Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Payroll Fraud: Effects Of Ghost Names On The Government Wage Bill In Ghana, Gilbert Nyaledzigbor

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Policy makers believe that there are ghost workers, persons who do not work yet receive salaries, on Ghana's public sector payroll. However, little is known about the factors that create opportunities for ghost workers. The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to extend Cressy's conceptualization of the fraud triangle theory to test the applicability of Reinikka and Svennson's graft estimation model by using nonprobability quota sampling to select 85 heads of public agencies for participation in a cross-sectional survey. The research questions focused on the relationship between size of government agency, the estimated number of opportunities for ghost workers, and …

Do Internal Funds Play An Important Role In Financing Decisions For Constrained Firms?, Barun Roychowdhury

CMC Senior Theses

In this paper, I discuss the importance of internal funds for corporate investment among financially constrained firms. I use the paper ‘Financing Constraints and Corporate Investments’ by Fazzari, Hubbard and Petersen.as a base for my framework. I focus on a specific paper refuting their findings and their response in order to fully understand the benefits and costs of the framework. I then apply the original framework to a recent sample that covers the Great Recession to see the results of the initial paper are still valid today and if the recent recession and elongated recovery had an even more adverse …

Network Connections In Reit Markets, George D. Cashman, Stuart L. Gillan, David M. Harrison, Ryan J. Whitby

Finance Faculty Research and Publications

Relationships play a central role across the spectrum of real estate transactions. Whether negotiating prices, securing funding, or acquiring permits, knowing the right people provides multiple channels to facilitate deal making. To better understand the role of relationships in real estate markets, we examine how the connectedness of REIT directors is associated with deal making, growth, and profitability. We find strong evidence that REIT connections are positively associated with both deal making and accounting based measures of profitability, however, those relations do not translate into better market returns or higher valuations. One explanation of these somewhat contradictory results is that …

Economic Conundrums In Search Of A Solution: The Functions Of Third-Party Litigation Finance, Joanna M. Shepherd, Judd E. Stone Ii

Faculty Articles

Despite a rapid increase in economic significance and substantial increase in international use, third-party litigation financing remains poorly understood. No academic consensus takes account of the multiple economic conundrums that third-party litigation financing arises to solve, nor do legal scholars adequately consider obvious public and private substitutes for litigation financing that society rightfully recognizes as innocuous or outright beneficial. In this Article, we explore the economic challenges driving both business plaintiffs and sophisticated law firms to seek external litigation financing. We examine closely the key elements of the litigation financing arrangement itself, focusing on eligible cases and clients, devices financiers …

Political Risk And The Cost Of Capital In Asia-Pacific Property Markets, George D. Cashman, David M. Harrison, Hainan Sheng

Finance Faculty Research and Publications

This study investigates the impact of political risk on the cost of capital for publicly traded real estate firms. More specifically, by using a sample of 102 REITs and listed property trusts, which hold nearly 6,000 distinct investment properties across the Asia-Pacific region, we find strong empirical evidence that increased exposure to political risk increases both the cost of equity financing of a firm and its weighted average cost of capital. Interestingly, no such linkages are apparent between political risk and the cost of debt of a firm. These empirical results are robust to a variety of alternative measures of …

Three Essays On Default Risk In Capital Markets, Laleh Samarbakhsh

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation comprises three essays on default risk in capital markets exploring (a) failure risk of hedge funds, (b) pricing in equity option markets, and (c) relationship between option and credit default swap markets, respectively, with a particular focus on the recent financial crisis.

The first essay “The role of Excess Leverage in Hedge Funds Failure” investigates the role of financial leverage, including the use of margins and derivatives, in the hedge funds failure during the 2008 financial crisis. Motivated by failure of the two Bear Sterns hedge funds, this paper examines why some hedge funds failed during and after …

Three Essays On Compensation And The Board Of Directors, Ian Cherry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In my first essay, I find a statistically and economically significant director-specific component in CEO pay following the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). In the cross-section of firms, directors that award relatively higher (lower) CEO pay in one firm also award relatively higher (lower) CEO pay in other firms of whose boards they are members during the year. Based on my estimates, the director-specific component is responsible for around ±3.5% of total CEO pay or around ±$230,000 per CEO-year on average. In addition to affecting CEO pay levels, the director-specific component also has a significant effect on …

Why Cash Flow Is More Important Than Profit, Aretha Boex

White Papers

While profits are good, they do not adequately represent the financial standing of a firm. It is quite possible for a company to report profits but be unable to grow, secure financing or attract investors.

