunities And Challenges For The Asset Management Industry, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Singapore, with its open economy and stable business environment, is host to some of the world's largest asset management companies. It has been observed, however, that local asset management firms are lagging far behind; somehow unable to capitalise on the same opportunities available to the global giants. Speaking at a conference organised by SMU's Centre for Asset Securitisation and Management in Asia, a panel of industry experts shared their views on what it would take to get both local and Asia-based firms into the big league.

The Diminishing Returns Of Incentive Pay In Executive Compensation Contracts, Gregg D. Polsky, Andrew Lund

Scholarly Works

For the past 30 years, the conventional wisdom has been that executive compensation packages should include very large proportions of incentive pay. This incentive pay orthodoxy has become so firmly entrenched that the current debates about executive compensation simply take it as a given. We argue, however, that in light of evolving corporate governance mechanisms, the marginal net benefit of incentive-laden pay packages is both smaller than appreciated and getting smaller over time. As a result, the assumption that higher proportions of incentive pay are beneficial is no longer warranted.

A number of corporate governance mechanisms have evolved to duplicate …

Rationale For Financial System Regulation And Supervision: A Global Perspective, Victor Ekpu

Bullion

The paper examines the enormous role of financial institutions, especially banks to the efficient functioning of the economy. The shortcomings of regulation and supervision, notwithstanding, one can argue that because of the special role that financial institutions play in the economy and the economic and social costs to society of their eventual failure, it is obvious that leaving the forces of demand and supply to bear will have adverse implications on the economy and the living standards of the nation's citizens. lt is on this note that i expound on the various reasons for financial system regulation in section 2. …

The Effect Of Global Financial Crisis On The Nigerian Capital Market: Lessons For Monetary Policy, Sunday Ogwuche Ameh

Bullion

The paper assesses the effect of the financial crisis on the Nigerian Capital market, and lessons for monetary policy with a view to providing valuable inputs that can be used to update policy decisions in Nigerian economy as well as examining the historical perspective of the recent global financial crisis.

Keynote Address By Mallam Sanusi, Lamido Sanusi, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi

Economic and Financial Review

The keynote address delivered by the Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria at the Executive Seminar on "Financial Sector Development, Economic Growth and the Nigerian Economy" for CBN executive staff held in Eko Hotel and Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos State, May 7-10, 2012

Financing Nigeria's Growth After The Global Economic Crisis Within The Perspective Of Vision 20:2020 And The Transformation Agenda, Babatunde Lawal

Economic and Financial Review

The paper adopts content analysis method to investigate the underlying assumptions of the pillar of growth within the framework of Nigeria Vision 20:2020 (NV20:2020) and the transformation agenda. The aim is to show how realistic the underlying assumptions are and whether or not the available structure/measures of the financial system would be sufficient to finance the Vision. The conclusion is that the present Transformation Agenda and indeed the Medium-Term Implementation Plans adequately provide for the financing of NV20:2020 if the provisions of the documents are strictly adhered to.

A Multiechelon Inventory Problem With Secondary Market Sales, Alexandar Angelus

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We consider a finite-horizon, multiechelon inventory system in which the surplus of stock can be sold (i.e., disposed) in the secondary markets at each stage in the system. What are called nested echelon order-up-to policies are shown to be optimal for jointly managing inventory replenishments and secondary market sales. Under a general restriction on model parameters, we establish that it is optimal not to both sell off excess stock and replenish inventory. Secondary market sales complicate the structure of the system, so that the classical Clark and Scarf echelon reformulation no longer allows for the decomposition of the objective function …

An Analysis Of The Dynamic Properties Of The American Depositary Receipt Cross Market Premium, Jorge Vidal

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The American Depositary Receipt (ADR) cross-market premium is studied over a 20 year period. The dynamic properties of the cross-market premium are studied for the first time in a nonlinear smooth error correction framework using a smooth transition error correction model (STECM) and compared against a linear model and two other nonlinear model specifications. The results indicate the ADR cross-market premium is more appropriately estimated when the nonlinearity, smooth transition, and cointegration properties present in the premium are estimated simultaneously with a STECM. The estimates of the STECM indicate arbitrage opportunities in the ADR market are rare and dissipate quickly. …

