Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Blockchain Technology: Digitizing The Global Financial System, John Frechette

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Recent technological innovations have sparked massive restructurings across the entire global economy. Despite the changes that have already taken place, an underutilized and emerging technology, known as “blockchain,” has the potential to disrupt every segment of the financial services sector. Using information and data accessed through the Bridgewater State library database, analyst reports, news articles, and the Bloomberg Terminal, this paper details the intricacies of blockchain technology, determines its potential effect on the global financial system, and reflects on its initial implementation with the creation of Bitcoin currency. While Bitcoin, a new cryptocurrency first invented in 2008, drew attention to …

The Implementation Of Financial Literacy Education In Public High School Classrooms, Shelby Olsen

Senior Theses

Due to the changing financial marketplace and the increased burden of financial decisions upon consumers there is a need for increased financial literacy among consumers. This thesis discusses and assesses promoting financial literacy within public high school classrooms to help provide students with the financial knowledge to confidently make informed financial decisions during their transition towards independence and into their adult lives. A strong financial literacy initiative within public high schools will help close the financial literacy gap created by little to no concrete financial education or parental background knowledge. This thesis will compile readily available curriculums and materials on …

One Hundred Dollars Now Or A Half Million Dollars Later?, Phuong Nguyen, Dr. Sheila Goins

Celebration of Learning

Most people do not think about retirement savings early enough and miss years of compound interest earnings. According to Investopedia, the average 55-64 year old American has approximately $104,000 in retirement savings, which translates into $310 income per month. The prospect of millions of seniors living well below the poverty level is not ideal. The purpose of our study is to determine if different methods of envisioning the future can prompt millennials to increase their savings early in life. Land-use management experts use a “backcasting” approach to generate future scenarios that enable planners to easily identify strategies to achieve those …

Dr. Harold C. Smith Fund Of Ursinus College Official Prospectus, May 2, 2017, Johnathan Myers, Benjamin R. Klybor, Isaac Abrams, Daan Slaats, Parker Wolf, Sam Sjosten, Scott Deacle

Ursinus Student-Managed Investment Fund Prospectus

This prospectus contains investment strategy and performance for the following stocks in the managed fund: Enanta Pharmaceuticals, Garmin Ltd., Pioneer Natural Resources and WalMart Stores, Inc.

Caught In The Headlights: Revising The Road Kill Hypothesis Of Antebellum Illinois Bank Failures, Scott N. Clayman, Scott Deacle, Andrew J. Economopoulos

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

Illinois had a dismal free banking experience, with over 80% of its free banks failing by the start of the Civil War. Researchers agree that a dramatic change in bond prices was the catalyst, and some have shown that the riskiest banks, ex ante, were the most likely to fail. This study examines how Illinois free banks adjusted their portfolios in the face of increased political and financial risks prior to Abraham Lincoln’s election as president. Lincoln’s nomination in May 1860 and the Democratic Party schism in June 1860 raised the likelihood of secession and the potential for a significant …

Banking The Unbanked In The Philippines, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

The Ayala Group brought together two of its subsidiaries, Globe Telecom and Bank of the Philippines Island, to bring banking services to 80 percent of the country

2017 Q2 Private Capital Access Index Report, Craig R. Everett

Pepperdine Private Capital Access Report

The Pepperdine Private Capital Access Index (PCA) is a quarterly indicator produced by the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University, and with the support of Dun & Bradstreet. The index is designed to measure the demand for, activity, and health of the private capital markets. The purpose of the PCA Index is to gauge the demand of small and medium sized businesses for financing needs, the level of accessibility of private capital, and the transparency and efficiency of private financing markets.

Financial Assessment Of Agricultural Lands At Risk To Coastal Salt Marsh Migration In Relation To Climate Change Induced Sea Level Rise In Dorchester County, Maryland, Jewell Porter

Sustainability and Social Justice

The increasing rate and effects of sea level rise is a major environmental concern in the Chesapeake Bay. This paper evaluates the impacts of rising sea level on coastal salt marshes and the surrounding agricultural lands at risk in Dorchester County, Maryland to build off existing environmental monitoring work performed by NOAA’s Sentinel Site Program. The results of the spatial analysis were used to estimate monetary benefits to incentivize farmers to protect these marshes by making their land available for marsh migration to occur. Looking at three scenarios of sea level rise and marsh migration, grain crops (corn, soybeans, and …

