Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Gambling Away Stability: Sports Betting’S Impact On Vulnerable H, Scott R. Baker, Justin Balthrop, Mark J. Johnson, Jason Kotter, Kevin Pisciotta

Faculty Publications

We estimate the causal effect of online sports betting on households’ investment, spending, and debt management decisions using household transaction data and a staggered difference-in-differences framework. Following legalization, sports betting spreads quickly, with both the number of participants and frequency of bets increasing over time. This increase does not displace other gambling or consumption but significantly reduces savings, as risky bets crowd out positive expected value investments. These effects concentrate among frequent bettors and low-savings households. Our findings highlight the potential adverse effects of online sports betting on vulnerable households.

Ceo Compensation Changes Following Acquisitions, Leonce Bargeron, David J. Denis

Finance and Quantitative Methods Faculty Publications

We find that CEO compensation increases following acquisitions only in those deals in which acquirer stock is used as the method of payment. These compensation increases are driven by increases in equity-based compensation and are concentrated in riskier acquirers, in riskier acquisitions, and in acquirers whose CEOs have low exposure to the stock price. We find little support for traditional agency cost explanations of changes in CEO pay following acquisitions. However, our findings are broadly consistent with compensation changes representing a contracting solution to a two-sided adverse selection problem that is present only in stock acquisitions.

The Emergence Of Buy Now Pay Later Platforms: A Business Analysis Study, Asher Frye

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis dives into the growth of Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) financing and its implications for consumer financial health. Using Affirm’s 2019-2024 data and recent reporting from regulators, it documents strong BNPL expansion alongside emerging concerns about repayment risk and credit score impacts. These insights motivate me to conduct an experiment testing whether clearer disclosure affects consumer BNPL choices. While the experiment shows no statistically significant effects, it underscores the need for further study of BNPL understanding and consumer behavior.

Auditor Independence And Its Impact On Debt Financing Outcomes, Harry Zhou

CMC Senior Theses

This study investigates whether perceived auditor independence, proxied through proportions of non-audit service fees and client dependence of the auditor, is associated with the outcome of debt contracts. While prior research examines how these proxies relate to auditor independence itself, and other strands of literature assess how audit quality influences debt contracting, few studies evaluate whether lenders interpret auditor independence signals in ways consistent with auditors. This study aims to contribute to the broader literature by examining the auditor independence proxies and its direct relationship to debt contract structure holistically. Two OLS models were employed to investigate the relationship between …

Board Characteristics And Bank Performance: An Empirical Analysis Of The Size Effect In Emerging Economies, A. Bouteska, M. Kabir Hassan, Luca Pezzo, Jose Perez-Amuedo

Finance Faculty Research and Publications

Purpose

This paper aims to estimate the impacts of the board characteristics on bank performance in emerging countries, mainly focusing on the role of moderating factor.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on the literature review and the feasible generalized least squares econometric method approach, 137 deposit banks from seven emerging countries, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Malaysia and Turkey, are all examined in the 2010–2022 year period.

Findings

Bank size is suggested as the statistically significant factor that moderates the association among the board characteristics, i.e. board size, duality, government ownership and bank performance. Based on the bank size, …

Beyond The Stream: Valuing Music Catalogs As An Alternative Asset Class, Amelia Jade Magay

Honors Theses and Capstones

This thesis builds a quantitative valuation framework for music catalog transactions and tests its limits systematically. The goal is not to produce a formula that perfectly prices every deal. The goal is to identify where streaming-based financial analysis is a useful underwriting tool, where it breaks down, and what categories of value investors appear to be pricing beyond publicly available streaming data.