Charting Your Financial Goals, Benedict Koh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Every one of us has financial goals but not many of us know how to go about achieving them. We often lack investment knowledge or expertise to design an investment plan that optimises our savings. Consequently, we adopt the default approach of leaving all our savings in bank deposits. By doing so, we have already made an asset allocation decision, one that is very conservative. Over time, we soon realise that this conservative investment plan is simply not working as our savings are not compounding fast enough to keep up with inflation. We need to invest more wisely so that …

Stochastic Capacity Investment And Flexible Vs. Dedicated Technology Choice In Imperfect Capital Markets, Onur Boyabatli, L. Bertil Toktay

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper analyzes the impact of endogenous credit terms under capital market imperfections in a capacity investment setting. We model a monopolist firm that decides on its technology choice (flexible versus dedicated) and capacity level under demand uncertainty. Differing from the majority of the stochastic capacity investment literature, we assume that the firm is budget constrained and can relax its budget constraint by borrowing from a creditor. The creditor offers technology-specific loan contracts to the firm, after which the firm makes its technology choice and subsequent decisions. Capital market imperfections impose financing frictions on the firm. Our analysis contributes to …

Longevity Risk Management In Singapore's National Pension System, Joelle H. Y. Fong, Olivia S. Mitchell, Benedict S. K. Koh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Although annuities are a theoretically appealing way to manage longevity risk, in the real world relatively few consumers purchase them at retirement. To counteract the possibility of retirees outliving their assets, Singapore’s Central Provident Fund, a national defined contribution pension scheme, has recently mandated annuitization of workers’ retirement assets. More significantly, the government has entered the insurance market as a public sector provider for such annuities. This article evaluates the money’s worth of life annuities and discusses the impact of the government mandate and its role as an annuity provider on the insurance market.

W.E. Bowers Ans Associates, Inc. Financial Operations Manual For Construction Cost Accounting, Stephen E. Brown

Purdue Polytechnic Masters Theses

W.E. Bowers and Associates, Inc. typically hires experienced project managers eager to

diversify their work experience. W.E. Bowers and Associates, Inc. verbally instructs

project managers to properly utilize the companies forms and the processes for financial

management of projects. The verbal training typically occurs in a piecemeal fashion. It

occurs only when a new project manager asks

“How To” perform specific tasks. The

project managers all come with different backgrounds and with different backgrounds,

come different business management strategies. The creation of this financial operations

manual will aid in the training of project managers and provide the company with a …

Designing A More Efficient And Fairer Tax System, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

A competent tax system should meet an economy's fiscal needs, but that cannot exist without a tax design that understands, pre-empts, and ultimately shapes human behaviours. Drawing from the UK's Mirrlees Review, Richard Blundell, research director at the London-based Institute of Fiscal Studies, delivered a lecture at Singapore Management University's School of Economics on the principles of the tax reform, and the challenges that await governments in formulating a coherent and economically efficient tax structure.

Supporting Global Metals Markets: The Role Of The London Metals Exchange, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Most people would expect automobiles and electronics, comprised of many important metal parts, to be sold at relatively stable prices. Little do consumers appreciate, however, the backend market mechanisms that keep these prices stable. A prospective car buyer does not have to monitor his or her dream car's daily price fluctuations, for example, precisely because the parts that go into its manufacture maintain steady prices. This is, in part, the doing of metal exchanges that regulate the demand and supply of metals. Liz Milan, managing director of the London Metals Exchange Asia, explained this and more at a seminar organised …

Cost-Benefit Analysis Of Implementing Wastewater Treatment Facilities In Beer Breweries, Jaffer (Jeff) Shah-Ganai

Agribusiness

The purpose of this study was to both see the effects of wastewater on profitability as well as determine an efficient way of dealing with that wastewater. In addition to finding the most efficient way of treating wastewater, the cost of implementing such a technology was also discussed. Two technologies were specifically talked about and those were an anaerobic digester and a two stage anaerobic digester. Between the three breweries that were discussed, two of them use one of those pieces of equipment; Sierra Nevada has an anaerobic digester and Red Hook has a two stage anaerobic digester.

To analyze …

Qu’Est-Ce Que L’Investissement Socialement Responsable?, Diane-Laure Arjaliès

Business Publications

Cet article étudie l’évolution des formes et des objectifs de l’Investissement socialement responsable (ISR) aux États-Unis et en Europe des années 1920 jusqu’à nos jours. En s’intéressant à la fois aux fondements théoriques et aux caractéristiques des fonds ISR au cours du temps, il dresse un panorama des différents types de fonds en fonction de leur appartenance à un référentiel sociétal ou économique. En montrant la complexité et la diversité de l’ISR d’hier et d’aujourd’hui, cet article permet de mieux appréhender les enjeux de définition et de légitimation rencontrés actuellement par les professionnels du secteur de la gestion d’actifs.

