Economics Commons^™

Do Socially Conscious Etfs Match Their Active Counterparts?, Ryan Cultice

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Over the past decade, Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) has grown at a rapid pace and, by some estimates, now represents a quarter of the $48 trillion in assets under professional management in the United States. At the same time, investors have broadly shifted from active to passive investing strategies. While there is significant research in each of these respective areas, we believe that we are the first to examine whether a socially conscious investor can employ a passive approach or if the constrained nature of SRI necessitates active management. As such, we examine the performance of socially conscious ETFs versus …

Regulations, Governance, And Resolution Of Non-Performing Loan: Evidence From An Emerging Economy, Abu S. Amin, Mahmood Osman Iman, Mahfuja Malik

WCBT Faculty Publications

How do banks resolve a severe bad loan problem in a capital-constrained, low-income economy when a government bailout is not an option? We address this question by examining new evidence from a sharp decline in bad loan ratios in a panel of conventional commercial banks in Bangladesh. On the aggregate level, the bad loan ratio in this market has dropped from 41% in 1999 to only 10% in 2012. We find that at a micro level, this dramatic improvement is associated with bank management quality and internal governance that were substantially enhanced during a decade of large-scale regulatory reforms. The …

Innovation, Ceos, And Ipos, Zhilu Lin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In Part 1, I study if CEOs with innovative ability impose a cost upon their firms. I find that while there is a positive effect of a CEO’s innovative ability on firm innovation, the benefit is only when CEO’s innovative ability is useful for the firm. Further, firms with innovator CEOs spend more on R&D projects but with lower efficiency and hold more cash but with lower cash value compared to firms with non-innovator CEOs. These results suggest that innovator CEOs create an overinvestment problem. In Part 2, I study the effects of talent cycling on IPO long-run performance and …

Less Is More: Beating The Market With Recurrent Reinforcement Learning, Louis Kurt Bernhard Steinmeister

Masters Theses

"Multiple recurrent reinforcement learners were implemented to make trading decisions based on real and freely available macro-economic data. The learning algorithm and different reinforcement functions (the Differential Sharpe Ratio, Differential Downside Deviation Ratio and Returns) were revised and the performances were compared while transaction costs were taken into account. (This is important for practical implementations even though many publications ignore this consideration.) It was assumed that the traders make long-short decisions in the S&P500 with complementary 3-month treasury bill investments. Leveraged positions in the S&P500 were disallowed. Notably, the Differential Sharpe Ratio and the Differential Downside Deviation Ratio are risk …

What Drives Merger Waves? A Study Of The Seven Historical Merger Waves In The U.S., Katherine Ching

Scripps Senior Theses

Historically, merger and acquisition (or M&A) activity has occurred in cyclical patterns, forming what are known as “merger waves.” To date, there have been a total of seven waves. Though it is widely acknowledged that merger waves exist, there is no consensus on what drives these waves. Through both qualitative and quantitative analysis, this paper aims to determine the causes of merger waves and looks at those causes through two different lenses: the neoclassical view, which states that economic shocks cause merger waves, and the behavioral view, which states that increases in merger activity are due to managerial behavior and …

Pitfalls In The Use Of Foreign Direct Investment Statistics, Clare O'Mahony, Frank Barry

Articles

Foreign direct investment (FDI) statistics are widely used to study the impact of international capital movements and multinational enterprise (MNE) activities. FDI-intensity is also an important indicator of globalisation and economic integration. Datasets spanning long time periods and with broad country coverage have been employed in numerous studies to analyse various aspects of the determinants and consequences of FDI. Focusing on a relatively homogeneous group of six Western European EU countries, the present study finds major inconsistencies in the construction and coverage of these data both through time and across countries, leading to large discrepancies. Asymmetries will be far greater …

The Effects Of Market Fragmentation Around Corporate Events, Justin Steven Cox

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In Part 1, I investigate the effects of market fragmentation in the liquidity formation of initial public offerings (IPOs). Recent exchange officials cite increases in market fragmentation as a hindrance to the liquidity formation in IPO trading. We find that IPOs are less fragmented at the start of IPO trading relative to later periods in the IPO secondary market. We also discover that more underpriced issues experience greater fragmentation, both lit and dark, at the start of IPO trading. Our study also examines the level of undisplayed liquidity in IPOs, finding more hidden trading at the start of IPO trading …

Policy, Aggregate Productivity And Misallocation, Guowen Chen

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

This dissertation explores the effects of factors such as industrial policy and listing on the stock market on manufacturing firms’ profitability and productivity.

