Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Big Bank, Small Country: Switzerland, The Financial Crisis And The European Union, Justin Thomas Schubert

Inquiry Journal 2011

No abstract provided.

Stock Exchanges In The Middle East: Risky Business Or Smart Investing?, Jed A. Haddad

Honors Projects in Finance

The goal of any investor is to obtain the highest possible return for his or her money. However for years, the debate has continued; stocks, bonds, mutual funds; which of these financial instruments will produce the greatest gain to give the investor the highest profit? Historically, stocks have been known to provide investors with high returns. With the world becoming increasingly globalized, international markets have proven to offer investors more options to help diversify their portfolios. The Middle East has been known as a region of recent economic growth and stability. Three prominent examples of such are Kuwait, Israel, and …

Getting The Sharks To Bite In Your Ocean: A Look At Regional Differences In Funding Components In China And The United States, Jennifer Ashley Schwall

Honors Projects in Finance

This study explores the relationship between a venture capital firm’s geographic region and the investment traits that it values. This study’s results will help determine whether venture capital firms, by geographic region, emphasize certain investment traits over others when funding new companies.

The study examines three regions (the East Coast of the United States, the West Coast of the United States and China, specifically Beijing and Shanghai). By surveying available firms in each region, I collected data on which funding components, or investment traits, the sampled respondents valued. To increase the usefulness of my findings, I held constant the stage …

Exploring The Feasibility Of Converting The Mardi Gras Hotel And Casino Into A Casino Boutique Hotel, Patrick Brennan

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Introduction:

The topic of my Professional Paper will be the feasibility study of renovating the Mardi Gras Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Currently the Mardi Gras is operating as a Best Western and is looking to expand into the boutique hotel market. With the maturation of the Las Vegas hotel market, it is vital to think forward in new methods of design and marketing to attract the next generation of convention attendees and visiting tourist.

Purpose:

The purpose of this study is to determine the feasibility of converting the Mardi Gras hotel and casino into a destination casino …

Identify Key Business Strategies To Target The Mass Market In Macau, Chia-Li Chen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Statement of Purpose:

The purpose of this paper is to examine Macau’s present gaming environment and identify factors that will contribute to the success of a mass gaming market in Macau. The study intends to provide economic justification and tourism policy considerations which support the growth of Macau’s mass gaming market by taking advantage of the booming Chinese economy and the fast growing popularity of gaming in China. In addition, this study will examine literature supporting Macau’s transformation from a simpler gamblers’ destination into a Las Vegas style international gaming, entertainment, and tourism destination, as well as arguments for sustaining …

Sustainability’S Correlation To Profit, Cheryl Annissa Drummond

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Sustainability and its correlation to profits in hospitality institutions is the subject of this paper. The lack of knowledge about sustainability and the benefits of sustainable practices are discussed. The evaluation of a GreenSeal (2010) Bronze certification G46-Restaurant audit is also examined. Research includes the review of industry experts’ findings on the subject and the social costs and benefits are evaluated based on the goal of economic, ecological, and social sustainability.

Controlling Labor Costs In Restaurant Management: A Review Of The Internal-Marketing Concept As A Method For Enhancing Operating Efficiency, Scott Yandrasevich

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Restaurants experience many challenges, including economic uncertainty, competition, demographic shifts in target markets, changes in employee work habits, and such financial considerations as maintaining adequate cash flow. Controlling costs in the restaurant business is essential to the success or failure of the establishment. In the hospitality industry, labor costs are very high; in fact, they amount to approximately 45% of operating costs. The goal of this review is to promote further research into identifying the specific criteria that govern the relationship between the use of labor resources and the goal of operating efficiency, mainly with a focus on internal marketing …

Redefining Capitalism: The Changing Role Of The Federal Reserve Throughout The Financial Crisis (2006–2010), Chris Celi

Inquiry Journal 2011

No abstract provided.

Shared Appreciation Mortgages—Sams Or Scams In The Foreclosure Crisis, Phoebe A. Hathorn

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Equity Incentives And Earnings Management: Evidence From The Banking Industry, Qiang Cheng, Terry Warfield, Minlei Ye

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine the relationship between equity incentives and earnings management in the banking industry. By focusing on this regulated industry and using industry-specific earnings management proxies, we provide evidence on the impact of regulation on earnings management arising from chief executive officers' equity incentives. We find that bank managers with high equity incentives are more likely to manage earnings, but only when capital ratios are closer to the minimums required by regulators. This finding indicates that, in the banking industry, potential regulatory intervention induces, rather than mitigates, earnings management arising from equity incentives.

