Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Historical Perspectives In Volatility Forecasting Methods With Machine Learning, Zhiang Qiu, Clemens Kownatzki, Fabien Scalzo, Eun Sang Cha

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

Volatility forecasting in the financial market plays a pivotal role across a spectrum of disciplines, such as risk management, option pricing, and market making. However, volatility forecasting is challenging because volatility can only be estimated, and different factors influence volatility, ranging from macroeconomic indicators to investor sentiments. While recent works suggest advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence for volatility forecasting, a comprehensive benchmark of current statistical and learning-based methods for such purposes is lacking. Thus, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive survey of the historical evolution of volatility forecasting with a comparative benchmark of key landmark models. We …

The Reluctant Feminist: Angela Merkel’S Cautious Leadership, Ls Gaiek, Marlyn Garcia

The Scholarship Without Borders Journal

Abstract: What does it mean to be a modern feminist global leader today? Global leadership research is growing, but less research focuses on female leaders, even though the 21st century thus far contains a significant rise of female leaders. Angela Merkel’s infamously historic reticence and aversion, concerning speaking about feminism, irrevocably dissolves in an interview in January of 2019. This interview offers a glimpse into Angela Merkel’s cageyness, and provides an intimate insight into her circumspect perspective concerning feminism. This article aims to explore barriers and challenges to Angela Merkel’s rise as a global leader, how crisis forged and …

The Misguided Journey To Queflation, Jannie Rossouw, Darrol J. Stanley

Graziadio Working Paper Series

No abstract provided.

The American Space Industry: A History Of Innovation And An Analysis Of Future Policy, Miles J. Pollard

Pepperdine Policy Review

This paper articulates the evolution of US space policy by collating the history of space program developments alongside the international treaties responsible for safe space exploration. As the US shifts from NASA-led ventures to private ventures, the treaties developed both during and after the space race are coming under scrutiny. Private US companies such as Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and Space X are investing in the future realms of space tourism, settlements, and mining that will hopefully provide untold profits for all of mankind. However, there exists the danger of a Kessler Syndrome event blocking access to Earth’s orbits if …

The Economic Crisis Index Quarterly Newsletter, Darrol J. Stanley, Donald M. Atwater

Graziadio Working Paper Series

This is the first issue of a quarterly newsletter publication that will update the Economic Crisis Index ™. This issue explains in detail the methodology of the Economic Crisis Index (ECI) and its comparison to other similar indices. Future newsletters will center on the ECI number and its implication to the American economy. These newsletters will be posted on the Pepperdine University Digital Commons.

Unmasking The Tipping Point For The Next U.S. Financial Crisis, Darrol J. Stanley, Donald M. Atwater

Graziadio Working Paper Series

The risks of the next U.S. Financial Crisis are increasing. Many Americans are fearful of the very negative financial impact of the next crisis especially since it could occur so soon after the negative impact of the Covid Pandemic on the economy. Financial safety nets are weak. The scope of the crisis includes decreasing values of assets, a recession caused by government policies, decreases in the value of existing bonds, and significant social stress fueled by political polarization after the 2022 midterm elections. We believe the solution to the fear begins with knowledge and a logical approach to assess key …

Youth Entrepreneurship Dynamics In Benin: Was Access To Finance The Missing Piece For Opportunistic Self-Employment?, Modeste Melain Senou, Kolotioloman Soro

The Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance

Young people in developing countries and more especially in Sub-Saharan African countries are seeking employment opportunities in challenging economic and social environments. Entrepreneurship appears then as a key factor in reducing unemployment, grasping for a sustainable job and reducing poverty. Both national and international authorities are taking steps to facilitate youth entrepreneurship. In that context, this study aims at reexamining the effect of access to finance on the dynamics of entrepreneurship of young people in transition from School to work in Benin. Using a SURE Probit procedure on data from the International Labor Organization (ILO) we estimated jointly the predicted …

Infrastructure Investment And European Economic Growth, John Ziolo

Global Tides

As the global economy continues to recover from the impacts of Covid-19, there is significant discussion among policymakers as to the best mechanisms to stimulate recovery. One of those mechanisms is infrastructure investment. There is a large contingent of policymakers who believe that large, immediate spending on infrastructure will lead to significant economic growth. While another group is concerned about the secondary effects of such large government spending packages. With global economies still digging out of the covid shock and supply chains struggling to keep up with demand, there is no better time to explore the topic. This paper then …

