Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Stock Returns, Oil Prices, And Leverage: Evidence From U.S. Firms, Md Ruhul Amin, André Varella Mollick

Economics and Finance Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper examines how the relationship between stock returns of U.S. firms and WTI oil prices is affected by leverage (debt to total assets) from 1990 to 2020. Results from our fixed-effect regression models suggest that leverage effects on stock returns are pervasive both in aggregate and cross-industry levels, while the mining industry is more sensitive. In addition to the positive oil price effects attenuated by leverage at the aggregate level, we observe stronger marginal effects of leverage only for the mining sector. Being more exposed to commodity prices, the positive effects of oil prices on stock returns in the …

The Us Supervisory Capital Assessment Program (Scap) And Capital Assistance Program (Cap), Aidan Lawson

Journal of Financial Crises

Due to continued stress during the Global Financial Crisis, the US Treasury released a series of additional measures in February 2009 that included a mandatory stress test for major U.S. bank holding companies (BHCs), backed by government capital. The stress test, known as the Supervisory Capital Assessment Program (SCAP), tested the capital adequacy of the 19 U.S. BHCs that had more than $100 billion in assets. A large interagency team of regulators and other experts estimated losses and income under two hypothetical scenarios for the group of BHCs: a baseline that reflected the consensus belief about the course of the …

Us Reconstruction Finance Corporation: Preferred Stock Purchase Program, Aidan Lawson

Journal of Financial Crises

By March 1933, the early collateralized lending programs of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) had failed to prevent the recurrence of bank runs and panic in US financial markets. These conditions forced newly elected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to call for a nationwide bank holiday from March 6 to March 9. On the final day of the holiday, a special session of Congress passed the Emergency Banking Act (EBA), which gave the RFC the power to make investments via preferred equity of distressed institutions. Under the EBA, the RFC could subscribe to and make loans on cumulative non-assessable preferred stock …

Three Essays On Labor And Marriage Markets: Farm Crisis And Rural-To-Urban Migration In The United States, 1920-1940, Jennifer Withrow

Doctoral Dissertations

Race and gender create differential responses to, and outcomes of, economic crisis. In this dissertation, I study the intersection of race and gender in the context of steep declines in farm commodity prices during the U.S. farm crisis of the 1920s and 1930s. Against this backdrop, women altered their marriage timing, increased their labor force participation, and migrated off-farm. Previous quantitative studies of this period typically omitted women due to challenges linking women from one historical census to the next after marriage. I create new datasets following women over both decades and draw on archival sources to explore the impact …

Skbi Big 5 Survey 2021 August, Singapore Management University

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

The latest survey results convey an upshift in growth projections of the five largest economies in aggregate accompanied by higher inflation, especially this year and to a lesser extent next year. The aggregate “Big5” median real GDP growth projections for 2021 and 2022 were raised to 6.7% (up in US, CN and EA but down in IN and JP) and 4.9% (all except US), respectively. The overall “Big5” median CPI inflation forecasts were nudged up to 2.6% (higher in US, IN and EA but lower in CN) and 2.4% (in US, IN and EA some), respectively, for this year and …

Squawking About Persistently Higher Inflation?, Thomas Lam

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

All signs point to an uncertain path for inflation in the future. While inflation is set to stay prospectively higher in the US in the near-term, it's unlikely to remain so.

The Determinants And Consequences Of Foreign Direct Investment, Alexandra Dinu Troidl

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the regional economic effects of foreign direct investment (FDI). FDI is known to have benefits for both national and regional economies. These benefits include an increasing number of higher paying jobs, productivity spillovers for local firms, and elevated economic development (SelectUSA, 2020). Many governments compete to attract large FDI projects, often through the use of controversial incentive packages. Incentives are criticized because it is not clear that they affect the location of FDI and furthermore, whether the benefit of incentives outweigh the costs (Bartik, 2018).

In the first paper, I assess the impact of incentives on the …

The Poverty In Usa: An In-Depth Analysis Of The Last Two Decades, Sara Negri

Economics Theses & Dissertations

Poverty is a global problem that affects not only the undeveloped states but also the most developed ones. This research paper will analyze this problem in depth, trying to summarize several definitions, several causes that can lead to an increase in the poverty rate, and policies implemented by the government in order to reduce the total number of poor people. The author analyzed the poverty rate in each state of the United States from 1990 to 2019 using a panel data analysis. She found out that California is the state with the highest value of poor people in the U.S. …

Effects Of Actual And Perceived Air Pollution On U.S. Twitter Sentiment, George R. Garcia Iii

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Objective

This study examines the associations between actual and perceived air pollution (PM_2.5, AQI, and ground visibility), weather information, and expressed sentiment via US Twitter. Heterogeneity in the associations across date and county characteristics are also explored.

Methods

A sentiment index was constructed using 27,827,828 geotagged U.S. tweets posted between May 31 and November 30, 2015. Associations between AQI category changes and the sentiment index were estimated using multi-cutoff regression discontinuity models. Associations between same-day and lagged PM_2.5, ground visibility, and the sentiment index were estimated using weighted linear regression models. Models include weather variables and …

Tanner Colby, Some Of My Best Friends Are Black (2012), James W. Gentry

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

No abstract provided.

Skbi Big 5 Survey 2021 February, Singapore Management University

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

The latest survey results suggest that the five largest economies collectively is projected to snapback to almost 6% in 2021, a modest upgrade from the August median, following an unprecedented preliminary contraction of roughly 4% last year (in real GDP terms). The 2022 median growth forecast of slightly above 4.5%, while slower, is still respectable, outstripping its pre-COVID 10-year average pace by more than half a percentage point. The aggregate upgrade in 2021, however, obscures the lopsided nature and highly uneven contour of the ongoing recovery. The bulk of the upward revision to growth was mainly due to IN (to …

Chasing Gold: Analyzing Opium Cultivation In Afghanistan And Its Alternatives, Jack Cameron

Senior Projects Spring 2021

This paper reviews the history of counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan from 1950 to the present. Each chapter will specifically examine a program or strategy used to suppress the cultivation of opium. It will then derive both the successes and failures of each moment in history. Using these lessons, the essay will lastly examine saffron as an alternative to opium. Though saffron has a high start-up cost and sizeable time investment, as the essay argues, these costs are actually worth it. Moreover, that these costs are most likely to be fulled in areas cultivating opium as poverty is at its lowest …

Backfire: How The Rise Of Neoliberalism Facilitated The Rise Of The Far Right, Jacob Fuller

Capstone Showcase

The U.S. far right has become increasingly mainstream in contemporary American politics. In this paper, I analyze the theory that the far right has gained ground due to a backlash from neoliberal policies beginning in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan. Using Process tracing, I operationalize claims made by those arguing that the white working class has moved towards the far right due to their loss of status, as well as the theory that specific wealthy actors have mobilized these groups and altered the movement against neoliberalism to suit their interests. I find that these arguments have merit, and further the …