Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Portfolio Manager Ownership And Mutual Fund Risk Taking, Linlin Ma, Yuehua Tang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study the effect of portfolio manager ownership, that is, “skin in the game”, on the risk taking of mutual funds. Using a holdings-based risk-shifting measure and a difference-indifferences approach, we find that managers with greater ownership engage in less risk-shifting behavior. We also find that managers with higher ownership exhibit superior reward-to-risk (i.e., Sharpe and appraisal) ratios. Funds with greater managerial ownership attract more capital flows. Taken together, our findings indicate that managerial ownership reduces managers’ incentive to engage in risk-shifting behavior and increases shareholder wealth.

Ceo Optimism And Incentive Compensation, Clemens A. Otto

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

I study the effect of chief executive officer (CEO) optimism on CEO compensation. Usingdata on compensation in US firms, I provide evidence that CEOs whose option exercisebehavior and earnings forecasts are indicative of optimistic beliefs receive smaller stockoption grants, fewer bonus payments, and less total compensation than their peers. Thesefindings add to our understanding of the interplay between managerial biases andremuneration and show how sophisticated principals can take advantage of optimisticagents by appropriately adjusting their compensation contracts.

Governance Matter: Morningstar Stewardship Grades And Mutual Fund Performance, Jerry X. Cao, Aurobindo Ghosh, Jeremy Goh, Wee Seng Ng

Research Collection School Of Economics

Mutual fund investors have the arduous task of disentangling luck from ability of mutual fund managers’ performance. In this paper we investigate the role of mutual fund corporate governance (measured by Morningstar Stewardship grade) in mutual fund performance. We propose an objective data-driven corporate governance score based on principal components of Morningstar Stewardship Grades. Furthermore, we establish corporate governance scores have Granger Causality on long-term risk-adjusted returns. The findings suggest that corporate governance grades of mutual funds carry information content beyond the usual star rating measures for predicting long-term mutual fund performance and provide an effective tool for selecting funds.

Mutual Funds And Information Diffusion: The Role Of Country-Level Governance, Chunmei Lin, Massimo Massa, Hong Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We hypothesize that poor country-level governance, which makes public information less reliable, induces fund managers to increase their use of semipublic information. Utilizing data from international mutual funds and stocks over the 2000-2009 period, we find that semipublic information-related stock rebalancing can be five times higher in countries with the worst quality of governance than in countries with the best. The use of semipublic information increases price informativeness but also increases information asymmetry and reduces stock liquidity. It also intensified the price impact and liquidity crunch during the recent global financial crisis.

Risk Sharing In An Asymmetric Environment, Eric Fesselmeyer, Leonard J. Mirman, Marc Santugini

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

We study the effect of an asymmetric environment on risk sharing. In our model, entrepreneurs consider undertaking risky projects in the real sector as well as selling part of their projects to investors. To capture the idea of an asymmetric environment, the returns on the alternative risk-free investment are allowed to differ between the entrepreneurs and the investors, i.e., agents have different opportunity costs of participating in the risky projects. We first show that the presence of asymmetric options establishes links between the risk-free and risky sectors as well as between the real and financial sectors. In particular, an asymmetric …

S&P Breaks Key Tecnical Mark, Steven D. Dolvin

All Chapters

The S&P fell below its 200-day moving average, a key negative technical indicator. Investors should pay close attention to see if this level holds. See article here, yahoo.

How To Strike The Wealth Balance, Shaomin Li, Seung Ho Park

Management Faculty Publications

The underlying attitude towards wealth within a country can have a big impact on a company's decision to invest there. Shaomin Li and Seung Ho Park look at ways in which 'wealth tolerance' can be measured.

Support And Ideas For Economic Education, Ed Starkenburg, Erica Vonk

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

Presentation covers opportunities to engage K-12th grade students in hands-on financial and economic materials that meet Iowa's content requirements. Also introduces the Dordt College Center for Economic Education and the services available and free resources available to teachers.

Engaging Students In Financial And Economic Literacy With Free Resources, Erica Vonk, Ed Starkenburg, Art Attema

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

Presentation covers opportunities to engage 3rd-12th grade students in hands-on financial and economic materials that meet Iowa's content requirements. This session will introduce you to the Dordt College Center for Economic Education, the services available and free resources available to teachers.