The Fuel For Neo-Nazism, Brandon M. Rubsamen

Global Tides

This paper attempts to explain the cause of support for far-right extremism movements in Europe. It takes a comparative approach in explaining that support by first analyzing Germany and Luxembourg. In each country, politics, history, economics, and society are explored in order to elicit a root cause. Once that main factor is found, Norway and Greece are also analyzed to see if the hypothesis holds. Political stability is hypothesized to be the root cause in far-right support in Germany (and lack thereof in Luxembourg), and the examples of Norway and Greece support this hypothesis. By comparing and contrasting aspects of …

The Covid-19 Pandemic And The Importance Of Financing The Biotechnology Industry In South Africa, Ramazan Uctu, Karen Eksteen

The Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance

Whether it is a government research institution, a public-private partnership, or a private enterprise, the South African biotechnology industry requires funding for the biotechnology industry. Our goal with this research is to look into the role of venture capital (VC) in financing biotech enterprises and demonstrate how VC finance could aid in the development of diagnostic kits and vaccines for Covid-19 or future pandemics in South Africa.

The study aims to provide policymakers with a clear image of the importance of funding the biotechnology sector, notably during the Covid-19 period, as recognized by the industry's key players. We employed a …

Purpose Built Communities: A Concentrated Urban Poverty Intervention, Shannon R. Bergman

Theses and Dissertations

This collective case study research evaluated how the concentrated urban poverty revitalization model administered by Purpose Built Communities (PBC) works to mitigate or eliminate intergenerational poverty and create thriving neighborhoods. There are 5 elements to the PBC revitalization model: (a) mixed-income housing, (b) a cradle-to-college educational accountability system, (c) focus on community health, (d) a tightly defined geographic neighborhood, and (e) the assignment of a Community Quarterback (CQ). This research demonstrated iterative improvements in the socioeconomic well-being of adults and children from the inception of the revitalized community. This was evaluated by adult employment rates, childhood educational achievement, and health …

Terrorism And Counter-Terrorism In Latin America: A Comparative Study Of Peru And Colombia, Reagan Shane

Global Tides

This paper investigates the counter-terrorism strategies employed against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Colombia and the Shining Path (SL) in Peru and analyzes the effectiveness of those strategies. It begins by exploring the foundation of each organization and its respective goals, organization and tactics. Using this information, it then explores the counter-terrorism strategies employed by the government of each country in which the organizations were operating to determine the effectiveness of those strategies and how the structure of the terrorist organization might change that effectiveness. The paper concludes that military strategies have only been somewhat effective in …

Can The Circular Economy Concretize Sustainability? A Construal Level Approach To Encourage Sustainable Consumption., Jolie Gutentag

Theses and Dissertations

Despite a growing awareness and understanding of the impact our lifestyles have on the environment, most people have not adequately changed their consumption patterns. One possibility for the disconnect is the perceived abstractness of sustainability. Drawing on construal level theory, this research proposes that framing environmental sustainability as circularity, using the principles of the circular economy, reduces the perceived abstractness of sustainability. Four studies investigate the effects of circular framing on sustainable consumption behavior, including the moderating role of consumers’ chronic level of construal, an innate mindset reflecting a tendency to view information more concretely or abstractly. Findings provide initial …

A Contemporary Study On The Impact Of Regulations On Business Performance, Brian C. Mulligan

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines Nobel Prize Laureate Hayek's ominous warning that economic liberty in the U.S. is at risk, due to regulations, of becoming an unplanned administrative state. The research seeks to understand the effects of regulations on business performance and how to right-size them for a healthy business environment. These objectives are accomplished with two papers: (1) a macro cross-discipline literature review and call for research on the impact of regulations on business performance, and (2) a qualitative grounded theory study from interviews from elite business executives on their perspectives on the impact of regulations on business performance. The findings …

Smoke Or Vapor: Regulation Of Tobacco And Vaping, James Prieger

School of Public Policy Working Papers

E-cigarettes and vaping raise new questions about the risks to health from their use and how they should be regulated and taxed compared to tobacco. The latter has a long history of taxation and a more recent history of regulation in the United States. E-cigarettes, on the other hand, have only recent begun to be regulated, but by treating them as “tobacco products” the federal regulator includes them by default in the regulatory apparatus design for tobacco control and is sending the tacit message that they are just as harmful as smoking. That is not likely to be the case. …

The Nuances Of Capital Controls In Economic Development: Argentina And Chile, Reagan A. Shane

Global Tides

In this paper, I analyze the ways that capital controls affect growth and economic development in developing countries and emerging market economies and use the historical evidence of Chile and Argentina to demonstrate how countries may experience the effects of capital controls in different proportions. I then review additional academic literature and historical evidence in Chile and Argentina to determine what factors seem to determine the success or failure of capital control strategies. I find two influential factors in the determination of whether implementation of capital controls helps or hurts economic growth and development. The first is whether capital controls …