Signals Of Value: A Comparative Analysis Of Sde And Ebitda In Predicting Microbusiness Sale Price, Joseph E. Turley

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This dissertation compares the predictive accuracy and stability of Seller’s Discretionary Earnings (SDE) and Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization (EBITDA) in explaining realized sale prices of microbusinesses. Microbusinesses, defined as firms with fewer than ten employees and annual revenue below $2.5 million, face persistent valuation challenges due to information asymmetry, owner dependence, and informal financial reporting. The study analyzes 5,499 completed U.S. transactions from the DealStats database (2014–2024) after applying microbusiness criteria and outlier trimming. Predictive accuracy is measured by absolute percentage error between actual sale prices and prices implied by each metric. Findings show that SDE-based predictions …

Corporate Disclosure Meets Natural Language Processing: Topic Modeling, Disclosure Strategy, And Audit Implications, Wanxin Yu

2026

Corporate disclosures serve as a critical channel for firms to communicate their financial performance, strategic initiatives, and firm-specific risks. In recent years, rapid advances in natural language processing (NLP) have provided powerful new tools for extracting insights from the growing volume and complexity of corporate disclosures. This dissertation consists of three studies that explore how advanced textual analysis can reveal deeper insights into corporate disclosures, managerial behavior, and auditor practices.

The first paper (co-authored) develops a topic-based approach to measuring the substantive content of risk factor disclosures. Using an embedding-based topic modeling framework, we identify 30 interpretable risk topics and …

The Impact Of Shariah Law, Liquidity And Interest Rate On Sukuk Growth In Malaysia In Short And Long Run: The Ardl Estimation, Dheya Hamood Saif Al-Fakih, Shahsuzan Zakaria, Md Khairu Amin Ismail

The Indonesian Capital Market Review

The issuance of sukuk has been steadily increasing over time, underscoring its growing significance and the need for further scholarly examination. As a global leader in the Islamic finance industry and a prominent issuer of sukuk, Malaysia serves as a critical case study for understanding this phenomenon. It is essential to investigate various factors and their impact on the growth of sukuk. The study analyzes the relationship between sukuk growth and factors such as interest rate, liquidity (M1), and Shariah law using monthly data from April 2011 to December 2020 obtained from Thomson Reuters Eikon. The study employs the ARDL …

Awareness And Decision-Making In Cryptocurrency Investment Among Students In Guwahati: A Comprehensive Study, Rituparna Roy Dr, Anupam Chanda Dr, Bidangsha Basumatary

The Indonesian Capital Market Review

This study investigates the awareness and decision-making processes related to cryptocurrency investment among students in Guwahati, Assam. Cryptocurrency, a form of digital money designed for online transactions without government or bank oversight, has initiated significant shifts in the global financial sector. The decentralization of cryptocurrencies offers transparency, security, and efficiency, challenging traditional financial systems. Despite the growing global interest in cryptocurrencies, their adoption faces barriers such as limited technological expertise, regulatory uncertainty, and security concerns. These issues are particularly pronounced among students, a demographic increasingly interested in digital currencies but often lacking foundational financial knowledge. The research aims to fill …

Green Credit, Climate Risk, And Credit Risk In The Indonesian Banking Industry, Titi Dewi Warninda, Shelby Devianty Widodo

The Indonesian Capital Market Review

As the largest archipelagic country, Indonesia's industries and regions are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. This research examines the effects of green credit policy and climate risk, specifically sea level rise and precipitation, on bank credit risk. Using data from 2019 to 2023 and system GMM, the research results show that the higher the sea level rise and precipitation, the higher the credit risk. The findings of this research also indicate that a higher proportion of green credit lowers bank credit risk, and bank inefficiency strengthens the impact of green credit on credit risk. The results of …

[Abstract For] Bond Pricing Mechanics Beyond Yield-To-Maturity Based Calculations, Maura Alexander, Tom Arnold, Xiu (Summer) Liu

Finance Faculty Publications

Three methods for pricing bonds are presented: using a constant yield to maturity, using the yield curve with discount factors, and using implied forward rates from the yield curve with backward induction.  By moving beyond the first method, more dynamic duration and convexity analyses emerge.  Further, logical connections and extensions are made in regard to pricing bonds with embedded options, the calculation of a swap rate, and the “bond bootstrapping” process for building a yield curve.

