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- All Subjects: Accounting
- All Subjects: data
- Creators: Department of Information Systems
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Description
The goal of this thesis is to conduct a descriptive analysis of the gross domestic product (GDP) sector composition of countries around the world and their respective levels of economic development with consideration of their geographic locations, economic growth over time, and their economic sizes. This analysis will be centered around exploring the differences of the GDP composition of countries at different levels of development, testing the consensus that developed countries tend to be focused on the services sector in comparison to less developed ones, who trend towards focus on the agricultural one. These findings will be primarily attained through use of data interpretation and regression analysis utilizing the statistical software packages of Stata and Excel. Results and analysis are to be supported by powerful data visualizations created in Tableau and the careful examination of said visualizations.
Due to the sheer amount of macro-economic factors and the case specific incidences involved in the determination of a country’s level of economic development, this thesis will focus entirely on the descriptive analysis of the relationship between a country’s GDP sector composition within the agricultural, industrial, and services sectors and their level of economic development measured in GDP per capita. This study will explore the relationship between GDP per capita and geographic regions, growth over time, and economic size as well. These relationships will be used to determine if said factors need to be controlled for when analyzing the relationship between a country’s sector composition and its level of development. A better understanding of what countries look like at all levels of development helps build a complete picture of a what makes a country successful and could be used in future studies that seek to predict economic success based on more and/or separate variables.
Due to the sheer amount of macro-economic factors and the case specific incidences involved in the determination of a country’s level of economic development, this thesis will focus entirely on the descriptive analysis of the relationship between a country’s GDP sector composition within the agricultural, industrial, and services sectors and their level of economic development measured in GDP per capita. This study will explore the relationship between GDP per capita and geographic regions, growth over time, and economic size as well. These relationships will be used to determine if said factors need to be controlled for when analyzing the relationship between a country’s sector composition and its level of development. A better understanding of what countries look like at all levels of development helps build a complete picture of a what makes a country successful and could be used in future studies that seek to predict economic success based on more and/or separate variables.
ContributorsStojsin, Rastko (Author) / Goegan, Brian (Thesis director) / Lopez, Andres Diaz (Committee member) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
With growing levels of income inequality in the United States, it remains as important as ever to ensure indispensable public services are readily available to all members of society. This paper investigates four forms of public services (schools, libraries, fire stations, and police stations), first by researching the background of these services and their relation to poverty, and then by conducting geospatial and regression analysis. The author uses Esri's ArcGIS Pro software to quantify the proximity to public services from urban American neighborhoods (census tracts in the cities of Phoenix and Chicago). Afterwards, the measures indicating proximity are compared to the socioeconomic statuses of neighborhoods using regression analysis. The results indicate that pure proximity to these four services is not necessarily correlated to socioeconomic status. While the paper does uncover some correlations, such as a relationship between school quality and socioeconomic status, the majority of the findings negate the author's hypothesis and show that, in Phoenix and Chicago, there is not much discrepancy between neighborhoods and the extent to which they are able to access vital government-funded services.
ContributorsNorbury, Adam Charles (Author) / Simon, Alan (Thesis director) / Simon, Phil (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
In the wide world of sports, not all fan bases are created equally—especially in the NBA. Differences in factors like tradition, history, team performance amongst teams make each fan base distinctly unique. This paper will analyze how team performance effects one component of fan behavior: home game attendance. Using win-loss data and home game attendance data for each NBA team from 2001 to 2017, I will construct statistical models to estimate how great of an impact team performance has on each team’s home game attendance. I expect each team’s fan base to respond differently to changes in their team’s win-loss record. This paper will also attempt to quantify other facts that impact attendance at NBA games, including year-to-year changes in team salary expenditures, regional income, and the number of star players playing for the team. Finally, this paper will explore the factors that affect home game attendance for specific games within a given season—things like weather, strength of opponent, and win streaks. Ultimately, the goal of this paper will be to provide NBA business analysts with resources to more precisely anticipate their team’s home game attendance. The ability to understand what motivates the behavior of a fan base is invaluable in creating a marketing strategy that drives fans to the arena. This paper will help to identify teams that are most susceptible to significant fluctuations in attendance and outline alternative strategies to positioning their product offering effectively to fans.