Synergies And Competition: Export Survival In Africa And Latin America, Luisa Blanco, Jesse Mora, Michael Olabisi, James E. Prieger

All Faculty Open Access Publications

Using firm-level export data from six African (Burkina Faso and Senegal) and Latin American (Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay) countries, we examine factors that determine the survival of export flows. We explore the effects on export survival of changes in the number of home-country exporters serving the same destination, firm-level export diversification, and country-level factors. Unlike previous studies, we find that export survival rates decrease with the number of co-exporters selling the same product to the same country. We also find that the relationship between firm-level product diversification and export flow survival is hump-shaped: firms that do not diversify or …

The Fairness Of Fair Trade: An Analysis Of The Economics Of Fair Trade, Duke C. Schillaci, Julia R. Norgaard

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

In 2015, a study done by Cone Communications found that millennials are "universally more engaged in corporate social responsibility." In fact, 87% of millennials are willing to purchase a product with social or environmental benefits. Enter, the fair trade label. The fair trade label, which is attached to products which meet the previously mentioned consumer demands, has emerged over the last three decades. Products like organic produce, textiles, and natural commodities have entered into global retailers and supermarkets through these non-traditional distribution channels, supported by increased consumption as well as changing consumer preferences. In order to uncover the underlying economic …

Option Strangles: An Analysis Of Selling Equity Insurance, Clemens Kownatzki, Hisam Sabouni

Graziadio Working Paper Series

Our results suggest, selling SPY strangles are generally profitable across a variety of widths. However, the payoff profile of a short option strangle exposes the contract seller to a potential for unlimited losses. Our evidence on maximum drawdowns indicates that losses on some positions can be the equivalent of the profits gained on approximately forty prior positions. This payoff profile has given rise to the metaphor of selling option contracts as the equivalent of “picking up nickels in front of a steam roller.” The goal of our paper is to analyze the full return characteristics of option strangles and to …

Empty Discarded Pack Data And The Prevalence Of Illicit Trade In Cigarettes In California, James Prieger

School of Public Policy Working Papers

Illicit trade in tobacco products (ITTP) creates many harms including reduced tax revenues; damages to the economic interests of legitimate actors; funding for organized-crime and terrorist groups; negative effects of participation in illicit markets, such as violence and incarceration; and reduced effectiveness of smoking-reduction policies, leading to increased damage to health. To study the prevalence of tax avoidance and ITTP, we analyze a large, novel set of data from empty discarded pack (EDP) studies. In EDP studies, teams of researchers collect all cigarette packs discarded in publicly accessible spaces of selected neighborhoods. Packs are examined for the absence of local …

Small Business Lending And Social Capital: Are Rural Relationships Different?, Robert Deyoung, Dennis Glennon, Peter J. Nigro, Kenneth Spong

The Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance

We test whether rural versus urban location, and the amount of social capital present in those locations, influence the performance of Small Business Administration (SBA) 7(a) loans originated between 1984 and 2012. On average, we find that rural loans are about 11% less likely to default than urban loans, and that a standard deviation increase in social capital reduces default by about 5%. Surprisingly, these two effects are largely independent of each other, even though social capital is substantially higher in rural places than in urban places. Our findings advance the small business lending literature and offer insights for a …

On The Efficacy Of Sanctions: Why Regimes And Motives Matter, Colette Faulkner

Global Tides

This paper seeks to explain not only the reasons and motivations behind why countries choose to use sanctions as a tool of foreign policy but also interrogates the efficacy of sanctions. Sanctions are a mechanism that countries generally use against another country in order to get a response. Sanctions can be used as either tools of economic coercion or as symbols of disapproval. With regards to the efficacy of sanctions extracting political concessions, sanctions are generally succeeding with more democratic regimes and fail with more autocratic regimes. As a symbolic tool sanctions often succeed at increasing the reputation of the …

Understanding The Racial/Ethnic Gap In Bank Account Ownership Among Older Adults, Luisa Blanco, Marco Angrisani, Emma Aguila, Mei Leng

School of Public Policy Working Papers

The observed racial/ethnic gap in bank account ownership among older adults is substantial. We investigate socio-economic, cognitive and cultural barriers underling it. As additional potential barriers are accounted for, the residual gaps in financial inclusion with respect to Whites is reduced by 19 percent for Blacks and 46 percent for Hispanics. We find that citizenship and “taste for privacy” play a limited role for both minority groups, while real asset ownership, health, cognitive ability and cultural hurdles contribute substantially to the gap. For Hispanics, language barriers explain most of the gap, while neighborhood-level socioeconomic characteristics are more salient for Blacks. …