Forthcoming in the Journal of Wealth Management

Do The Oscars Move Markets? Best Picture Recognition And Public Equity Responses, Avi Dayani

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines when culturally salient events become financially material by testing whether Academy Awards recognition is reflected in public equity markets. The central question is whether Best Picture nomination announcements and wins generate abnormal returns or abnormal trading activity for the publicly traded parent firms linked to nominated films, and whether those responses depend on the firm’s exposure to filmed entertainment. I study Best Picture nominees from 2000 through 2024, map each film to the public parent of its primary distributor, and construct a firm-by-Oscar-year sample of 119 observations. Using an event-study framework, I calculate abnormal returns as firm …

Gubernatorial Re-Election Incentives, Local Investment Bias, And Pension Fund Performance, Hongxian Zhang, Liang Guo, Jun Hao, Yu Liu

Business and Information Technology Faculty Research & Creative Works

We investigate the impact of gubernatorial re-election incentive and political factors on US public pension funds from 1990 to 2022. Our empirical analysis finds no significant overall relationship between gubernatorial re-election incentives and local bias in the full sample. However, the effect of gubernatorial re-election incentives on local bias is influenced by a state's level of corruption. Specifically, in states within the lowest corruption quantile, governors eligible for re-election tend to prioritize local investments to gain consistent support. In contrast, in states within the highest corruption quantile, heightened scrutiny may encourage re-election-eligible governors to adopt conservative investment policies that do …

Lease Capitalization And Financial Flexibility: An Empirical Investigation Of Asc 842’S Impact On Liquidity In The Us Telecommunications Industry, Caleb J. Martin

Doctor of Business Administration Dissertations

Measures of liquidity are some of the most important financial ratios to analyze when measuring a firm’s overall financial health and its ability to pay both creditors and dividends. The US telecommunications industry is an industry that has become synonymous with dividends, mergers, and acquisitions, all of which are possible due to industry wide and firm specific liquidity. With the implementation of ASC 842 and the new standard of placing operational leases on the balance sheet, additional research may be warranted to determine the effect ASC 842 may have on firm liquidity. This study investigated whether there was evidence to …

Essays In Consumer Credit Markets, Sarah Najafzadeh Khoei

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

This dissertation studies how technology, market structure, and contract design shape outcomes in consumer credit markets, with a particular focus on auto lending and leasing. In the first chapter, I investigate the performance of automated underwriting systems relative to human underwriters in the auto loan market. While prior studies document the advantages of automated underwriting, I show that its performance deteriorates under conditions of heightened data uncertainty. Exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic as an exogenous shock and using a combination of difference-in-differences and regression discontinuity designs, I find that automated underwriting performs significantly worse than human underwriting during this period, particularly …

Audit Fee Spillovers Following Sec Scrutiny: Evidence From Auditor Portfolio Effects, Rakhshaan R. Adamjee

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines whether audit firms reprice clients that are not under Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) review when a greater share of the auditor’s other clients face SEC scrutiny. Results indicate economically meaningful pricing spillovers. In the full sample, a ten-percentage-point increase in auditor-level exposure is associated with approximately 2% higher fees for non-scrutinized clients. The effect is stronger for Big Four networks: the Big Four slope is about 3.6% per ten points, and a Big Four only replication yields roughly 8.9%. Among Big Four, measuring exposure at the signing-office level also produces a positive but smaller association (~0.4% …

Artificial Intelligence–Enabled Revenue Cycle Management And Financial Performance In Healthcare Organizations, K’Reesa Webster

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The purpose of this review was to examine how artificial intelligence–enabled revenue cycle management (AI-enabled RCM) systems have been associated with financial performance outcomes in healthcare organizations. A literature review following a systematic process consistent with PRISMA 2020 guidelines was conducted to identify quantitative studies published between 2015 and 2026. Eligible studies were required to report at least one financial outcome related to claim denial rate, days in accounts receivable, or operating margin. Twenty-seven studies met all inclusion criteria. Findings across these studies indicated that AI-enabled RCM systems have been associated with lower denial rates, shorter accounts receivable timelines, and …

2026 Crummer Truist Portfolio, Alexis Matton, Carlos Meyer, Amelia Kondal, Numair Aziz, Madison Kalhor, Taylor Payne, Hannah Gilbert, Chris Brennan, Ian Dean, Tully Njoroge, Dylan Reilly

