Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Powerful Blockholders And Ceo Turnover, Chi Shen Wei, Lei Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We identify the power of institutional blockholders to influence management using previous occurrences of forced CEO turnover at other firms in the blockholders’ overall portfolio. We create a “powerful blockholder linkage” measure that strongly predicts future forced CEO turnover. These effects are larger when “powerful” blockholders are more motivated to monitor and when they have had valuable monitoring experience. Moreover, firms with powerful blockholders display higher CEO turnover-performance sensitivity, pursue more value-increasing mergers, and have higher firm value. Overall, our results suggest that an identifiable group of powerful blockholders play an important role in corporate governance.

Fair Deposits Against Double-Spending For Bitcoin Transactions, Xingjie Yu, Shiwen M. Thang, Yingjiu Li, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In Bitcoin network, the distributed storage of multiple copies of the blockchain opens up possibilities for double spending, i.e., a payer issues two separate transactions to two different payees transferring the same coins. To detect the doublespending and penalize the malicious payer, decentralized non-equivocation contracts have been proposed. The basic idea of these contracts is that the payer locks some coins in a deposit when he initiates a transaction with the payee. If the payer double spends, a cryptographic primitive called accountable assertions can be used to reveal his Bitcoin credentials for the deposit. Thus, the malicious payer could be …

Burning Budgets: Does An Institutional Blank-Check Raise The Severity And Cost Of Fighting Wildland Fires?, Devin T. Stein

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In conducting this research, I wanted to explore whether political incentives have a significant effect on wildfire management in the United States. I attempt to answer this question by proving a theoretical justification for why wildfires may become more expensive to fight and severe to manage because of political institutions. I then attempt to provide some hard evidence to support this theory by using regression analysis. My analysis suggests that political factors do matter for wildfire suppression funding, although I was unable to find strong enough evidence to suggest that these political factors are actually driving more severe wildfires.

This …

Does Financial Education Enhance Financial Preparedness? Evidence From A Natural Experiment In Singapore, Rashmi Barua, Seng Kee Benedict Koh, Olivia S. Mitchell

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We evaluate how financial education provided to college students influenced their financial knowledge and planning in a quasi-experimental setting where we control for student motivation to enroll in the course. Using a difference-in-difference strategy, we show that financial education led to an increase in financial knowledge and planning. Specifically, we find that financial education improved students’ financial knowledge score by 11%, and financial planning score by 16%. No statistically significant effects are detected for student levels of financial prudence, discipline, or outcomes related to credit card usage.

Public Hedge Funds, Lin Sun, Song Wee Melvyn Teo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Hedge funds managed by listed firms significantly underperform funds managed by unlisted firms. The underperformance is more severe for funds with low manager deltas, poor governance, and no manager co-investment, or managed by firms whose prices are sensitive to earnings news. Notwithstanding the underperformance, listed asset management firms raise more capital, by growing existing funds and launching new funds post listing, and harvest greater fee revenues than do comparable unlisted firms. The results are consistent with the view that, for asset management firms, going public weakens the alignment between ownership, control, and investment capital, thereby engendering conflicts of interest.

Public Hedge Funds, Lin Sun, Song Wee Melvyn Teo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Hedge funds managed by listed firms significantly underperform funds managed by unlisted firms. The underperformance is more severe for funds with low manager deltas, poor governance, and no manager co-investment, or managed by firms whose prices are sensitive to earnings news. Notwithstanding the underperformance, listed asset management firms raise more capital, by growing existing funds and launching new funds post listing, and harvest greater fee revenues than do comparable unlisted firms. The results are consistent with the view that, for asset management firms, going public weakens the alignment between ownership, control, and investment capital, thereby engendering conflicts of interest.

Temporal Aggregation And Risk-Return Relation, Xing Jin, Leping Wang, Jun Yu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The function form of a linear intertemporal relation between risk and return is suggested by Merton's (1973) analytical work for instantaneous returns, whereas empirical studies have examined the nature of this relation using temporally aggregated data, i.e., daily, monthly, quarterly, or even yearly returns. Our paper carefully examines the temporal aggregation effect on the validity of the linear specification of the risk-return relation at discrete horizons, and on its implications on the reliablility of the resulting inference about the risk-return relation based on different observation intervals. Surprisingly, we show that, based on the standard Heston's (1993) dynamics, the linear relation …