Crowdfunding: Financing Ventures In The Digital Era, Srinivas K. Reddy, Yee Heng Tan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School of Business

Over the past few years, digital platforms have emerged as a new way to disrupt industries. These platforms not only connect riders and drivers, like Uber, or hosts and guests, like Airbnb, but also ventures and funders. Crowdfunding platforms like Lendingclub or Kickstarter have gained widespread visibility and acceptance in recent years. Crowdfunding was virtually non-existent until 2010 but has been growing exponentially since 2010. In 2015, the volume rose to US$34.4 billion, slightly surpassing the venture capitalist industry and is expected to continue growing quickly.

The Impact Of The 2016 Election On The Financial Performance Of Major Healthcare Companies, Joshua T. Blotter

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Healthcare reform was a significant political issue during the November 2016 US general elections, and played an important role in campaigning and political discourse leading to the election. Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, and Republicans running for congressional office, campaigned on a platform advocating for the repeal and replacement of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA), among other changes. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate, and Democrats running for congressional office, campaigned on a platform that included support for the ACA, as well as increased regulations on the pharmaceutical industry and health insurers, among various …

Can Tweets Predict Intraday Stock Price Movements?, Diwas Puri

Honors Projects in Finance

Twitter is a microblogging platform where over 320 million people post about things that matter to them in less than 140 characters. People post about their happiness, sadness, pride, disappointments, love, hate, expectations and other feelings. Nowadays, a popular trend has come up in which data from Twitter, can be gathered and analyzed in real time to see how people react to a particular situation including changes in stock markets. This research focuses on looking into the relationship, if any, between public mood from Twitter and the stock market returns by analyzing the Tweets about four major companies in consumer …

Senior Business Seminar Proposal, Alex C. Mcgrainer

Senior Honors Projects

How could a single idea increase the value of a university’s college of business? My project aims to do this through the successful implementation of a single class. It addresses some of the most important factors that current and prospective students should consider while they undergo their college searches, such as the post-graduation employment rate and starting salary across majors of interest.

My inspiration for the topic came from students struggling to find a job. I realized that every year around March, they would begin to suffer due to the self-inflicted pressure of being unemployed after commencement. I immediately knew …

Financial Development And The Liquidity Of Cross-Listed Stocks; The Case Of Adr's, Jed Decamp

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This study examines the relationship between financial development in a particular country and the volatility and illiquidity of ADR’s cross-listed on American exchanges, that correspond to the particular home country. Tests show that financial development and illiquidity are inversely related, thus, financial development improves liquidity and reduces volatility. The results have important implications for individual investors, firms seeking to lower their cost of capital, and the economic well-being of countries in general.

Portfolio Insurance Using Leveraged Etfs, Jeffrey George

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study examines the use of leveraged exchange traded funds (LETFs) within a portfolio insurance framework to reduce exposure to downside risk. Investors have learned the importance of mitigating this risk having experienced two “once in a century” events in the last 20 years with the tech crash in the early 2000s and the financial crisis in 2008. Current portfolio insurance strategies are either option based (Leland & Rubinstein, 1976) or constant proportional portfolio insurance (CPPI), (Black & Jones, 1987). The cost of option based strategies can be quite high while a CPPI strategy requires constant rebalancing.

This study combines …

A Theoretical Application Of Metaphor Research To The Film Industry, Michael J. Stanton

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper explores the value of using metaphor based marketing research methods (most notably Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique) in the development and green-lighting processes of filmmaking. A review of literature reveals that even large blockbuster films lack any marketing research employed in the developmental stage. Audiences are extremely difficult to analyze when considering something as abstract and subjective as what makes a “good” film. Metaphor based marketing research methods (e.g. ZMET) offer a solution by examining the minds of consumers through language markers called metaphors. Using a metaphor based marketing technique early in a film’s development process may help to …

Institutional Investors And Cross-Border Mergers And Acquisitions: The 2000-2012 Period, Jinsuk Yang

Finance and Real Estate Dissertations - Archive

Using mergers and acquisitions (M&As) from 26 countries between 2000 and 2012, I examine the role of foreign and domestic institutional investors in cross-border M&As. I have several findings. First, both foreign and domestic institutional ownerships increase significantly during the period 2000-2012.Meanwhile, the volume of the cross-border M&As does not increase during the same time period. Second, domestic institutional investors facilitate both domestic and cross-border M&As. However, this seems to be inconsistent with the negative impact of domestic institutional ownership on the intensity of cross-border M&A activity, as reported in Ferreira et al. (2010). I discover that domestic institutional investors …