Crummer Truist Portfolios

We would like to thank you for your service to the Crummer Truist Portfolio. Without your participation, Crummer students would not benefit from the unique insight you bring to managing an active portfolio. We have been fortunate to listen and learn from some outstanding guest speakers who have been generous with their time and expertise: Dr. J. Clay Singleton, Emeritus Professor, Crummer Graduate School of Business; Amy Martin, Executive Director (Corporate Credit Strategy) at Wells Fargo; Davis Moshier, Investment Banking Associate at Lucid Capital Markets; Jay Kineon, Analyst at PFM Financial Advisors; Marc Miller, Partner, DePrince, Race, and Zollo; Matej …

Does A More Functionally Diverse Top Management Team Make The Financial Statements More Comparable?, Md Mahmudul Hasan, Audrey Wen-Hsin Hsu, Sayan Sarkar, Tsung-Hsuan Joey Yang

Accounting Faculty Publications

We examine whether top management team (TMT) functional diversity affects financial statement comparability. Drawing upon upper echelons theory and the information sharing perspective in diversity research, we argue that TMT functional diversity produces more comparable financial statements due to better information sharing and integration. Using a sample of US firms, we find that financial statement comparability is positively associated with TMT functional diversity. We also find that the positive relationship between TMT functional diversity and comparability is more pronounced in firms with a poor information environment. Our findings remain robust after addressing endogeneity concerns. This study contributes to the existing …

From Static Λ To Moving Penalties: Dynamic Regularization In Mean-Variance Portfolio Choice, Ariel Santiago

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis evaluates whether dynamically tuned weight penalties can improve high-dimensional mean-variance portfolio choice. Classical Markowitz portfolios perform poorly when the number of assets is large relative to the data, because small estimation errors in means and covariances can generate extreme, fragile allocations. A common remedy is to regularize the weights using L1 (lasso), L2 (ridge), or elastic-net penalties, but these are typically chosen once and held fixed. Using monthly excess returns on the 48 Fama-French industry portfolios from January 2010 to June 2025, this thesis compares penalized mean-variance and minimum-variance strategies under long-only and long-short constraints, with and without …

Two Essays On Out-Of-Town Home Buyers, Kamrul H. Talukdar

Graduate Studies Theses and Dissertations 2026

This dissertation analyzes the price premia paid by Out-of-Town (or non-local) home buyers. The first essay investigates the role of social connectedness in the price premia paid by non-local buyers in the residential housing market. Using over 74,000 residential transactions from Orange and Seminole counties, Florida between 2016 and 2019 and exploiting the Social Connectedness Index (SCI) constructed based on Facebook friendship links, I show that non-local buyers who come from regions which are more socially connected to the purchase location pay about 1.8% to 2.1% lower premia compared to those coming from less connected regions. This effect is attributed …

Fiscal Illusion And Property Tax Porportionality, Cathy Lynn Johnson

Dissertations of Practice

Tax Increment Financing (TIF) has become a widely utilized economic development tool, allowing municipalities to capture future increases in property tax revenue within designated redevelopment areas.

The study’s purpose was to examine how TIF districts in Illinois affect the proportional distribution of property tax burdens and the allocation of property tax revenues to public school districts. Guided by Resource Allocation Theory, Public Choice Theory, and Fiscal Illusion, the study investigated how the exclusion of incremental EAV alters tax rate calculations and redistributes tax responsibility among taxpayers both within and outside of TIF boundaries. A quantitative analytical framework was developed and …

100 Conversation Starters To Develop Student Critical Thinking In Intermediate And Financial Accounting Courses, Joe B. Hoyle

Bookshelf

INTRODUCTION

Why create a book containing nothing but accounting problems?

The genesis of an idea is often difficult to recall, but I can trace the creation of this project to a single sentence found in a specific book.  One recent summer, to help prepare myself for the upcoming academic year, I began reading Why Don’t Students Like School? by Daniel T. Willingham.  On page 16 of the dog-eared copy I acquired on the Internet, I was drawn to a key sentence like a moth to a flame.  The words were buried rather unobtrusively within a long paragraph but, for me, …

Reassessing Argentina’S 2018 Crisis: Fiscal Imbalances, External Constraints, And Imf Policy, Michael Garcia

Honors Theses

This thesis will evaluate the causes of Argentina’s 2018 financial crisis, examining how it should be evaluated through the lens of fiscal imbalance or by external constraints. The dominant interpretation is shown in the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) 2018 Standby Agreement. It attributed the crisis to excessive fiscal deficits, inflation, and weak monetary discipline. This perspective is supported by the Polak model. The model itself connects domestic credit expansion to balance of payment imbalances. It views external crises resulting from internal policy excess.