This …

The Relationship Between Vmt And Economic Activity, B. Starr Mcmullen, Nathan Eckstein

TREC Final Reports

Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in the U.S. have exhibited an upward trend over time similar to that observed for gross domestic product (GDP) and personal income (PI). While conventional wisdom suggests that economic growth leads to more driving and thus higher VMT, it is theoretically possible that the causation could also be the other way around. If causation is from VMT to GDP, then legislation such as the Federal Surface Transportation Policy and Planning Act of 2009’s directive to annually reduce national per capita VMT could potentially have an adverse impact on overall economic activity.

This study uses times series …

Deployment Evaluation Of Accounting Information Systems In Libyan Commercial Banks, Omar Sharkasi, Martin George Wynn

The African Journal of Information Systems

This article reports on the recent implementation and current deployment of accounting information systems in Libyan commercial banks. A case study approach is adopted that moves from an initial screening of the 14 main Libyan banks to a final in-depth study of just three banks. Business process modeling and systems profiling are used to assess the status of the banks in terms of systems use, process change and information systems strategy development. Libyan banks are well advanced in their installation of modern packaged software but could be used to greater effect to optimize business processes and improve efficiencies. Training and …

Dating The Timeline Of Financial Bubbles During The Subprime Crisis, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

A new recursive regression methodology is introduced to analyze the bubble characteristics of various financial time series during the subprime crisis. The methods modify a technique proposed in Phillips, Wu, and Yu (2011) and provide a technology for identifying bubble behavior with consistent dating of their origination and collapse. The tests serve as an early warning diagnostic of bubble activity and a new procedure is introduced for testing bubble migration across markets. Three relevant financial series are investigated, including a financial asset price (a house price index), a commodity price (the crude oil price), and one bond price (the spread …

Errors Spell Checkers Do Not Correct And Style Sheet, Charles J. Higgins

Finance Faculty Works

The article focuses on errors that are not corrected by spell checkers in writing programs and communication devices. It is said that spell checkers may change a written word to an unintended one, as well as may provide autocompletion. A list of words that spell checkers and auto completion programs may confuse is provided. Several words in which writing programs can do little to correct notational styles are also listed.

Specification Sensitivity In Right-Tailed Unit Root Testing For Explosive Behavior, Peter C. B. Phillips, Shu-Ping Shi, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Right-tailed unit root tests have proved promising for detecting exuberance in economic and financial activities. Like left-tailed tests, the limit theory and test performance are sensitive to the null hypothesis and the model specification used in parameter estimation. This paper aims to provide some empirical guidelines for the practical implementation of right-tailed unit root tests, focusing on the sup ADF test of Phillips, Wu and Yu (2011), which implements a right-tailed ADF test repeatedly on a sequence of forward sample recursions. We analyze and compare the limit theory of the sup ADF test under deferent hypotheses and model specifications. The …

2011-2012 Revised Operating Budget: Southern University Law Center, Southern University System. Office Of Finance & Administration.

All Southern University System Budgets

The 2011-2012 Revised Operating Budget FY 2012-2013 Budget Request for the Southern University Law Center Campus.

Flagship Funds At Hedge Fund Families, Melvyn Teo

Research Collection BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre

Motivated by the stellar performance of flagship funds such as the Renaissance Medallion fund, we ask whether hedge fund firms (e.g. Renaissance Technologies) have incentives to protect the performance of their flagship funds (e.g. Medallion). We find that the flagship fund tends to outperform other funds within the fund family. The fees and redemption terms of non-flagship funds at launch is correlated with the past performance of the flagship fund. Finally, flagship fund performance has a positive impact on net flows into the other funds within the same family.

Predictions For Protection: A System To Measure And Detect Asset Bubbles, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Millions of lives can be ruined with the bursting of economic bubbles. Just in the past two decades alone, the world has had the misfortune of witnessing two such incidents; first with the dot-com burst, and then most recently, with the housing and sub-prime crisis that led to a global recession. While there is reportedly no cure for the greed, economists have made strides to identify and predict bubbles – thereby paving the way for institutional stopgaps that could well prevent a financial crisis.