Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
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This paper serves as an analysis of the current operational conditions of a real-world company – referred to as “Company X” – with respect to the IC substrate industry. The cost of substrates, a crucial component in the production of Company X’s product, has recently diverged from Company X’s predictions and is contributing to declining profitability. This analysis aims to discover the underlying cause for price divergence and recommend potential resolutions to improve the forecast of substrate costs and profitability. The paper is organized as follows: Chapter 1 is an introduction to IC substrates and the industry as a whole, Chapter 2 is a breakdown of the specific factors responsible for substrate prices, and Chapter 3 delivers a final recommendation to Company X and concludes the paper.
This thesis explores the benefits of tax loss harvesting by examining the time period from 1999-2000 to determine the potential profits investors could realize from utilizing this strategy. The first step to accomplishing this was to collect data from the past 20-plus years from the SPDR S&P 500 Exchange Traded Fund (SPY) and its 11 sectors: Energy (XLE), Consumer Staples (XLP), Consumer Discretionary (XLY), Communication Services (XLC), Real Estate (XLRE), Technology (XLK), Utilities (XLU), Materials (XLB), Industrials (XLI), Financials (XLF), and Health Care (XLV). The next step was to clean the data from hundreds of months of opening prices, closing prices, and quarterly dividends into an annual opening price and total annual dividends to calculate a rate of return. Finally, I found the weightings of the S&P 500 and its sectors on January 1st of every year and input this data into a model whose output reflected the growth of a portfolio with and without the use of tax loss harvesting. Once this model was created, I determined the benefits of tax loss harvesting in the present and the value of carrying these losses forward. The outcomes of this thesis solely reflect the benefits of using tax loss harvesting through a passive investment strategy. This research will enrich academic and professional understandings of tax loss harvesting through its clear demonstration of how much tax loss carryforward can be accessed, as well as the opportunity for gains from compounding interest on previous tax savings due to tax loss harvesting.