College News

Business Exchange

Finance Legends Share Tips With Students, College Welcomes New Hospitality School Director, New 3D Printer Helps Students Turn Ideas Into Reality, Do What You Love, CEO Bob Mariano Tells Graduates

All That Glitters Is Gold, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Limited supply of the precious metal and an age gap in leadership translate into career opportunities in the gold industry

Factors That Affect The Outcome Of A General Fund Referendum In Indiana, Andrew Charles Sargent

Open Access Dissertations

School finance elections in Indiana were a relatively rare occurrence prior to a series of new legislation enacted in 2008 that, through the imposition of property tax caps statewide, resulted in sweeping reforms to education funding. These new laws coupled with a national recession resulted in many school districts not having the necessary financial resources to maintain programming and personnel consistent with their needs. With this in mind, many of these districts turned to the General Fund referendum as a mechanism to raise more revenue for their districts through an increase in local property taxes as decided by the voters …

The Archway Investment Fund Semi Annual Report, Fall 2014, Bryant University, Archway Investment Fund

Archway Investment Fund

No abstract provided.

2014 Q3 Market Pulse Report, Craig R. Everett

Pepperdine Market Pulse Report

The quarterly IBBA and M&A Source Market Pulse Survey was created to gain an accurate understanding of the market conditions for businesses being sold in Main Street (values $0-$2MM) and the lower middle market (values $2MM -$50MM). The national survey was conducted with the intent of providing a valuable resource to business owners and their advisors. The IBBA and M&A Source present the Market Pulse Survey with the support of the Pepperdine Private Capital Markets Project and the Graziado School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University.

Notes With Interest: Department Of Finance Newsletter, N03, Fall 2014, University Of Northern Iowa. Department Of Finance.

Department of Finance Newsletter

News about the activities of the Department of Finance

Investor Behavior In The Mutual Fund Industry: Evidence From Gross Flows, George D. Cashman, Federico Nardari, Daniel N. Deli, Sriram V. Villupuram

Finance Faculty Research and Publications

Using a large sample of monthly gross flows from 1997 to 2003, we uncover several previously undocumented regularities in investor behavior. First, investor purchases and sales produce fund-level gross flows that are highly persistent. Persistence in fund flows dominates performance as a predictor of future fund flows. More importantly, failing to account for flow persistence leads to incorrect inferences with respect to the relation between performance and flows. Second, we document that investors react differently to performance depending on the type of fund, and that investor trading activity produces meaningful differences in the persistence of fund flows across mutual fund …

Improving Public Health Safety Nets After An Economic Recession, Sanjay Basu

Center for Policy Research

When we say ‘here’s what’s going on with our nation’s health,’ how do we know the answer? Where is the data coming from? How can we best evaluate our public health system? We’re talking about it every day on CNN given the Ebola scare. What do we mean by our ‘public health system’? I would argue that we should expand our definition to mean something more than hospitals and clinics, or doctors and nurses. In particular, I’ll argue that some of our non-health programs that we have as part of the safety net actually make a bigger health impact than …

Accounting For Financial Instruments: Difficulties With Fair Value Measurement And Reporting, Lindsey T. Byrne

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

The Shadow Banking System In The United States, Bhakti Joshi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 2008 the United States suffered a devastating economic collapse. Millions of Americans were unemployed; families lost their homes; and long time businesses were forced to shut down. These events put the United States into an economic depression so deep that the country has yet to fully recover. The crisis was not a natural disaster but varieties of private sector agents such as banks and hedge funds were responsible for its efficient cause. Even though the housing and stock bubbles were generated largely by market forces rather than by government policies, the US government policies and institutions also played a …

Dynamic Asset Allocation: A Bayesian Approach, Yalan Feng

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The first half of this dissertation consists of two essays addressing dynamic asset allocation problem by exploring time-varying volatility and covariance between different assets.

In the first essay, I propose a time-varying Bayesian approach based on autoregressive models. To allow a parsimonious specification while improving predictive power, I specify a step function that considerably decreases the number of parameters to be estimated. To reduce data dimensionality, I use orthogonal portfolios instead of correlated assets in estimation and forecast. Finally, a Bayesian estimation is applied to dynamically update coefficients and error variance. I combine Bayesian time-varying autoregression with step function restriction …

The State Of The Region: Hampton Roads 2014, James V. Koch, Vinod Agarwal, Chris Colburn, Vicky Curtis, Steve Daniel, Elizabeth Janik, Feng Lian, Sharon Lomax, Alice Mcadory, Janet Molinaro, Ken Plum, Ayush Toolsidass, Shara Weber, Luke Watson, Gilbert Yochum