Analyst Effort Allocation And Firms' Information Environment, Rong Wang, Jarrad Harford, Feng Jiang, Fei Xie

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We show that a firm’s information environment is significantly impacted by the characteristics of the other firms its analysts cover. Analysts strategically allocate effort among portfolio firms by devoting more effort to firms that are relatively more important for their career concerns. Specifically, controlling for analyst and firm characteristics, we find that within each analyst’s portfolio, firms ranked relatively higher based on market capitalization, trading volume, or institutional ownership receive more accurate, frequent, and informative earnings forecast revisions and stock recommendation changes that contain greater information content from that analyst. Firms’ relative rank across analysts varies widely, so this is …

Hedge Fund Performance And Derivative Hedging, Yongjia Li

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is comprised of three essays which focus on hedge fund performance and derivative hedging. The first essay uses ETF returns as proxies for tradable risk factors in hedge fund performance evaluation and identifies contemporaneously relevant risk factors from the entire universe of ETFs. The model provides more informative estimates of alpha and beta coefficients for predicting hedge fund out-of-sample performance compared with other widely used hedge fund factor models. Portfolios of top alpha hedge funds selected by the model generate statistically significant out-of-sample performance that is substantially higher compared with portfolios selected by other models. In addition, the …

Financial Success From The Start: Personal Finance For New Pastors, Annetta M. Gibson

Faculty Publications

Presentation for the Mid-America Union Conference Pastor's Convention, July 31, 2017

Distributive Justice And Donative Intent, Alexander Boni-Saenz

All Faculty Scholarship

The inheritance system is beset by formalism. Probate courts reject wills on technicalities and refuse to correct obvious drafting mistakes by testators. These doctrines lead to donative errors, or outcomes that are not in line with the decedent’s donative intent. While scholars and reformers have critiqued the intent-defeating effects of formalism in the past, none have examined the resulting distribution of donative errors and connected it to broader social and economic inequalities. Drawing on egalitarian theories of distributive justice, this Article develops a novel critique of formalism in the inheritance law context. The central normative claim is that formalistic wills …

An Introduction To Financial Analysis, Annetta M. Gibson

Faculty Publications

Presentation for the WAD Quinquennial Division-wide Council, July 5, 2017

Managing And Analyzing Cash Flow, Annetta M. Gibson

Faculty Publications

Presentation for the WAD Quinquennial Division - Wide Council, July 4, 2017

Two Essays On Forced Ceo Turnover During Envy Merger Waves, And Dividends, Bader Almuhtadi

Finance Theses & Dissertations

Scholars have provided different theories that aim to explain merger waves throughout the years. However, a recent stream of the finance literature addresses the behavioral aspect behind mergers waves and imply that envy motivated CEOs tend to create merger waves. On the other hand, the decision to oust a CEO is considered one of the most important corporate decisions made in the lifetime of corporations. In Essay 1, we participate into the study stream by focusing on whether the incident of forced CEO turnover is higher during the late stages of merger waves where envy turns out to be more …

International Trade And Unemployment: Evidence From Selected Asean+3 Countries, Atif Awad, Ishak Yussof

DLSU Business & Economics Review

The present study seeks to examine empirically whether exposure to international trade creates or destroys jobs for a sample of eight ASEAN+3 countries (APT). The findings of the PMG technique shows that trade liberalization policies have a negative influence on unemployment rate in the long run. Since medium and unskilled workers are the majority of the workforce, a reduction in trade barriers is likely to expand the trading sector. For the APT countries to compete globally, the trading sector is likely to shift to a more efficient production mode by using intensive capital and high skilled labor, leaving unskilled workers …

Transformational Leadership, Job Satisfaction, And Intention To Quit: A Sequential Mediation Model Of Meaning In Work And Work Engagement, Mohammed Yasin Ghadi

DLSU Business & Economics Review

This study aims to determine the indirect impact of transformational leadership on two job related outcomes: general job satisfaction and intention to quit, by integrating sequential mediating mechanisms of employees’ perceptions toward the job (i.e., the experience of meaningful work) and employees’ perceptions toward own self (i.e., employee engagement) as underlying mechanisms to understand transformational leadership impact in the Australian context. The proposed model was tested using a heterogeneous sample of employees working in various Australian sectors. The study sample consisted of 530 full-time employees working in Australia. This was done by applying structural equation modelling and MEDTHREE technique. The …

