Matching Items (16)
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
This paper examines how equity analysts' roles as information intermediaries and monitors affect corporate liquidity policy and its associated value of cash, providing new evidence that analysts have a direct impact on corporate liquidity policy. Greater analyst coverage (1) reduces information asymmetry between a firm and outside shareholders and (2) enhances the monitoring process. Consistent with these arguments, analyst coverage increases the value of cash, thereby allowing firms to hold more cash. The cash-to-assets ratio increases by 5.2 percentage points when moving from the bottom analyst-coverage decile to the top decile. The marginal value of $1 of corporate cash holdings is $0.93 for the bottom analyst-coverage decile and $1.83 for the top decile. The positive effects remain robust after a battery of endogeneity checks. I also perform tests employing a unique dataset that consists of public and private firms, as well as a dataset that consists of public firms that have gone private. A public firm with analyst coverage can hold approximately 8% more cash than its private counterpart. These findings constitute new evidence on the real effect of analyst coverage.
ContributorsChang, Ching-Hung (Author) / Bates, Thomas (Thesis advisor) / Bharath, Sreedhar (Committee member) / Lindsey, Laura (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
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 purpose of this paper is to review the effects of the Dodd-Frank Title VII Clearing Regulations on the Over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market and to analyze if the benefits of the Title VII regulations have outweighed the costs in the OTC derivatives market by reducing systematic(market) risk and protecting market participants or if the Title VII regulations’ costs have made things worse by lessening opportunities in the OTC derivatives market and stifling economics benefits by over regulating the market. This paper strives to examine this issue by explaining how OTC are said to have played a part in the 2008 Financial crisis. Next, we give a general overview of financial securities, and what OTC are. Then we will give a general overview of what the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Acts are, which are the regulations to come out of the 2008 Financial crisis. Then the paper will dive into Dodd-Frank Title VII Clearing Regulations and how they regulated OTC derivatives in the aftermath of the 2008 Financial crisis. Next, we discuss the Clearing House industry. Then the paper explores the major change of central clearing versus the previous bilateral clearing system. The paper will then cover how these rules have affected OTC derivatives market by examining the works of authors, who both support the regulations and others, who oppose the regulations by looking at logical arguments, historical evidence, and empirical evidence. Finally, we conclude that based on all the evidence how the Dodd-Frank Title VII Clearing Regulations effects on the OTC derivatives market are inconclusive at this time.
ContributorsThacker, Harshit (Co-author) / Charette, John (Co-author) / Aragon, George (Thesis director) / Stein, Luke (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
The purpose of this paper is to review the effects of the Dodd-Frank Title VII Clearing Regulations on the Over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market and to analyze if the benefits of the Title VII regulations have outweighed the costs in the OTC derivatives market by reducing systematic(market) risk and protecting market participants or if the Title VII regulations’ costs have made things worse by lessening opportunities in the OTC derivatives market and stifling economics benefits by over regulating the market. This paper strives to examine this issue by explaining how OTC are said to have played a part in the 2008 Financial crisis. Next, we give a general overview of financial securities, and what OTC are. Then we will give a general overview of what the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Acts are, which are the regulations to come out of the 2008 Financial crisis. Then the paper will dive into Dodd-Frank Title VII Clearing Regulations and how they regulated OTC derivatives in the aftermath of the 2008 Financial crisis. Next, we discuss the Clearing House industry. Then the paper explores the major change of central clearing versus the previous bilateral clearing system. The paper will then cover how these rules have affected OTC derivatives market by examining the works of authors, who both support the regulations and others, who oppose the regulations by looking at logical arguments, historical evidence, and empirical evidence. Finally, we conclude that based on all the evidence how the Dodd-Frank Title VII Clearing Regulations effects on the OTC derivatives market are inconclusive at this time.
ContributorsCharette, John (Co-author) / Thacker, Harshit (Co-author) / Aragon, George (Thesis director) / Stein, Luke (Committee member) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
The following thesis discusses the primary drivers of value creation in a leveraged buyout. Value creation is defined by two broad criteria: enterprise value creation and financial value creation. With enterprise value creation, the company itself may be improved, which in turn may have positive implications on the economy at large. As the analysis of enterprise value creation is outside the scope of publicly available information and data, the core focus of this thesis is financial value creation. Financial value creation is defined as the financial returns to a given private equity firm. Amongst this segment of value creation, there are roughly three primary categories responsible for generating returns: financial engineering, governance improvements, and operational improvements. The attached literature review and subsequent chapters of this thesis discuss the academic drivers of value creation and the outputs of a leveraged buyout model conducted on a public company, Schnitzer Steel, that has been determined to be an ideal candidate for a buyout.