Why Good Financial Records Are Worth The Effort, Sara Bennett

White Papers

Accounting. Taxes. Payroll. Recordkeeping. Necessary, but confusing at times. Thorough and accurate recordkeeping of all revenues and expenses related to your business is essential and goes beyond financial and tax reporting. Why you should seek help from the pros

One-Step Bond Pricing, Tom Arnold

Finance Faculty Publications

This paper re-works the traditional formula for pricing a bond with a present value annuity and a single discounted cash flow into a "one-step' bond pricing formula. The new derivation allows for a clear presentation of the relationship between a bond's coupon yield and its yield to maturity and a quick means for pricing a bond.

Crummer Suntrust Portfolio Recommendations: Crummer Investment Management [2015], Heather Cunningham, Jeffrey Dirkin, Seonag Doherty, Will Edwards, Christian Fielitz, Alison Frederick, Kathryn Joseph, Marten Mueller, Hongda Qiao, Tomas Cabrera Ranaldi

Crummer Truist Portfolios

We approach the market this year with muffled optimism. The market’s growth rate will be softer than the last two years, based on our GDP forecast of 2.8% accompanied by steady unemployment and low interest rates. In this environment, stock selection is paramount and we have modified the portfolio to favor pro-cyclical sectors like Consume Discretionary and Industrials.

The Effect Of Ceo Gender, Age, And Salary On Firm Value, Brandon H. D'Ewart

CMC Senior Theses

This paper investigates the academic conclusions on how CEO gender and salary affect firm value, while at the same time adding data on how CEO age affects firm value. Via an event study of S&P 500 CEO changes from 2000 to 2006 I confirm the current academic findings and discover that CEOs promoted during their 40s negatively influence firm value, while CEOs in older age brackets show a positive abnormal return on firm value. With this validation and addition to the existing data, firms and investors can more effectively assess proper candidates for the position of CEO and allocate resources …

The Power Of An Actively Managed Portfolio: An Empirical Example Using The Treynor-Black Model, Alexander D. Brown

Honors Theses

The focus of this thesis is to examine the added benefits of actively managing a portfolio of securities from an individual investor's perspective. More specifically, managing a market portfolio with the combination of a selected few actively managed securities can, in some instances, create excess return. The active portfolios are formed based on the firms' specific industries or region in which they operate. The idea is that an investor can forecast that a specific industry will outperform or underperform other industries during different periods in the market. Using the investor's forecasts can provide excess returns if the forecast is accurate. …

The “Other” Side Of Wall Street: Banking, Policies, And Adaptive Methods Of U.S. Migrant Workers, Cassandra Rae Decker

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Migrant farmworkers' social and economic mobility is frequently constrained through the denial of basic resources, such as access to the formal financial sector. This thesis ethnographically examines banking policies as they apply to low-income, mobile, populations that temporarily reside in Florida. It utilizes participant observation, interviews, and participatory mapping with migrant farmworkers. It also considers how policymakers and service providers in the formal and informal financial sectors rationalize control of resources and the effects on mobile populations. Particular attention is paid to adaptive practices in the alternative financial sector – cash checking services, carrying cash, and remittances. By utilizing the …

Three Essays On Remittances, Institutions, And Economic Development, Durga Gautam

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Does the inflow of remittances affect the quality of institutions in the recipient countries? This question is important because economists have stressed that good economic institutions, particularly those in the public sector, are instrumental for economic development and growth. The literature on remittances, however, does not document a thorough analysis and compelling evidence of the relationship between these private financial transfers and institutional quality. Unlike other kinds of international capital flows, remittances inflows are not mediated by the government of recipient countries. Remittances are not taxed directly and so are not a source of revenue for the government. Then a …

Biophysical Vulnerability Impact Assessment Of Climate Change On Aquaculture Sector Development In Sarawak, Malaysia, Rosita Hamdan, Fatimah Kari, Azmah Othman

DLSU Business & Economics Review

This study is an assessment of the impact of climate change on the biophysical vulnerability of aquaculture production in Sarawak. The relationship between change in risk factors with the total aquaculture production and farmer’s income is identified. It utilizes data from the survey done on 249 aquaculture farmers in Sarawak, as well as secondary data gathered from various government reports. The multiple linear regressions results verify that the mean minimum temperature has a positive significant effect on freshwater ponds, while relative humidity has a negative significant effect on brackish water ponds. The total aquaculture area has a positive significant effect …