Essays On Product Market Dynamics And Corporate Cash Holdings Across Countries, Trang Thuy Thai

Finance and Real Estate Dissertations - Archive

My dissertation is composed of two essays that investigate two related yet distinct dynamics of product market and their influence on corporate cash holdings, and both are concerned with these dynamics being determinants of cash policy for international samples over the period of 1999-2015. The samples for the first and second essays respectively cover fourteen and ten countries that span not only developed countries but also emerging economies. The first essay focuses on the impact of product market competition risk on corporate cash level. I construct a composite score of competition that captures three horizontal dimensions of product pricing competition …

Cognitive Biases, Style Investing, And Stock Return Predictability, Samar Mohamed M. Ashour

Finance and Real Estate Dissertations - Archive

This dissertation consists of three distinct essays. In the first essay, “Does Credit risk explain market’s participants ‘cognitive biases - Evidence from Anchoring Bias in Analysts’ Earnings Forecasts”, using anchoring bias in analysts’ earnings forecasts, I examine the relation between credit risk and market participants’ cognitive biases. Recent findings indicate that analysts suffer from anchoring bias as they anchor their earnings per share (EPS) forecasts on the industry median without making sufficient adjustment. I show that the profitability of anchoring bias based trading strategies concentrates in the worst-rated stocks, especially around credit rating downgrades, suggesting that analysts exhibit stronger cognitive …

Three Essays On Leverage, Informative Trading, And Option Implied Information, Adam C. Harper

Finance and Real Estate Dissertations - Archive

This study will take a three-prong approach to examine the role high-leveraged option trades have in determining the informational content of options market trading. First, I closely observe the structure of the volatility spread ahead of firm-level corporate earnings events to strengthen the well documented lead-lag relationship between the option and stock markets. I find that volatility spreads driven by deep, out-of-the-money options exceed the predictability of equivalent volatility spreads that are more uniform in distribution. I then explore the differential behavioral responses of leveraged trades and earnings, such the role of the disposition effect and overconfidence. I find that …

Microloans, Macro Impact, Kelly M. Frank

Senior Honors Projects

Nearly half of today’s population is living in poverty, meaning that they are living on less than $2.50 a day. The lack of capital creates a vicious cycle for those in poverty. The less fortunate do not have sufficient access to education, healthcare, proper nutrition and loans. This forces those living in poverty to focus on getting by one day at a time instead of looking to the future. Those with a lack of sufficient income can’t get access to loans because of the risk associated with lending to subprime borrowers.

However, microfinance loans change this. They are unique because …

Determinants Of Profitability: Empirical Evidence From The Largest Global Banks, Anthony Iacobelli

Financial Analyst

This paper examines the factors determining the profitability of the top sixteen global banks according to market capitalization. Using panel data spanning the period 1980 to 2015, this study estimates several specifications to examine the impact of bank-level and country-level variables on profitability. Fixed effects and GMM results show that bank characteristics, industry structure and macroeconomics variables are important in explaining global banks’ profitability. Bank capital and productivity increase a bank’s profitability whereas credit risk and operating efficiency reduce it. With respect to the macroeconomic indicators, higher economic growth and inflation spur banks’ profitability. The study also provides evidence on …

Do Corporate Managers Time Stock Repurchases Effectively?, Michael Lorka

Financial Analyst

This study examines the performance of share repurchases completed by corporate managers, and compares the implied performance of the purchases to a mythical alternative investment in the S&P 500 index, and the company’s industry sector. The “repurchase” portfolio benefits from managers’ significant information advantage over all other market participants. The data was collected from Compustat, and return, risk and risk adjusted metrics were calculated to provide a comparison of the two portfolios. Overall, the portfolio of repurchasing companies experienced lower returns than the broad index and respective industry sector, but the volatility for repurchasers was lower as well.