This paper offers an alternative interpretation of a post-Keynesian that emphasizes external vulnerability, foreign currency debt, and …

Essays On Stock Market Expectations And Financial Decisions, Shanxiang Yang

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation consists of three essays on stock market expectations and financial decisions. The first essay shows significant racial differences in expectations regarding future stock market performance. Using data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Survey of Consumer Expectations from 2013 to 2022, we find that, relative to White Americans, Black and Hispanic Americans have lower probabilistic expectations that the stock market will increase. This racial gap in expectations was even larger during the recession caused by the Covid-19 epidemic, suggesting that economic uncertainty exacerbates this heterogeneity in expectations. Furthermore, we show that relative to White Americans, the …

Stock Market Reactions To Interest Rate Changes: Evidence From Emerging Markets, Binali Selman Eren

The Indonesian Capital Market Review

This study investigates the impact of interest rate decisions made by national central banks, including the Federal Reserve (Fed), and the European Central Bank (ECB), on the stock markets of emerging economies. It analyzed stock market reactions to interest rate hikes and cuts through the use of an event study approach. The findings provided evidence of heterogeneous effects of interest rate decisions by national central banks, the Fed, and the ECB on stock markets in emerging economies. Specifically, the results indicated that, in most emerging economies, stock markets reacted negatively to interest rate hikes and positively to cuts by national …

Identifying Risk-Free Asset Proxies In Companies Listed On The Indonesia Stock Exchange From 2017 To 2023 Using The Zero-Beta Capital Asset Pricing Model, Fajri Alan Ghazali Mr., Lenny Suardi Mrs.

The Indonesian Capital Market Review

This study evaluates Bank Indonesia Certificates (SBI), IndONIA, and gold as zero-beta proxies for Indonesian equities. Using daily returns for 213 firms listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (2017–2023) and the Jakarta Composite Index as the market return, we estimate firm-level zero-beta CAPMs and compute Wald statistics test to identify the appropriate risk- free asset proxy for each individual company; and firm-level outcomes are then aggregated under a Bernoulli/Binomial criterion with a 95% threshold. Empirical results show that gold satisfies the zero-beta condition for 207 of 213 firms (97.18%), whereas SBI and IndONIA satisfy it for five (2.35%) and six …

Escaping The Crash? The Protective Power Of Liquidity In The Pakistan Stock Market, Sana Saleem, Muhammad Usman, Amna Rafique

The Indonesian Capital Market Review

This study investigates the effect of stock liquidity on the risk of stock price crashes, taking sample of non-financial firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange, from 2009 to 2024. A two-step system GMM estimation is applied to test the hypotheses. The results reveal that greater stock liquidity significantly reduces crash risk, whereas illiquidity amplifies it. Two underlying channels explain this relationship; first, liquidity strengthens block holders’ capacity to intervene, discouraging managerial tendencies to withhold adverse information, second, liquidity enhances price informativeness, limiting managerial discretion to manipulate prices through delayed disclosure of bad news. The findings imply that liquid stocks …

Linear And Asymmetric Interactions Of Bank And Stock Market Development In The Face Of Global Economic Uncertainty: A Focus On The Nigerian Economy, Augustine C. Arize, Ebere Ume Kalu, John Malindretos, Srinvias Nippani

Faculty Publications

This study explores the functional interaction between bank development and stock market development in the face of uncertainty variables. The geography of the study is one of the largest economies in Africa—Nigeria—regarding the following variables: credit to the private sector (CPS), broad money (M2) stock market capitalization (MCAP), and industrial production (IP), which are all scaled by the gross domestic product (GDP) and used in natural log form. Additionally, we included the natural logarithm of a measure of monetary policy uncertainty, which represents the uncertainty variable. In terms of methodology, the study uses monthly time series data from 1990:M1-2022M4 (384 …