The Corporate Choice Between Public Debt, Bank Loans, Traditional Private Debt Placements, And 144a Debt Issues, Matteo P. Arena

Finance Faculty Research and Publications

The main purpose of this study is to examine the determinants of the corporate choice between different forms of debt financing. By analyzing the most comprehensive sample of U.S. corporate debt issues to date, I find that firms that issue 144A debt have significantly lower credit quality and higher information asymmetry than firms that issue traditional non-bank private debt. Further, the study shows that traditional private placements, rather than bank loans, are the favorite private debt source for firms with good credit quality. I also show that the firm characteristics of traditional private debt issuers have significantly changed after 1990 …

The Liquidity Risk Of Liquid Hedge Funds, Melvyn Teo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper evaluates hedge funds that grant favorable redemption terms to investors. Within this group of purportedly liquid funds, high net inflow funds subsequently outperform low net inflow funds by 4.79% per year after adjusting for risk. The return impact of fund flows is stronger when funds embrace liquidity risk, when market liquidity is low, and when funding liquidity, as measured by the Treasury-Eurodollar spread, aggregate hedge fund flows, and prime broker stock returns, is tight. In keeping with an agency explanation, funds with strong incentives to raise capital, low manager option deltas, and no manager capital co-invested are more …

Refund Anticipation Loan, Ann House

All Current Publications

This fact sheet defines a refund anticipation loan and gives the benefits to considering other options.

Confidence Weighted Mean Reversion Strategy For On-Line Portfolio Selection, Bin Li, Steven C. H. Hoi, Peilin Zhao, Vivek Gopalkrishnan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

On-line portfolio selection has been attracting increasing attention from the data mining and machine learning communities. All existing on-line portfolio selection strategies focus on the first order information of a portfolio vector, though the second order information may also be beneficial to a strategy. Moreover, empirical evidences show that the stock price relatives may follow the mean reversion property, which has not been fully exploited by existing strategies. This article proposes a novel on-line portfolio selection strategy named ``Confidence Weighted Mean Reversion'' (CWMR). Inspired by the mean reversion principle in finance and confidence weighted online learning technique in machine learning, …

Ua3/9 201 Advanced Practice Doctorates & Budget Reductions, Wku President's Office, Gary Ransdell

WKU Administration Documents

Memo entitled 1) 2011 General Assembly / Action on Advanced Practice Doctorates / Doctor of Physical Therapy at WKU; and 2) Budget Reductions for 2011-2012 issued by President Gary Ransdell to faculty and staff. Gives detailed budget reductions by department.

Virtualness Of The Cost Estimating Community, Whiticar S. Darvill

Theses and Dissertations

Many researchers have sought to identify the sources for cost and schedule growth, most researchers failed to analyze the resource utilization of the cost community. This research explores how the cost community allocates its time. Furthermore, by examining how resources are spent, this research will juxtapose the desires of recent Congressional and Department of Defense policies against the current demands of the cost community. A thorough understanding of resource allocation requires research into the inherent virtualness of the community. Early virtualness predicated the notion of extremes, either virtual or not. However, recent literature expands virtualness into gradients and explains that …

Alternative Active Duty Military Retirement Plan, Amy L. Schmidt

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Using Earned Value Data To Detect Potential Problems In Acquisition Contracts, C. Grant Keaton

Theses and Dissertations

Government contractors report earned value (EV) information to government agencies in monthly Contract Performance Reports (CPR). Though major differences may exist in the data between subsequent CPRs, we know of no government effort to detect these occurrences. The identification of major changes may locate and isolate problems and thus prevent million and billion dollar cost and schedule overruns. In this study, we develop an approach to identify changes in the Cost Performance Index (CPI) and the Schedule Performance Index (SPI) that may indicate problems with contract performance. We find the detection algorithm indentifies changes in the CPI and the SPI …

Impact Of The Economic Downturn On Local Governments In South Carolina, William Tomes

Georgia Journal of Public Policy

Across the country local government revenues have decreased while operating costs such as fuel, materials, equipment, and health insurance costs have significantly increased. In addition to reduced revenues, interest earnings for city and county government investments are low. These factors combined have created a difficult financial arena in which local governments must operate. While economists are reporting signs of economic recovery, many city and county budgets are just now feeling the full brunt of the economic downturn that began in 2008. On a daily basis, news media nationwide report local governments addressing budget deficits by cutting services, eliminating positions, or …

Profitabliltiy Analysis Of A Hard Apple Cider Company, Erik R. Johnson

Agribusiness

The purpose of this paper was to determine whether a hard cider company could be profitable in San Luis Obispo, CA in a 3 year period. A business plan was created to analyze the potential profitability of the company and included an analysis of the market, competition, consumers, the industry, and finances.

Background information was provided on the history of the hard apple cider industry, the use and importance of a business plan and the permit and license requirements to run an alcohol business.