The second chapter investigates the effect of industrial policies on misallocation using a rich data-set of Chinese firms. Using a difference-in-difference approach, I provide evidence that government policies (i.e. the 10^th Five Year Plan) favoring particular industries lead to increased misallocation (i.e., an increase in the dispersion of revenue productivity across firms in four-digit industries). Moreover, the differential changes between industries supported and not supported by the 10^th Five Year Plan are quantitatively large and …

Strategies For Providing Loans To Small Businesses, Linda Faye Evans

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Between 2007 and 2013, the number of loans banks provided to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) declined. The purpose of this single case study was to explore the strategies that senior bank lending officers used to improve lending to SMEs. The sample size consisted of 4 senior small business lending officers who have in lending for 5 or more year in Houston, Texas. The conceptual framework used was agency theory. Data were collected using semistructured interviews with 4 senior bank lending officers from a bank in the Houston, Texas area, a review of documents from lending officers, and other artifacts …

Sources Of Financial Education And Use Of Alternative Financial Services, Stefan Ignatovski

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

As the lending practices of the alternative financial services (AFS) industry harm many consumers and consumers' access and use of traditional credit are restricted, the use of AFS is a growing concern. The financial education of consumers determines their financial behavior, which may be inadequate to make effective financial decisions regarding high-cost borrowings. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine if and to what extent the sources of financial education is related to the use and frequency of use of AFSs among U.S. consumers. The theory of planned behavior and the transtheoretical model of change shaped the theoretical …

Circadian Variations And Risky Decision Making, Sana Sra

Scripps Senior Theses

Over the past decades, decision making under risk has garnered a great amount of attention both in the field of economics and psychology. Although state-dependent variabilities of risk taking are well-documented, little is known about the effects of a person’s preferred time of day, or chronotype, in risky decision making. Under circumstances of circadian mismatch (e.g., when an “early bird” makes decisions in the evening), research suggests that decision making may reflect a greater reliance on heuristics, such as using stereotypes in social judgments. However, the effects of circadian mismatch on heuristics in risky decision making are relatively unexplored. This …

M&A Performance: Market’S Initial Reaction As An Unbiased Indicator Of Post-Acquisition Performance, Nikolaos Papageorgiou

CMC Senior Theses

This paper investigates the reliability of the stock market’s initial reaction to M&A announcements as a predictor of actual post-acquisition performance. The two prevailing methods for evaluating M&A performance are event studies (stock market-based measures) and accounting-based measures. The present study combines these two performance evaluation approaches in a single empirical examination. Both the post-merger buy-and-hold abnormal returns and changes in ROA are used as actual post-acquisition performance variables. The acquirer’s cumulative abnormal return (CAR) around the announcement is used as the market predictor variable. An econometric model is employed to test the predictive power of the announcement-period CAR on …

What Do We Know About The Recent Performance Of Indian Banks?, Laira Aggarwal

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines the performance of Indian banks by studying the effects of recent reforms and macroeconomic events. Indian banks went through a period of reforms in the past twenty years. The impact of these reforms and major macroeconomic events has been examined using time-series analysis. Event studies offer additional perspective on the short-run effect of the events on different types of Indian banks. Although, the event dates are not all statistically significant in the time-series regressions, the demonetization of 2016 is significant in the event study analysis. Thus, while reforms and events have immediate impact on the performance of …

Testing The Determinants Of Stock Exchange Index Comovement In Thailand Stock Exchange, Nuntapat Asavaroengchai

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

A study into the effects of different macroeconomic variables on the comovement between the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) Index and the Standard & Poor's 500 (S&P 500). These effects are tested using OLS regression in an annual and quarterly frequency. Real Interest Rate Difference between the two countries is found to have a significant negative effect, likely due to investors turning to Thailand when it has higher real interest rate. Income Level is found to be a significant positive effect, as countries with higher income are more integrated with the US. As the economy naturally grows, it is likely …

Multi-Step Forecast Of The Implied Volatility Surface Using Deep Learning, Nikita Medvedev

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Implied volatility is an essential input to price an option. Machine learning architectures have shown strengths in learning option pricing formulas and estimating implied volatility cross-sectionally. However, implied volatility time series forecasting is typically done using the univariate time series and often for short intervals. When a univariate implied volatility series is forecasted, important implied volatility properties such as volatility skew and the term structure are lost. More importantly, short term forecasts can’t take advantage of the long term persistence in the volatility series. The thesis attempts to bridge the gap between machine learning-based implied volatility modeling and multivariate multi-step …

An Examination Of The Stock Market's Effect On Economic Inequality, Nicholas Golina