Left-Wing And Right-Wing Terrorism In The United States, Alex Rant, Paul Jones, Nathanael Robinson

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

This paper assesses whether there is causality between Left-Wing and Right-Wing Terrorist attacks in the United States. A Vector Auto-Regressive (VAR) Model is estimated for the two variables. A Granger Causality test and Impulse Response Functions are examined to understand the relationship between the two variables. Both terrorist attacks appear to Granger Cause each other, but an analysis of the Impulse Response Functions reveals that Right-Wing Terrorism yields a stronger response from Left-Wing groups than Left-Wing terrorism does from Right-Wing groups. Nonetheless, there are strong elements of causality and response between the two groups.

Duratable Enterprises Inc., Spencer D. Evans, Hal B. Heaton

The Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance

In late 2017, DuraTable received a number of unsolicited inquiries regarding its interest in selling out in a going private transaction, mostly from private equity firms. Since the chairman of the board and founder, Gary Reynolds, was approaching retirement age and the largest single shareholder who had provided the seed capital to start the company was over 80 years old, Mr. Reynolds was willing to consider a sale and provided information to four or five of them to prepare bids. DuraTable was a closely held company with relatively few individuals holding the vast majority of shares. As such, DuraTable’s shares …

Cigarette Taxes And Illicit Trade In Europe Online Appendix, James Prieger, Jonathan D. Kulick

School of Public Policy Working Papers

Cigarettes are highly taxed in Europe to discourage tobacco use and to fund public-health measures to mitigate the harms from tobacco consumption. At higher prices some consumers substitute more toward illicit cigarettes. We find that raising prices in any one country would lead to substantial increases in the expected illicit market share and volume in that country. This appendix contains more complete information about the data and additional regressions to which the article published in Economic Inquiry (and also available in earlier form as School of Public Policy Working Paper 60) refers.

Mobile Banking As A Mechanism To Increase Access To Financial Services, Luisa Blanco, C. Andrew Bosque, Xizhu Wang

School of Public Policy Working Papers

We study the determinants of mobile banking adoption, with a special interest on how mobile banking can increase access to financial services among racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. In our analysis, we use survey data from two different sources: 1) Survey of Consumers' Use of Mobile Financial Services (SCUMFS) We conduct a regression analysis and Oaxaca Decomposition to determine the explanatory factors of racial and ethnic gaps in bank account ownership. We find that minorities are less likely to use mobile banking than Whites in the NSUUH, but more likely to adopt mobile banking according to SCUMFS, …

The Importance Of Transportation, Broadband, And Intellectual Infrastructure For Entrepreneurship, James E. Prieger, Heng Lu, Habi Zhang

School of Public Policy Working Papers

This empirical study uses a unique panel dataset to investigate the link between regional entrepreneurship and infrastructure. This topic is vital for understanding the factors that facilitate entrepreneurship, yet it receives scant scholarly attention. It is of particular value to policy makers because entrepreneurship is crucial for economic growth. We therefore examine how broadband infrastructure (internet connectivity), intellectual infrastructure (human capital), and transportation infrastructure (roads, bridges, and intermodal facilities) affect the establishment of new businesses in the United States. We primarily focus on broadband infrastructure, which is the least explored of these factors in the literature. We find that all …

Mobile Data Roaming And Incentives For Investment In Rural Broadband Infrastructure, James Prieger

School of Public Policy Working Papers

Mobile broadband Internet access is highly important to the American economy and millions of users. There were almost 200 million mobile broadband connections by the end of 2013 in the United States, far more than the number of fixed broadband connections (FCC, 2014a, Table 1). The economic activity created by the provision and usage of mobile broadband is sizeable, and has been documented at the national level (Gruber and Koutroumpis, 2011; Thompson and Garbacz, 2011; Katz, 2012) and specifically for rural areas (Whitacre, Gallardo, and Strover, 2014). The benefits of mobile broadband—and indeed the entire broadband ecosystem—depend on investment in …

Value Added As The Tax Base For Enterprise Income, Nicos Zafiris

The Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance

The paper addresses the long standing asymmetry in the tax treatment of debt and equity costs through a direct comparison of two hypothetical regimes based exclusively on income taxation, broadly defined, and value added taxation. The model presented widens existing debate to encompass the choice between entrepreneurial and contractual use of inputs generally and including labour, as well as capital. Using representative functional forms and numerical illustrations the analysis explores the effect of the tax regimes on firm decisions concerning input selection, output level and vertical integration. The greater neutrality of value added taxation is shown to produce gains in …