Mathematical Modeling Of Financial Derivative Pricing, Kelly L. Cosgrove

Honors Scholar Theses

The binomial asset-pricing model is used to price financial derivative securities. This text will begin by going over the probability concepts necessary to understand this discrete-time model. It then develops the theory behind the binomial model and different properties that arise. It shows how to use the binomial model to predict future stock prices, and then uses this information to price derivative securities. It initially focuses on the European call option, but goes on to provide a pricing method for the American put option. However, many of the theorems developed are applicable to all derivative securities. The text wraps up …

A Changing Industry: An Analysis Of The Effects Of Direct-To-Consumer Advertising On The Insurance Industry, James Bonvicini

Honors Scholar Theses

Direct-to-consumer selling is a shift in the strategies of many companies. As technology continues to play a prominent role in business, companies need to adapt to accommodate, and take advantage of, new opportunities that become available. Many insurance companies are now focusing on improving their direct-to-consumer selling efforts and attracting consumers with new online selling platforms. This thesis looks at the changes inside and outside of the industry that led to this direct method of selling and the impact that this has on the intermediaries in the industry, with a focus on property and casualty businesses. Additionally, this thesis takes …

An Examination Of The Short Term Reversal Premium, Timothy Burgess

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The intent of this study is to explore short-term reversal effects in public securities markets.

The basis of this study is to take into consideration prior work done by economists, paying particularly attention to periods specifically before and after the decimalization of the stock market in 2001. This study finds that from years 1980-2000, there is a monthly return premium of -0.0552% or 5.5 basis points, which is quite significant with a t-statistic of 11.08. Following decimalization in 2001 through year 2012, this monthly return premium drops 44% to -0.031% or 3.1 basis points, again with a high t-statistic of …

The Business Of Dentistry: A Financial Plan, Katherine Elizabeth Stewart

Senior Theses

At the University of South Carolina, I have taken action to find different ways to be more involved in my local community and to help families and people from underrepresented societies. While it is important to have this overarching goal, I have always wondered how I will be able to finance my goal so that I can have the money, supplies, and human capital to give back to communities in need. Through my thesis I have been able to create a business plan for a future dental practice in the Charlotte, NC metropolitan region. This business plan includes a financial …

Public Fund Strategic Asset Allocation To Hedge Funds: A Time Series Analysis, Morgan Steadwell

Honors College Theses

Public funds represent some of the U.S.’ largest institutional investors. These funds are a pool of money saved for retirement by those who are still working. Boards of Directors of these funds have strict standards for their investments, as the money they are investing is not their own; rather, it comes from the thousands of workers that pay into the funds. Alternative investments such as private equity, private debt, real assets, real estate, and hedge funds are historically more risky than traditional public equities or fixed income investments. Recently, public funds’ investments in hedge funds have been called into question …

A Different Perspective On The Debate Between Nonprofit And For-Profit Microfinance Organizations, Hane E. De Oliveira Crevelari

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Microfinance for-profit organizations flooded the market in the early 2000's when microcredit demonstrated profitability. Ever since, an intense debate arose contesting the morality of profiting from the poor. Many for-profit microfinance institutions were accused of predatory lending through high interest rates and aggressive marketing and payment collection. In this paper, I examine the validity of the arguments for and against for-profits by extensively comparing the different target audiences of the charity sector and the private sector and the main arguments of each side. I conclude that, although the ability to serve the poor is compromised by profit motives, for-profit microfinance …

Active Vs. Passive Management: The Elusiveness Of Alpha To The Modern Hedge Fund, Robert Wesley Long Jr

Senior Theses

The goal of this thesis stated off with one question: are hedge funds worth the fees? This seemed like it would simple to answer, but the measurement of hedge fund performance turned out to be far more complex than one would imagine. The first complexity that became apparent was the bias to overly weight returns as a measure of performance. This is the simplest metric to comprehend and universally can be understood by investors. It seems like common sense that the fund with the highest return would be the best investment opportunity. But this rush to judgment often overlooks other …

Variance Risk Premiums Of Commodity Etfs, Chyng Wen Tee, Christopher H. A. Ting

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We propose a model-independent method to account for the early exercise premiums in American options on non-dividend paying stocks. We find that our estimates of early exercise premium are generally larger than the estimates by existing methods. Given the American options on the Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) of gold, silver, natural gas, and crude oil, we find strong empirical evidence of variance risk premiums for these commodities, over a volatility term structure up to 18 months. Furthermore, we show that volatility indexes constructed by using existing methods tend to overestimate the risk-neutral variance, and consequently the magnitude of variance risk premium.