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The economic literature on economic inequality has shown that it can negatively impact aggregate demand because it indicates a higher concentration of wealth in the hands of the top 10% as opposed to the poor and middle class, who are more likely to consume. The literature has identified many factors that can lead to increasing inequality. The stock market could be one of those factors since it can either create an upward redistributive effect towards the top 10% or redistributive effect towards the middle class. This paper tested the effect of the stock market on inequality. This study contributes to …

The Effects Of Natural Resource Dependence And Democracy On The Incremental Budgeting Theory And Punctuated Equilibrium Within A Budgetary Context, Barrak Ghanim Algharabali

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

I contribute to the literature by providing additional factors that could affect the incremental budgeting theory and punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) within a budgetary context. Because of the fluctuation in the price of natural resources, I argue that dependence on natural resources could lead to less stable budgets than ones not dependent on natural resources. I also argue that democracy is another source that leads to stability in the budget, relative to countries that are not democratic. I theorize that countries with no democracy and heavy dependence on natural resources will have budgets with more volatility than the rest of …

Expectations And Reality In Meeting Financial Needs Of Thai Elderly : A Gender Perspective, Phantira Soontornsittipong

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Using the 2007 Survey of Knowledge and Attitudes on Elderly Issues surveying respondents aged 50 to 59 and the 2017 Survey of Older Persons in Thailand surveying respondents aged 60 to 69, this study identified a cohort to examine the gap between reality and expectations of Thai elderly males and females with regards to financial sources in meeting financial needs at old age with emphasis placed on the effect of regions and education. Three models of OLS dummy regression were ran to find the magnitude, sign, and significance of the reality-expectations gap. The results of the study found that the …

Global Capital Flows, Time Varying Fundamentals And Transitional Exchange Rate Dynamics: An Ms-Var Approach, Süleyman Hilmi Kal, Ilhami Gunduz

Publications and Research

This paper studies whether dynamic relationship between exchange rate and economic and financial fundamentals vary depending on exchange rate is overvalued and undervalued with respect to its fundamental value. To achieve this, we implement two-state Markov Switching Vector Auto Regression (MSVAR) model with time varying transition probabilities to investigate whether the relationship among exchange rate, interest rate and inflation dynamics depend on overvaluation and undervaluation of exchange rates for the pre-crises period between years 1972-2009. We govern the transition between the undervalued and overvalued states by using Sharpe Ratios of debt and equity investments of the currency to assess whether …

Accounts Receivable Management Strategies To Ensure Timely Payments In Rural Clinics, Anthony N. Medel

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Healthcare business leaders in a rural clinic setting can enhance profitability by implementing strategies to ensure timely payments. The purpose of this multiple case study was to examine strategies applied by healthcare leaders in rural clinics to improve profitability. The population included 10 rural clinic managers and billing staff from 5 rural clinics in the southwestern region of the United States. The conceptual framework for this study was Wernerfelt's resource-based value theory. Implementing Yin's multiple-step data analysis process, data from semistructured interviews were transcribed, coded, and analyzed to identify strategies used by rural clinic managers and billing staff to enhance …

Study Of The Impact Of The Great Recession On The Relation Between Earnings Surprises And Stock Returns, Benjamin Anderson, Stoyu Ivanov

Faculty Publications

This paper examines the impact of the Great Recession on the relation between earnings surprises and stock returns and examines the role that informed and uninformed investors play in the formation of the post-earnings announcement drift (PEAD). We use quarterly earnings surprises (SUE), firms' standardized unexpected returns, calculated as actual earnings minus expected earnings, scaled by stock price one day prior to the earnings announcement, and one-year future stock returns, the subsequent twelve-month abnormal stock returns, calculated as the difference between the firm's buy-and-hold return and the value-weighted market buy-and-hold return, to test whether the Great Recession had an impact …

An Investigation Of Etf Flows : Asset Allocation Perspectives, Boonyaporn Wongsawatgul

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

This study investigates impacts of asset allocations on ETF flows across asset classes in a panel form, utilizing fixed-effects panel regression. The period of study covers October 2008 to July 2019. The investment universe contains 9 U.S.-listed ETFs, classifying into 5 asset classes. Monthly asset allocations are obtained from 5 optimization strategies based on mean-variance and risk-based optimizations. The findings indicate that asset allocations of risk-based optimization strategies significantly explain fund flows across asset classes. It implies that ETF market participants attempt to stabilize portfolio volatilities rather than maximize portfolio expected returns or risk-adjusted returns. This study further analyses relations …

Institutional Factors And Cross-Border Merger And Acquisition : Evidence From Selected Asian Countries, Haneeta Phuriputranonth