Do Unions Affect Innovation?, Daniel Bradley, Incheol Kim, Xuan Tian

Finance Faculty Publications

We examine the effect of unionization on firm innovation, using a regression discontinuity design that relies on “locally” exogenous variation generated by elections that pass or fail by a small margin of votes. Passing a union election results in an 8.7% (12.5%) decline in patent quantity (quality) three years after the election. A reduction in R&D expenditures, reduced productivity of inventors, and departures of innovative inventors appear to be plausible underlying mechanisms through which unionization impedes firm innovation. In response to unionization, firms move their innovation activities away from states where union elections win. Our paper provides new insights into …

Factor Based Statistical Arbitrage In The U.S. Equity Market With A Model Breakdown Detection Process, Seoungbyung Park

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Many researchers have studied different strategies of statistical arbitrage to provide a steady stream of returns that are unrelated to the market condition. Among different strategies, factor-based mean reverting strategies have been popular and covered by many. This thesis aims to add value by evaluating the generalized pairs trading strategy and suggest enhancements to improve out-of-sample performance. The enhanced strategy generated the daily Sharpe ratio of 6.07% in the out-of-sample period from January 2013 through October 2016 with the correlation of -.03 versus S&P 500. During the same period, S&P 500 generated the Sharpe ratio of 6.03%. This thesis is …

How To Enable Future Faster Payments? An Evaluation Of A Hybrid Payments Settlement Mechanism, Zhiling Guo, Yuanzhi Huang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In the era of Fintech innovation and e-commerce, faster settlement of massive retail transactions is crucial for business growth and financial system stability. However, speeding up payments settlement can create periodic liquidity shortfalls to banks which would incur high cost of funds in the settlement process. We propose a new hybrid settlement mechanism design that integrates features of real-time gross settlement, deferred net settlement, and central queue management structure. The hybrid mechanism is managed by an intermediary and is particularly suitable to settle large volume of small-value retail payments. We evaluate the mechanism using computer experiments and simulation. We find …

Does Director Interlock Impact The Diffusion Of Accounting Method Choice?, Jie Han, Nan Hu, Ling Liu, Gaoliang Tian

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper examines the influence of director interlock on firms' discrete accounting method choices from the perspective of behavior diffusion. We argue that firm managers will imitate their interlocked-partner firm's accounting method choices when choosing their own accounting methods. We find that when there is an interlock relationship between two firms, their accounting method choices, including inventory and depreciation methods, are similar to each other, indicating that accounting method choices can diffuse across firms through director interlock. In addition, such similarity is greater the longer the interlock relationship between the two firms is and as uncertainty increases. Further, the interlock …

Gender Gap In Entrepreneurship: Evidence From Argentina, Sebastian Auguste, Alejandro Bricker

DLSU Business & Economics Review

We investigate which factors affect the gender gap in entrepreneurship using evidence from CBMS Argentina and the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition for nonlinear models. The dataset allows us to construct a series of personality variables (risk aversion, social aversion, outgoing attitude, flexibility desire, and effort aversion) which are usually missing in standard household surveys. In addition, we can measure current entrepreneurial activity as well as failure from the past. We find that there is no evidence of discrimination in the event of starting up, since the small gap between women and men can be fully explained once the new personality variables are …

The Impact Of Remittances On The Youth’S Human Resource Development, Employment, And Entrepreneurship: Evidence From Philippine Cbms Data, Christopher James R. Cabuay

DLSU Business & Economics Review

International migration has been a significant avenue for many Filipinos to make use of interspatial differences in purchasing power, to send home remittances, and to maximize household income. However, migration has had a stigma of being disruptive to children’s educational outcomes, and remittances have been noted to cause dependence among working age members. This study estimates the impact of remittances on the human resource development, employment, and entrepreneurial outcomes and choices of the Philippine youth, individuals aged fifteen to thirty, using CBMS data census of selected De La Salle school communities. I employ an instrumental variable multinomial logistic regression to …

Evaluating Government Programs For Enhancing The Welfare Of The Youth Towards Entrepreneurship, Mitzie Irene P. Conchada, Marites M. Tiongco, Paulynne J. Castillo, Divina E. Edralin

DLSU Business & Economics Review

No abstract provided.