Economics Faculty Books

This is Old Dominion University's 15th Annual State of the Region Report. While it represents the work of many people connected in various ways to the university, the report does not constitute an official viewpoint of Old Dominion or it's president, John R. Broderick. The report maintains the goal of stimulating thought and discussion that ultimately will make Hampton Roads an even better place to live. We are proud of our region's many successes, but realize that it is possible to improve our performance. In order to do so, we must have accurate information about "where we are" and a …

Finance And Social Responsibility In The Informal Economy: Institutional Voids, Globalization And Microfinance Institutions, Hao Liang, Chris Marquis, Sunny Li Sun

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine how different types of country-level globalization and the industry structure of microfinance institutions (MFIs) affect organization-level microcredit interest rates which crucially affect the poor's entrepreneurial opportunities. We develop an opportunity structure perspective that argues that MFI interest rates can be reduced by egalitarian-based social globalization but increased by neoliberal-based economic globalization. Moreover, stronger presence of nonprofit organizations in the microfinance industry lowers interest rates. Furthermore, these three forces can moderate the relationship between MFIs' outreach to the poor and average interest rate. Analyses of 2,559 MFI observations across 74 countries from 2002 - 2012 largely support our hypotheses.

Essays On Corporate Bank Loan Contracting, Leann G. Pashnyak

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation is comprised of two essays on corporate bank loan contracting. The purpose of the first essay is to investigate the effect of loan's designated purpose on loan agreement contracting terms, as well as to examine whether lenders apply different standards to assess the value of borrower's corporate governance for each type of loan purpose. Using a large sample of private bank loans, the results indicate that both price and non-price loan terms vary significantly by loan purpose. Specifically, the spread yield varies by about 182 basis points (bps) for loans made for different purposes. Further, borrowers of operations …

On Maximizing Annualized Option Returns, Charles J. Higgins

Finance Faculty Works

While options do generally demonstrate an increase in prices as time increases, an annualized return of their excess premiums exhibit other characteristics including a lower return on options farther out of the money, that as the exercise price is farther out of the money that the expiration with the greatest annualized return is longer in time, and more interestingly that for underlying securities having larger standard deviations the greatest annualized option returns are found with options having shorter expirations.

Repayment Determinants For Egyptian Microfinance Institutions, Reem Nabil Hashad

Theses and Dissertations

Finance is one of the core development axes and is the basis for job creation, income, poverty reduction and economic growth. Financial resources in Egypt are both idle and misallocated. Access to finance is a major constraint especially to the poor stratum of the Egyptian society. Microfinance is one of the means through which the poor can gain access to finance. However, Egyptian microfinance institutions (MFIs) are inefficient and are unable to supply 90% of the demand for microcredit. This research focuses on how the supply-demand gap of microcredit in Egypt can be reduced. Hence this paper examines what are …

Alibaba Ipo, Steven D. Dolvin

All Chapters

Most firms that undertake an IPO subject insiders (founders, initial investors, etc.) to a lockup period of, typically, 180 days. For Alibaba, this is not the case, which suggests that many additional shares could hit the market immediately after the IPO. This may mute the initial return that new shareholders could receive. See article here, WSJ.

Update: Even with insiders selling shares, the Alibaba IPO was well subscribed, generating a 38% return on the first day. Moreover, with additional shares sold (i.e., the overallotment option), the Alibaba IPO is reportedly the biggest IPO in history, raising $25 billion. See article …

Diversification Revisited, Steven D. Dolvin

All Chapters

Asset allocation is widely considered to carry the most weight in determining a portfolio's overall return, but we often avoid/ignore many categories that could be helpful. See article here for a discussion of why diversification matters, Fidelity.

On the contrary, though, some analysts believe too much diversification is not a good thing. See article here (WSJ) to help answer the question, "How Much Diversification Is Too Much?"

Active Managers Vs. Index Funds, Steven D. Dolvin

All Chapters

Watch this video to facilitate discussion about active vs. passive investing, as it reviews the large amount of money being invested with Vanguard.

All-Time Market Highs And Market Timing, Steven D. Dolvin

All Chapters

With the market at all-time highs, many investors are left wondering if stocks are still attractive investments. Based on PE ratios, the market's current level of 17.5 if slightly above the historical average, but not excessively so. Thus, if corporate profits remain strong, valuations could remain stable (so says some analysts). See article and video here, Fidelity. The video also discusses the difficulty of market timing, which is a good reminder for most investors.

Etfs That "Mimic" Buffet, Steven D. Dolvin

All Chapters

Watch this video to facilitate discussion about ETFs that use criteria similar to those applied by Warren Buffet.