Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes both ASU Theses and Dissertations, submitted by graduate students, and the Barrett, Honors College theses submitted by undergraduate students.
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- All Subjects: Finance
- Creators: Babenko, Ilona
- Creators: Babenka, Ilona
Description
I show that firms' ability to adjust variable capital in response to productivity shocks has important implications for the interpretation of the widely documented investment-cash flow sensitivities. The variable capital adjustment is sufficient for firms to capture small variations in profitability, but when the revision in profitability is relatively large, limited substitutability between the factors of production may call for fixed capital investment. Hence, firms with lower substitutability are more likely to invest in both factors together and have larger sensitivities of fixed capital investment to cash flow. By building a frictionless capital markets model that allows firms to optimize over fixed capital and inventories as substitutable factors, I establish the significance of the substitutability channel in explaining cross-sectional differences in cash flow sensitivities. Moreover, incorporating variable capital into firms' investment decisions helps explain the sharp decrease in cash flow sensitivities over the past decades. Empirical evidence confirms the model's predictions.
ContributorsKim, Kirak (Author) / Bates, Thomas (Thesis advisor) / Babenko, Ilona (Thesis advisor) / Hertzel, Michael (Committee member) / Tserlukevich, Yuri (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Mutual monitoring in a well-structured authority system can mitigate the agency problem. I empirically examine whether the number 2 executive in a firm, if given authority, incentive, and channels for communication and influence, is able to monitor and constrain the potentially self-interested CEO. I find strong evidence that: (1) measures of the presence and extent of mutual monitoring from the No. 2 executive are positively related to future firm value (Tobin's Q); (2) the beneficial effect is more pronounced for firms with weaker corporate governance or CEO incentive alignment, with stronger incentives for the No. 2 executives to monitor, and with higher information asymmetry between the boards and the CEOs; (3) such mutual monitoring reduces the CEO's ability to pursue the "quiet life" but has no effect on "empire building;" and (4) mutual monitoring is a substitute for other governance mechanisms. The results suggest that mutual monitoring by a No. 2 executive provides checks and balances on CEO power.
ContributorsLi, Zhichuan (Author) / Coles, Jeffrey (Thesis advisor) / Hertzel, Michael (Committee member) / Bharath, Sreedhar (Committee member) / Babenko, Ilona (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This paper studies the relation between alignment in partisan affiliation between a firm's management team and the president and corporate investment. Survey evidence suggest that households have higher expectations of economic growth when their preferred party controls the presidency. I therefore investigate whether finance professionals, specifically corporate managers, are subject to the same partisan-based optimism and make investment decisions not based on fundamentals. Consistent with the behavior displayed by the general public, I find that managers invest more and become more optimistic about their companies' prospects when their preferred party is in power. Using insider trades, I am able to separate optimism from alternative explanations such as industry sorting of partisan managers, political connections, etc. This optimism-driven increase in investment is associated with lower profitability and stock returns. Overall, managers' partisan beliefs produce heterogeneous expectations about future cash flows and distort investment decisions.
ContributorsRice, Anthony Baird (Author) / Bates, Thomas (Thesis advisor) / Babenka, Ilona (Committee member) / Lindsey, Laura (Committee member) / Sosyura, Denis (Committee member) / Stein, Luke (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
The first chapter uses data on birthplaces of 2,065 Chief Executive Officers (CEO) and a county-level measure of cultural individualism based on the westward expansion in American history to establish a positive relation between CEO cultural individ- ualism and corporate innovation. Difference-in-differences estimations around CEO turnovers support the causality. Individualistic CEOs increase innovation by creating an innovative corporate culture, providing more flexibility to employees, and tolerance for failure.The second chapter develops a model to study the corporate board structure and communication. Outside directors are related to potential competitors. As a result, they can bring valuable advice and cause information leakage. The firm needs to decide whether to have outside directors on the board. In the presence of the outside director, the other directors need to determine whether to communicate.
ContributorsZhang, Fan (Author) / Boguth, Oliver (Thesis advisor) / Babenko, Ilona (Committee member) / Schiller, Christoph (Committee member) / Wang, Jessie Jiaxu (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) whose observed personal option-holding patterns are not consistent with theoretical predictions are variously described as overconfident or optimistic. Existing literature demonstrates that the investment and financing decisions of such CEOs differ from those of CEOs who do not exhibit such behavior and interprets the investment and financing decisions by overconfident or optimistic CEOs as inferior. This paper argues that it may be rational to exhibit behavior interpreted as optimistic and that the determinants of a CEO’s perceived optimism are important. Further, this paper shows that CEOs whose apparent optimism results from above average industry-adjusted CEO performance in prior years make investment and financing decisions which are actually similar, and sometimes superior to, those of unbiased CEOs.
ContributorsWalton, Richard (Author) / Bates, Thomas (Thesis advisor) / Lindsey, Laura (Committee member) / Babenko, Ilona (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
In the first chapter, I develop a representative agent model in which the purchase of consumption goods must be planned in advance. Volatility in the agent's portfolio increases the risk that a purchase cannot be implemented. This implementation risk causes the agent to make conservative consumption plans. In the model, this leads to persistent and negatively skewed consumption growth and a slow reaction of consumption to wealth shocks. The model proposes a novel explanation for the negative relation between volatility and expected utility. In equilibrium, prices of risky assets must compensate for the utility loss. Hence, the model suggests a new mechanism for generating the equity risk premium. Importantly, because implementation risk does not rely on the co-movement of asset prices with marginal utility, the resulting equity premium does not require concavity of the intratemporal utility function.