Role Of Education In Encouraging Youth Employment And Entrepreneurship, Brian C. Gozun, John Paolo R. Rivera

DLSU Business & Economics Review

More than half of the Philippines’ jobless sector is comprised of the youth. This warrants the need to identify the constructs and create policy frameworks that would facilitate employability and entrepreneurship among the Filipino youth. Using the Community Based Monitor System (CBMS) survey on Accelerated Poverty Profiling among member schools of De La Salle Philippines, we estimate a multinomial logistic regression that highlights how demographic characteristics and level of education influence a youth’s likelihood to be employed or to be entrepreneurial. Our results provide a framework for policymakers in improving program design and policy implementation targeted towards youth employment and …

Determining The Credit Risk Factors In Accessing Debt Financing For Entrepreneurial Activities, Junette A. Perez, Denmark C. Alarcon, Mar Andriel S. Umali

DLSU Business & Economics Review

Access to debt financing can be explained by the capability to pay of the borrower. The idea is that the better the capability to pay of a borrower, the wider his option to access debt financing and secure bank capital. As a derivative function of the individual and business characteristics of the borrower, the credit risk factors among others include housing type, education, share of income, total sales and total expenses, business and unemployment and economic skills. Using the Community Based Monitoring(CBMS) data, a three stage methodology has been implemented. Regression results show that having business capital is positively affected …

Togolese Informal Sector Workers’ Willingness To Pay For Access To Social Protection, Esso-Hanam Atake, Akoété Ega Agbodji

DLSU Business & Economics Review

In Togo, the informal sector accounts for 84% of the workforce with an annual growth rate of 5%. Despite the importance of the informal sector workers in the Togolese productive activity, they do not benefit from social protection. To address this situation, Act No. 2011-006 was adopted by the Togolese National Assembly in 2011 to provide social security to informal sector workers. However, this was not applied, which means they are still not covered by social protection. This paper seeks to estimate the willingness-to-pay (WTP) of informal workers to have access to social protection services offered by National Social Security …

Making Social Health Insurance And Micro-Savings Programs Work For The Informal Sector In The Philippines, Mitzie P. Conchada, Marites M. Tiongco

DLSU Business & Economics Review

In the Angelo King Institute annual report of Monitoring the Philippine Economy, the Philippines maintained its growth momentum in 2014, besting other Asian economies. Given this backdrop, it is interesting to find out whether various sectors have benefited from this growth, particularly the informal sector which includes bulk of the poor who are self-employed and are mostly engaged in the services sector. The intention of this study is aimed to determine the effect of social protection, particularly social health insurance program (known as PhilHealth Insurance) and the micro-savings scheme (known as AlkanSSSya) on informal sector especially those who are poor …

The Economics Of Brand And Marketing Activities, Mehir Baidya, Bipasha Maity, Kamal Ghose

DLSU Business & Economics Review

Understanding the contributions of brand and marketing activities to sales is vital to make smart decisions. This study attempts to investigate this issue empirically. Data were gathered from two brands in frequently purchase packaged goods category. Two double-log regression models were fitted to data. We find that brand and marketing activities contribute to sales significantly. Managers may find our findings useful to allocate fund between short-term and long-term marketing actions. As far as our knowledge is concerned, this constitutes the first empirical work of economics of branding for regional brands in India.

Market Sensing Capability And Product Innovation Advantages In Emerging Markets: The Case Of Market Entry Quality And Marketing Performance Of Batik Industry In Indonesia, Gita Sugiyarti, Elia Ardyan

DLSU Business & Economics Review

The purpose of this study is to test the effect of market sensing capabilities and product innovation advantage on market entry quality and marketing performance in emerging markets. The samples of this research are 122 respondents. The analysis used in this study is structural equation modeling (SEM). To process the data, AMOS version 21 is employed. The results show that (1) the product innovation advantage can improve market entry quality and market performance, (2) the quality of market entry has significant and positive effect on marketing performance, and (3) the capability to market sense positively and significantly affect the quality …

Trans-Pacific Partnership And Political Motivations: Interpretive Work Based On Analyses Of The Chinese State Media, Tai Wei Lim

DLSU Business & Economics Review

This writing is about studying political motivations for and against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) through interpretive work based on analyses of Chinese state media articles. My criteria for article selection centers on the use of Google index search for such articles drawn from three newspapers: China Daily, People’s Daily, and Global Times. From receiving the call for paper by this journal on 6 January 2016 to the submission deadline for the call for paper on 15 April 2016, a period of about three months, I downloaded articles from these three dailies for analysis. The motivation for the selection of these …