The CEO and founder of the future company, Erik Johnson, determined the company would be named …

Hedge Funds, Managerial Skill, And Macroeconomic Variables, Doron Avramov, Robert Kosowski, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo

Research Collection BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre

Duplicate, see https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/1867/. This paper evaluates hedge fund performance through portfolio strategies that incorporate predictability based on macroeconomic variables. Incorporating predictability substantially improves out-of-sample performance for the entire universe of hedge funds as well as for various investment styles. While we also allow for predictability in fund risk loadings and benchmark returns, the major source of investment profitability is predictability in managerial skills. In particular, long-only strategies that incorporate predictability in managerial skills outperform their Fung and Hsieh (2004) benchmarks by over 17 percent per year. The economic value of predictability obtains for different rebalancing horizons and alternative benchmark …

Evaluation Of A Walnut Orchard And A Cost Study Of The Redevlopment Of A Walnut Orchard, Jacob F. Samuel

Agribusiness

A comprehensive study of the redevelopment of a walnut orchard taking into consideration all the factors from planting to harvest. Also a comparison of two orchards where orchard A is well producing and orchard B is poor producing. The study examines the value of the two orchards, where their profitabliltiy is, and whether or not the poor producing orchard should be redeveloped.

(Wp 2011-01) It Takes Two: The Incidence And Effectiveness Of Co-Ceos, Matteo P. Arena, Stephen P. Ferris, Emre Unlu

Department of Finance Working Papers

This study examines the phenomenon of co-CEOs within publicly traded firms. Although shared executive leadership is not widespread, it occurs within some very prominent firms. We find that co-CEOs generally complement each other in terms of educational background or executive responsibilities. Our results show that firms most likely to appoint co-CEOs have lower leverage, a more limited firm focus, less independent board structure, fewer advising directors, lower institutional ownership and greater levels of merger activity. The governance structure of co-CEO firms suggest that co-CEOships can serve as an alternative governance mechanism, with co-CEO mutual monitoring substituting for board or external …

Trend Of The Future, Not Flavour Of The Month: The Changing Private Equity Industry In Emerging Markets, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

With memories of the recent global financial crisis still fresh in many people's minds, investors are shying away from anything that may sound too risky or complex. TPG Capital, on the other hand, is taking this opportunity to place their bets on the emerging markets. To secure its investments, Ashish Shastry, managing director and Southeast Asia head of this prominent private equity firm, recommended to the audiences at SMU's BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre, a road less travelled – engagement and consulting. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Common Economic Space For The West African Monetary Zone (Wamz): Imperatives For Financial Systems Development, A. O. Adenuga, K. K. Ogunjuiba, M. E. Obiechina

Bullion

The international financial turmoil of the 21 century has provoked much reflection and analysis within the international community on ways to strengthen the international financial architecture. It left behind important lessons, while exposing the limitations of individual country policy frameworks for preventing a systemic crisis. However, the issue of whether a common economic space is feasible within the West African Monetary Zone is still doubtful, given current efforts towards monetary union in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper adopts an empirical review approach, identifying benefits and key constraints to a common economic space in the WAMZ vis-à-vis macroeconomic development in the WAMZ, …

Cash Flow Management For Sda Organizations, Annetta M. Gibson

Faculty Publications

A presentation on managing cash flow in SDA organizations. Given to the East Central Africa Division on March, 2011.

Consolidating Information In Option Transactions, Richard Holowczak, Jianfeng Hu, Liuren Wu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Underlying each stock trades hundreds of options at different strike prices and maturities. The order flows from these option transactions reveal important information about the underlying stock price. How to aggregate the trade information of different option contracts underlying the same stock presents an interesting and important question for developing microstructure theories and price discovery mechanisms in the derivatives markets. This paper takes options on QQQQ, the Nasdaq 100 tracking stock, as an example and examines different order flow consolidation mechanisms in terms of their effectiveness in extracting information about the underlying stock price and volatility movements. The analysis leads …

Executive Compensation: The Role Of Shari’A Compliance, William Martin, Karen Ahmed

College of Business Faculty and Staff Works

Abstract Purpose The purpose of this paper is to illuminate issues surrounding executive compensation as it relates to current understandings of Islamic business law. Methodology We review the emerging bodies of literature in the fields of executive compensation and opinions of stock options under Shari’a law. Findings It appears that the trend in offering employee stock options as part of a Shari’a compliant compensation package is acceptable in most cases, yet because of its close association with the more problematic idea of derivative transactions, the company must be vigilant in obtaining the approval from its Shari’a Standards Board before offering …

Resume, Karen Ahmed

College of Business Faculty and Staff Works

No abstract provided.

Hedge Funds, Managerial Skill, And Macroeconomic Variables, Doron Avramov, Robert Kosowski, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper evaluates hedge fund performance through portfolio strategies that incorporate predictability based on macroeconomic variables. Incorporating predictability substantially improves out-of-sample performance for the entire universe of hedge funds as well as for various investment styles. While we also allow for predictability in fund risk loadings and benchmark returns, the major source of investment profitability is predictability in managerial skills. In particular, long-only strategies that incorporate predictability in managerial skills outperform their Fung and Hsieh (2004) benchmarks by over 17% per year. The economic value of predictability obtains for different rebalancing horizons and alternative benchmark models. It is also robust …