Evaluating Banking Agents: A Case Of Brazilian Banking Correspondents, Tania Pereira Christopoulos, Lauro Emilio Gonzales Frias, Tomás Costa De Azevedo Marques

DLSU Business & Economics Review

Financial institutions play an important role in the development of any country’s economy, but there is still an enormous gap between supply and demand of financial services that meet the needs of the poor. Hence, it is important to analyze the role of the traditional financial system in the expansion of proper financial services, and their accessibility to the poor. Within inclusive finance, the most promising topic seems to be branchless banking. One major example of branchless banking is the case of banking correspondents (BC) in Brazil. In order to deepen the comprehension of the subject, this article will present …

Initiating Women Empowerment And Youth Development Through Involvement In Non- Formal Education In Three Selected Parishes: An Action Research On Poverty Alleviation, Divina M. Edralin, Maria Victoria P. Tibon, Florenz C. Tugas

DLSU Business & Economics Review

This article elaborates on an action research undertaken by three researchers from a business school of a leading university in the Philippines on the contribution of non-formal education programs in poverty alleviation, aimed to initiate women empowerment and youth development among selected women and youth in the parishes they belong to. Non-formal education programs such as home-based livelihood program, parenting for women, leadership, character building, values clarification, and priority setting for women and youth were administered as a way to reduce the selected parishioners’ vulnerabilities arising from poverty. Using outcome mapping as a project cycle management tool, changed behaviours, attitudes, …

Cyclical Economic Impacts On Aggregated Fiscal Imbalance Levels In The United States, Douglas Arthur Merriman

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Cyclical Economic Impacts on Aggregated Fiscal Imbalance Levels in the United States

by

Douglas A. Merriman

MSM, University of Maryland University College, 2004

BS, Central Washington University, 1983

Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Applied Management and Decision Science

Walden University

July 2015

The impacts of cyclical economic volatility on state-level fiscal imbalance levels have gained attention, given that beginning in late 2007, the United States experienced the deepest and longest-lasting recession in its history. The problem addressed by this study was whether there was a statistically significant relationship between certain …

Narrowing The Gap Of Financial Fraud Detection In Corporations, Solomon Aborbie

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Business leaders remain exposed to financial and accounting fraud as well as loss of profitability, despite the dictates of the SOX Act of 2002. The most challenging aspect of corporate management is the unexpected nature of an emerging, existing, or an inherent financial risk. Guided by the evolution of fraud theory, this exploratory case study's purpose was to identify and explore the financial management strategies that corporate financial managers need to adequately protect investors. Twenty participants from a population group of corporate auditors of Fortune 1000 corporations within 70 miles of Columbus, Ohio provided input for this study. Data from …

A Quantitative Study Of Multilayered Market Systems And Small And Medium-Sized Enterprises, Mukhail Hamza

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for approximately 50% of the world's gross domestic product. However, these economic agents suffer from inadequate access to liquid funds to finance their operations. The liquidity gap has led to early bankruptcy and liquidation, stagnant growth and development, and fewer employment opportunities. The problem under study was the effect of funding limitations on SMEs' business operations and growth. The purpose was to examine the impact of multilayered capital systems as alternative funding for SME growth. This study was informed by Gilbrat's law and the theory of financial exclusion. The research questions addressed the use …

Differences In Financial Performance And Risk Tolerance At Faith-Based Credit Unions, Bruce J. Toews

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In the United States, faith-based and other small credit unions are vanishing at the rate of nearly a credit union each workday. The purpose of this causal-comparative study was to provide managers of faith-based credit unions with information about differences in financial performance and risk tolerance between faith-based and non-faith-based credit unions in order to improve their investment strategy and long-term sustainability. The study included a comparison of ratios measuring the financial performance and risk tolerance of randomly selected faith-based credit unions in the United States with the corresponding ratios of non-faith-based credit unions of similar size and location from …

The Effects Of Stock Distributions On Returns, Volatility, And Price, Jason Heavilin

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation investigates three issues regarding the effects of stock distributions on returns, volatility, and prices in an attempt to answer the questions why firms execute stock distributions and why the market appears to favor them. These questions have occupied academicians for at least 40 years (i.e., Fama et al (1969), Ohlson and Penman (1985), Rankine and Stice (1997), Angel (1997), and Crawford et al (2005) among many others).