ContributorsSloan, Jacob Marlow (Author) / Lee, Christopher (Thesis director) / Eaton, John (Committee member) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
The Internet has brought along countless benefits to society and for the case of this thesis, especially educational benefits. Students can now have endless resources to whatever they wish to learn. This is especially beneficial in a time where a clear majority of studies show that the U.S.'s financial literacy is in a concerning state. However, even though there may be a bounty of websites and programs available non-exclusively, they do not all effectively teach accounting and finance. In fact, many websites aimed at teaching accounting or finance simply replicate textbooks and glossaries, even though there are ways to make them more effective learning tools. Since the scope of this empirical observation is too large to confront, this thesis is mainly concerned with students currently learning accounting and finance who wish to have more supplemental learning information. Accordingly, the overarching argument of this thesis, is that college students aiming to learn accounting do not have enough resources to fully understand the classroom formulas and concepts. The creative solution for this problem is a website, name FIN-WIT aimed at providing financial content in plain language and with real-world examples.
ContributorsDitore, Heather Beatrice (Author) / Orpurt, Steven (Thesis director) / Sopha, Matthew (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
How prepared are individuals to work in an environment with sensitive information? Do business students believe a data security course would be a valuable addition to their curriculum? This study investigates W.P. Carey's role in preparing its students for jobs in which they most likely will have to handle large amounts of important data. Roughly 500 students across varying majors and years of education in the W.P. Carey School of Business answered an assortment of questions on their computer habits, and responded to various scenarios to test their knowledge. The survey targeted three specific areas (Software Updates, Password Protection, and Phishing) which was believed to be most pertinent to the students' future roles as professionals. While a large number of those surveyed (roughly 65%) responded well to most questions, nearly a third of all the responses received indicated cause for concern or an indication of a lack of knowledge. It was suggested (and many respondents agreed) that further education be provided to students for their own well-being in addition to the wellbeing of their future employers.
ContributorsVaughan, Nathaniel D (Author) / Lin, Elva (Thesis director) / Doupé, Adam (Committee member) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
Data is ever present in the world today. Data can help predict presidential elections, Super Bowl champions, and even the weather. However, it's very hard, if not impossible, to predict how people feel unless they tell us. This is when impulse spending with data comes in handy. Companies are constantly looking for ways to get honest feedback when they are doing market research. Often, the research obtained ends up being unreliable or biased in some way. Allowing users to make impulse purchases with survey data is the answer. Companies can still gather the data that they need to do market research and customers can get more features or lives for their favorite games. It becomes a win-win for both users and companies. By adding the option to pay with information instead of money, companies can still get value out of frugal players. Established companies might not care so much about the impulse spending for purchases made in the application, however they would find a great deal of value in hearing about what customers think of their product or upcoming event. The real value from getting data from customers is the ability to train analytics models so that companies can make better predictions about consumer behavior. More accurate predictions can lead to companies being better prepared to meet the needs to the customer. Impulse spending with data provides the foundation to creating a software that can create value from all types of users regardless of whether the user is willing to spend money in the application.
ContributorsYotter, Alexandria Lee (Author) / Olsen, Christopher (Thesis director) / Sopha, Matthew (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
Twitter is one of the most powerful communication tools ever created. There are over 1.3 billion registered Twitter users (Smith, 2016). 100 million daily people actively use Twitter every day. 6,000 tweets are tweeted every second. Communication has never been so abundant, public, and chronicled. Not only is there a gigantic population to market to, but also a wealth of information about that population to record and draw insights from. However, many companies' Twitter accounts fail to generate popular posts on a regular basis. The content that they produce is ineffective and uninteresting. In my opinion, these companies are failing to take advantage of a huge opportunity. I decided to dive into the Twitter accounts of some of my favorite companies to see what they were doing wrong and how they could improve. My thesis investigates 18 different company Twitter accounts from four different industries: Athletic Apparel, Technology, Online Entertainment, and Car Manufacturing. I pulled 200 tweets from each company and cleaned and organized the data into an Excel spreadsheet. I investigated how certain variables impacted tweet popularity across the four industries. First, I looked at tweet format to determine whether posts, retweets, or replies were the best format. Then, I analyzed how different elements of a tweet's content could impact the tweet's popularity. Specifically, I looked at the effects of including links, hashtags, and questions into the tweet. Next, I tried to determine the optimal tweet length for each industry. And finally, I compared each industry's tweet sentiment preferences. I then summarized my findings into a series of recommendations for companies to improve their tweet popularity.