In the second chapter, I challenge the view that equity market timing always benefits
shareholders. By distinguishing the effect of a firm's equity decisions from the effect of mispricing itself, I show that market timing can decrease shareholder value. Additionally, the timing of equity sales has a more negative effect on existing shareholders than the timing of share repurchases. My theory can be used to infer firms' maximization objectives from their observed market timing strategies. I argue that the popularity of stock buybacks, the low frequency of seasoned equity offerings, and the observed post-event stock returns are consistent with managers maximizing current shareholder value.
In the second chapter, I challenge the view that equity market timing always benefits
shareholders. By distinguishing the effect of a firm's equity decisions from the effect of mispricing itself, I show that market timing can decrease shareholder value. Additionally, the timing of equity sales has a more negative effect on existing shareholders than the timing of share repurchases. My theory can be used to infer firms' maximization objectives from their observed market timing strategies. I argue that the popularity of stock buybacks, the low frequency of seasoned equity offerings, and the observed post-event stock returns are consistent with managers maximizing current shareholder value.
ContributorsWan, Pengcheng (Author) / Boguth, Oliver (Thesis advisor) / Tserlukevich, Yuri (Thesis advisor) / Babenka, Ilona (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
I examine the determinants and implications of the level of director monitoring. I use the distance between directors' domiciles and firm headquarters as a proxy for the level of monitoring and the introduction of a new airline route between director domicile and firm HQ as an exogenous shock to the level of monitoring. I find a strong relation between distance and both board meeting attendance and director membership on strategic versus monitoring committees. Increased monitoring, as measured by a reduction in effective distance, by way of addition of a direct flight, is associated with a 3% reduction in firm value. A reduction in effective distance is also associated with less risk-taking, lower stock return volatility, lower accounting return volatility, lower R&D; spending, fewer acquisitions, and fewer patents.
ContributorsBennett, Benjamin (Author) / Coles, Jeffrey (Thesis advisor) / Hertzel, Michael (Committee member) / Babenka, Ilona (Committee member) / Custodio, Claudia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
I study how the density of executive labor markets affects managerial incentives and thereby firm performance. I find that U.S. executive markets are locally segmented rather than nationally integrated, and that the density of a local market provides executives with non-compensation incentives. Empirical results show that in denser labor markets, executives face stronger performance-based dismissal threats as well as better outside opportunities. These incentives result in higher firm performance in denser markets, especially when executives have longer career horizons. Using state-level variation in the enforceability of covenants not to compete, I find that the positive effects of market density on incentive alignment and firm performance are stronger in markets where executives are freer to move. This evidence further supports the argument that local labor market density works as an external incentive alignment mechanism.
ContributorsZhao, Hong, Ph.D (Author) / Hertzel, Michael (Thesis advisor) / Babenko, Ilona (Committee member) / Coles, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Stein, Luke (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
By matching a CEO's place of residence in his or her formative years with U.S. Census survey data, I obtain an estimate of the CEO's family wealth and study the link between the CEO's endowed social status and firm performance. I find that, on average, CEOs born into poor families outperform those born into wealthy families, as measured by a variety of proxies for firm performance. There is no evidence of higher risk-taking by the CEOs from low social status backgrounds. Further, CEOs from less privileged families perform better in firms with high R&D spending but they underperform CEOs from wealthy families when firms operate in a more uncertain environment. Taken together, my results show that endowed family wealth of a CEO is useful in identifying his or her managerial ability.
ContributorsDu, Fangfang (Author) / Babenko, Ilona (Thesis advisor) / Bates, Thomas (Thesis advisor) / Tserlukevich, Yuri (Committee member) / Wang, Jessie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
The dissertation consists of three essays in financial economics. In the first essay, using historical prices for futures contracts tied to U.S. election outcomes, I develop a measure of firm-level partisan exposure. This measure captures the sensitivity of a firm's stock return to the changes in the odds of winning by a Democratic presidential candidate. I find that political beta is significantly lower in regulated industries and that it takes more extreme values for smaller and more highly levered firms. Finally, I document that firms with high political beta earn 4.0% higher annual buy-and-hold abnormal returns under Republican presidencies than firms with low political beta. The second essay studies mean monthly returns and compound long-run returns to over 64,000 global common stocks during the January 1990 to June 2020 period. The important practical distinctions between arithmetic, geometric, and dollar-weighted monthly returns are highlighted. In addition, it is documented that the majority, 56.6% of U.S. stocks and 61.3% of non-U.S. stocks, underperform one-month U.S. Treasury bills in terms of compound returns over the full sample. Focusing on aggregate shareholder outcomes, the top-performing 1.5% of firms account for all of the $US 56.2 trillion in net global stock market wealth creation. Outside the US, less than one percent of firms account for the $US 20.1 trillion in net wealth creation. The third essay documents evidence of managerial influence on shareholder voting outcomes. There are significantly more proposals that narrowly pass than narrowly fail. This behavior is more pronounced for firms with low institutional ownership and for proposals receiving a negative ISS recommendation. Mechanisms by which managers influence the outcome, such as meeting adjournment and selective campaigning, are newly identified. Finally, the market reacts more positively to the narrow failure of management proposals than to their passage. Combined with a theoretical model, these results imply that managerial influence on the voting process is value-destroying.
ContributorsChoi, Goeun (Author) / Bessembinder, Hendrik (Thesis advisor) / Babenko, Ilona (Committee member) / Schiller, Christoph (Committee member) / Tserlukevich, Yuri (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021