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

The objective of this study is to examine the impact of institutional factors on cross-border merger and acquisition (M&A) inflows by using a panel data of 18 selected Asian countries from 2002 to 2016. This study contributes to the existing literatures by using various measures of institutional factors as the determinants of cross-border M&A into selected Asian countries and examining at the disaggregated level according to country’s income level. There are two main results from this study. First, two institutional factors, namely control of corruption and voice and accountability, have significant effect on cross-border M&A into selected Asian countries. Higher …

Predicting Market Crashes Using Systemic Risk And Volatility Spillovers : A Deep Learning Approach, Kornprarun Mahutchariyakul

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

We develop a model for predicting market crashes in the Stock Exchange of Thailand using a deep learning-based anomaly detection approach (LSTM-VAE). The model aims to detect market behavior before each market crash. Apart from the common stock market variables, we feed the model with the indices of systemic risk, and of volatility spillovers. With these two indices, the model takes into account the influences from both inside and outside the particular stock market. We find that in large crashes our model gives the crash warning signals shortly after the SET index reaches its peaks and long before the index …

Location Determinants Of Foreign Direct Investment In Real Estate : Evidence From China, Yi Tang

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

The objective of this paper is to examine factors affecting locational choice of foreign direct investment (FDI) in China’s real estate. The panel data selected 32 provinces of China during 2003 to 2017 are used in the analysis. The results show that GDP per capita, population, and loan rate are important factors affecting FDI in China’s real estate market. This reflects that China's economic growth made a significant contribution to the growing trend of FDI in the real estate market. However, the investment of foreign real estate developers in cities in the eastern, central and western parts of China is …

Which Types Of Investor Investment Flow Affect Thailand Stock Market Index, Net Teeramungcalanon

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

This study examines the effect of types of investor investment flow on Thailand Stock Market Index returns. Daily data on investment types, namely, foreign investors, institutional investors, proprietary investors, and retail investors from the Stock Exchange of Thailand for the period 2015 to 2020 is used. The results from the OLS model show that proprietary investors dominate the SET index. We also conduct a Granger causality test to understand the relationship between the SET index and investor investment flow. This study also examines the relation between SET volatility and investor behavior. The result shows that when the SET index has …

Impact Of Growth In International Tourism Industry Contributed To Co2 Emission In Cambodia, Philippines And Thailand, Juthamard Laohawattanajinda

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Tourism is generally considered a clean industry, one of the reasons is tourism increasing investment in traveling facilities, instead of investment in factories. Furthermore, increasing tourism development relies on the protection of the natural environment and ecology. However, tourism development, like all industrial development, also comes with the higher demand in energy consumption and lack of management in the tourism industry resulting in environmental degradation The paper investigated the effect of environmental degradation in both aspects of destination factors and tourist factors based on the EKC hypothesis by incorporating trade openness and CO2 emission in Cambodia, Philippines, and Thailand which …

The Effect Of Outward Fdi Of China On The Export Of China To Asean Countries, Ziang Li

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

With the guidance of the Chinese "One Belt One Road" policy and the development of China-ASEAN Free Trade Area, trade and investment between China and ASEAN have become more frequent. Based on the panel data from 2005 to 2018, this paper starts from two steps to empirically analyze the determinants of Chinese outward Foreign Direct Investment to ASEAN and its impacts on the export of China to ASEAN. As a result, China's motives for FDI to ASEAN are more inclined to seek market size, and China tends to invest in ASEAN countries with political stability and a high degree of …

Climate Risks And Market Efficiency, Harrison Hong, Frank Weikai Li, Jiangmin Xu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Climate science finds that the trend towards higher global temperatures exacerbates the risks of droughts. We investigate whether the prices of food stocks efficiently discount these risks. Using data from thirty-one countries with publicly-traded food companies, we rank these countries each year based on their long-term trends toward droughts using the Palmer Drought Severity Index. A poor trend ranking for a country forecasts relatively poor profit growth for food companies in that country. It also forecasts relatively poor food stock returns in that country. This return predictability is consistent with food stock prices underreacting to climate change risks.

Intraday Information From S&P 500 Index Futures Options, Kian Guan Lim, Chen Ying, Kian Leong Nelson Yap

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this paper we employ intraday transaction prices of liquid E-mini S&P 500 index futuresoptions to form 10-minutes ahead risk-neutral skewness forecasts and show profitable optionstrading strategy net of transaction costs. We do not find profitable trading based on 10-minutesahead risk-neutral volatility and only very marginal cases of profitable trading using kurtosisforecasts. The skewness profitability anomaly may be an indication of informational marketinefficiency in intraday S&P 500 futures options markets, which is contrary to findings usinglonger-span daily and weekly moments. Our results lend credence to the persistence of intradaytrading activities in the markets.