ContributorsFrame, Christopher James (Author) / Clark, Joseph (Thesis director) / Jenkins, Anthony (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Company X is one of the world's largest manufacturer of semiconductors. The company relies on various suppliers in the U.S. and around the globe for its manufacturing process. The financial health of these suppliers is vital to the continuation of Company X's business without any material interruption. Therefore, it is in Company X's interest to monitor its supplier's financial performance. Company X has a supplier financial health model currently in use. Having been developed prior to watershed events like the Great Recession, the current model may not reflect the significant changes in the economic environment due to these events. Company X wants to know if there is a more accurate model for evaluating supplier health that better indicates business risk. The scope of this project will be limited to a sample of 24 suppliers representative of Company X's supplier base that are public companies. While Company X's suppliers consist of both private and public companies, the used of exclusively public companies ensures that we will have sufficient and appropriate data for the necessary analysis. The goal of this project is to discover if there is a more accurate model for evaluating the financial health of publicly traded suppliers that better indicates business risk. Analyzing this problem will require a comprehensive understanding of various financial health models available and their components. The team will study best practice and academia. This comprehension will allow us to customize a model by incorporating metrics that allows greater accuracy in evaluating supplier financial health in accordance with Company X's values.
ContributorsLi, Tong (Co-author) / Gonzalez, Alexandra (Co-author) / Park, Zoon Beom (Co-author) / Vogelsang, Meridith (Co-author) / Simonson, Mark (Thesis director) / Hertzel, Mike (Committee member) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Women have more opportunities to expand their career aspirations than ever before, so many view it as being acutely relevant. However, although women now account for more than half of the work force, there is still a considerable gap in the representation of women in the top leadership positions within their organizations. This trend is especially prevalent in public accounting firms. Drilling down to the root cause of gender inequality in firm management reveals several key obstacles that women face including generational gender biases, inflexible work schedules, insufficient career development training, and limited visibility of other female leaders. The negative implications of uneven gender distribution in upper management leave a potential for firms to miss opportunities for diverse perspectives on innovations, solutions, and advancement in the industry. Furthermore, firms make tremendous investments on extensive training of their professionals throughout the entire length of their careers, so high turnover rates cause a significant loss to each firm's investment in their human capital. So, public accounting firms have made considerable investments to develop resources and programs in order to combat the issues that create gender inequality and uneven turnover. The thesis begins by reviewing the Ann Hopkins v. Price Waterhouse trail, which was a pivotal point in changing how public accounting firms treat and prevent sex discrimination within their organizations. The rest of the thesis analyzes the correlation between the barriers that are most frequently linked to hindering women's success in public accounting and the programs that firms have installed to address those barriers. It also addresses qualitative accounts from female CPAs on the actual effectiveness of their firm's programs on the longevity of their careers in public accounting, as well as perspectives from current Accountancy students on the relevancy of diversity and inclusion programs.
ContributorsValdivia, Ashley Lynae (Author) / Cassidy, Nancy (Thesis director) / Huston, Janet (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Sagebrush Coffee is a small business in Chandler, Arizona that purchases green beans, roasts them in small batches for quality, and ships fresh, gourmet roasted coffee beans across the nation. Deciding which coffee beans to buy and roast is one of the most crucial business decisions Sagebrush and other gourmet coffee roasters face. Further complicating this decision is the fact that coffee is a crop, and like all crops, has a specific growing season and the exact same product cannot usually be ordered from year to year, even if it proves to be successful. The goal of this research is to use data analytics and visualization to help Sagebrush make better purchasing decisions by identifying consumer purchasing trends and providing a recommendation for their portfolio mix. In the end, I found that Latin American coffees are popular with both returning and first-time customers, but a specific country of origin does not appear to be associated with the top coffee producing countries. Additionally, December is a critical month for Sagebrush and Sagebrush should make sure to target the states with the most sales: California, Pennsylvania, and New York. Arizona has growth potential as it is not one of the top three locations, despite the presence of a physical store. Also included in the following report is a portfolio recommendation suggesting how many of each product based on region, processing type, and roast level to carry in inventory.
ContributorsBlue, Jessica Morgan (Author) / Kellso, James (Thesis director) / Davila, Eddie (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / Morrison School of Agribusiness (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05