ContributorsAlivarius, Chadwick (Author) / Simonson, Mark (Thesis director) / Stein, Luke (Committee member) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
The purpose of this paper is to study the impact that poison pills have on the value of share prices after the cancellation of a transaction. While various studies have focused on the generic share price impact of poison pills, very few have focused on the impact of poison pills in cancelled transactions. Based on our research and analysis, in cancelled transactions, target firms that have poison pills prior to the transaction and target firms without poison pills generate returns above the announcement date premium and subsequent investment in the S&P 500 when held to the cancellation of the transaction and when held from cancellation to 6 months after the transaction. This analysis can contribute to the argument that holding shares of firms regardless of cancellation risk is preferable to taking profit at announcement date. Additionally, it can contribute to the study of undiscovered pricing impact of poison pills.
ContributorsChotalla, Gurkaran (Co-author) / Amjad, Hamza (Co-author) / Reddy, Samir (Co-author) / Stein, Luke (Thesis director) / Lindsey, Laura (Committee member) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
We chose to analyze Apple's current cash and cash equivalents balance of $246.1 billion. To fully understand how to maximize Apple's investment using this cash balance, we performed detailed due diligence on the company. We analyzed the history of apple, a timeline of their major product releases, their financial statements, product mix, and the industries in which they operate. This allowed us to gain a deeper understanding of available opportunities. After doing our due diligence on the company, we look at their current cash levels and potential reasons that the cash balance has been increasing so quickly. Another component of their cash balance is the implications of a tax holiday for repatriation, so we also looked at the potential effects of this on Apple's cash balance. Finally, we begin the main portion of our project where look at the six potential options for the cash. We cover share buybacks, dividends or a special dividend, paying down debt, investing in research and development, making a large acquisition, or continuing to build a high cash balance. We pull data on each of these, look at financial metrics and many different numbers to evaluate which of these six options would maximize shareholder value. A large portion of our work was spent looking at acquisition targets. We finally vetted three potential targets: Tesla, Netflix, and Disney. These companies made sense for a number of different qualitative reasons, but after looking at them from a financial standpoint we concluded Disney was the only company worth modeling out. A detailed financial model was built on Disney to find a purchase price. Included in this was a discounted cash flow analysis, comparable company's analysis, analyzing precedent transactions, and then finding an enterprise value based on the model. We also built an accretion dilution model to see what the effect on earnings per share is and also what the combined entity would look like. In order to present our findings, we built a pitch book. A pitch book is the standard type of presentation that investment banks use in order to show their recommendations to companies.
ContributorsMuscheid, Michael (Co-author) / Klein, Matthew (Co-author) / Lauro, John (Co-author) / Gagner, Landon (Co-author) / Simonson, Mark (Thesis director) / Stein, Luke (Committee member) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Bitcoin is a form of virtual currency that can be used as a medium of exchange for goods or services. Different from other forms of virtual payment, bitcoin is de-centralized and puts all of the power in the hands of the user, rather than a banking institution. However, bitcoin's ability to develop as a renowned medium of exchange has been impeded, potentially due to a lack of knowledge, active bitcoin platforms, and support. In this paper, I conduct a survey to understand factors that affect households' adoption of bitcoin. In particular, I focus on factors that capture the potential benefit and cost of adopting bitcoin. Through a public survey, participants are asked a series of questions on their willingness to adopt bitcoin. I found significant results stating that subjects were more inclined toward bitcoin contingent upon the number of platforms accepting it, the number of acquaintances using bitcoin, and the degree of personal knowledge participants have about bitcoin. These findings suggest that perceived benefit captured by network effect and convenience of use, as well as the potential cost captured by uncertainty help shape the adoption of bitcoin.
ContributorsMorrissey, Michael Joshua (Author) / Wang, Jessie (Thesis director) / Ray, Colter (Committee member) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
I study the relation between firm debt structure and future external financing and investment. I find that greater reliance on long-term debt is associated with increased access to external financing and ability to undertake profitable investments. This contrasts with previous empirical results and theoretical predictions from the agency cost literature, but it is consistent with predictions regarding rollover risk. Furthermore, I find that firms with lower total debt (high debt capacity) have greater access to new financing and investment. Lower leverage increases future debt issues and capital expenditures, and firms do not fully rebalance by reducing the use of external financing sources such as equity. Finally, my results support the view that greater reliance on unsecured debt can increase future debt financing. Overall, my paper offers new insights into how aspects of debt structure, in particular maturity, are related ex-post to firms' ability to raise new financing and invest.
ContributorsFlynn, Sean Joseph (Author) / Tserlukevich, Yuri (Thesis advisor) / Hertzel, Mike (Committee member) / Stein, Luke (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017