Chapter 1 studies the notion that the stock market reacts more positive to stock dividends than to stock splits (Rankine and Stice, 1997). However, I find that the stock market does …

Essays On Mortgage Debt Payment, Meagan Nicole Mccollum

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I offer three independent studies that each contribute to the literature on mortgage debt payment. In the first paper, I examine the recent phenomenon of mortgage curtailment (borrowers making voluntary partial prepayments) and link this behavior to consumer deleveraging trends. In the second paper, I use the curtailment measures developed in the first essay to examine heterogeneity in sensitivity to current mortgage leverage in default decisions. Considering the group of borrowers who have previously curtailed mortgage debt, I posit such borrowers should be less sensitive to current leverage than borrowers without past curtailments because previous curtailers have …

Two Essays On Institutional Investors And U.S. Bank Holding Companies, Hui Wang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation studies institutional investment in U.S. bank holding companies (BHCs). The first essay examines institutional investing preferences in U.S. banks and the impact of expansion of bank power on the preferences. Institutional investors prefer BHCs that hold more liquid assets, are better capitalized and larger in size, have better loan quality, lower stock return volatility and less derivative trading. In addition, the expansion of bank power is welcomed by various types of institutional investors, except for long-term institutions. Institutional investors also become less risk-averse when investing in BHCs that have expanded into non-banking business. However, the increased complexity and …

Essay On Anti-Takeover Provisions And Corporate Spin-Offs, Wei Du

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Despite the prevalent use of anti-takeover provisions (ATPs) based indices as measures of corporate governance quality, the role of ATPs (efficiency vs. entrenchment hypotheses), and their relationship to firm performance are not fully understood. Corporate spin-offs offer a unique opportunity to disentangle entrenchment motives from efficiency motives behind the adoption of ATPs. This setting also provides relatively clean inferences on the relation between ATPs and firm performance. This paper studies the design of ATPs in spun-off firms relative to their parents, the determinants of ATPs, and their relationship to subsequent firm performance. We show that spun-off firms typically are endowed …

Revisiting Compensating Wage Differentials: The Evidence From Employer-Provided Health Insurance, Dan Qu

Business Review

This paper uses 1996 and 2001 Survey of Income and Program Participation to examine the evidence for compensating wage differentials associated with employer-provided health insurance (EHI) in the United States. The results provide no evidence of a tradeoff between wages and EHI coverage. On the other hand, the results do suggest that employees who work in states with income taxes are more likely to receive EHI than those in states without income taxes. Fixed effects, first differencing and instrumental variable estimation are used to address the potential ability bias and endogeneity problems in wage models with EHI as an independent …

Easypaisa: Seizing The White Space And Business Model Innovation, Nasir Afghan

Business Review

EasyPaisa is a diversification case study written about two very different organizations, a Telco and Microfinance Bank, and how they merged to create a new business. This new business was providing Mobile Financial Services. Both Telenor (a Telco) and Tameer Bank (Microfinance bank) saw a business opportunity in branchless banking (business white space). They were committed to make this acquisition successful, where Telenor bought over 51%sharesof Tameer Bank. However, as per regulations, the branchless banking model is to be governed under a bank-led model. Therefore, the face of EasyPaisa has always been Tameer Bank which is expected to manage all …

Two Essays On Ipos And Asset Prices, Gaole Chen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the first essay we examine the effect of concurrent lending and underwriting on IPO withdrawal, we find that IPOs underwritten by the firms’ concurrent lending banks are significantly more likely to be withdrawn. The result is robust to controlling for the common factors that affect IPO withdrawal and also for endogeneity using a propensity score matching portfolio. Our evidence suggests a cost to IPO firms’ hiring concurrent lending banks as underwriters despite the potential benefit of informational scope economies such intermediaries may provide. It is consistent with an alternative argument that a current lending and underwriting bank has less …

Performance Of Utility Based Hedges, Jim Hanly, John Cotter

Articles

Hedgers as investors are concerned with both risk and return. However when measuring hedging performance, the role of returns and investor risk aversion has generally been neglected in the literature, by its focus on minimum variance hedging. In this paper we address this by using utility based performance metrics to evaluate the hedging effectiveness of utility based hedges for hedgers with both moderate and high risk aversion together with the more traditional minimum variance approach. To examine this for an energy hedger, we apply our approach to WTI Crude Oil, for three different hedging horizons, daily, weekly and monthly. We …