Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Capitalists and financiers Corporations'

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2006.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-65). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Corporate finance researchers have long been puzzled by low corporate debt ratios given debt's corporate tax advantage. What makes the capital structure debate especially intriguing is that the different theories represent such different, and in some ways almost diametrically opposed, decision-making processes.

Using a random sample of transactions data from the time period of September 1, 1978 through August 31, 1985, the high end-of-day transaction returns noted by Wood, Mclnish and Ord and by Harris were examined to determine their persistence over time and their relationship to a commonly used measure of daily security performance. Additionally, final transactions were classified by type of price change-reversal or continuation-in order to document whether the high end-of-day returns are the result of security price appreciation or the result of increases in transactions at the ask price. New information provided by this study can be summarized as follows: 1. The end-of-day anomaly persisted over the time period of the study and appeared to be strongest in the last three years. 2. A Friday effect was found in that the mean return to the final transaction on Friday was at least as great or greater than the mean final transaction returns on the other days of the week. 3. A relationship was found to exist between CRSP excess return level (good day/bad day) and the final transaction return, and there was evidence that the final transaction may have had a large impact on the CRSP excess return. 4. Reversals are more frequent than continuations on the final trade, particularly after 3:56pm, and the mean return to reversals is greater than the mean return to continuations.
Ph. D.

The evolution of policy regarding the black bourgeoisie -- Issues in the struggle for black capitalism -- The roles and effects of NAFCOC (National African Federation Chamber of Commerce) and FABCOS (Foundation of Business and Consumer Service) -- The development of black capitalists in the urban areas -- Constraints on, and the performances of black entrepreneurs -- 'Normalisation' of the economic playing field.

Systematic mispricing by the state-of-the-art option pricing models is a paradox in financial economics as both the magnitude and direction of the mispricing is debated. The models have been found to overprice out-of-the-money and deep-in-the-money call options while underpricing in-the-money and deep-out-of-the-money calls. In addition, research has shown these biases have different signs in different time periods. We propose that when investors maximize expected utility for Friedman-Savage-Markowitz utility functions, the option mispricing observed in the market will result. The theories and empirical tests in the literature of higher-order utility functions and risk-neutral valuation (RNV) in the options market are presented. Though investor attitudes towards risk are irrelevant in the non-arbitrage world of modern option pricing, to the extent the options market does not meet the non-arbitrage conditions, investor risk preferences will affect the pricing of options. Risk-loving traders will bid up market prices relative to risk-neutral model prices; risk-averse traders will bid down prices. And investor risk preferences can, and do, change over time as market conditions change. New tests are run to analyze the relationship between mispricing biases and investor preferences before and after the historic stock market crash of October 19, 1987. We find mispricing biases which imply a decreased risk aversion on the part of investors in the IBM call option markets for the period prior to the market crash and mispricing biases which imply an increased risk-averse (and decreased risk-loving) behavior in those markets following the crash. Similar analyses are also performed in the Microsoft call options markets with less conclusive results.
Ph. D.

Although there is ample evidence of the heterogeneity of investors' expectations of security returns (Cragg and Malkiel, 1982), few studies have attempted to relate this divergence of investor opinion directly to security returns. Barry and Brown (1984) argue that divergence of investor opinion results from differing levels of estimation risk across securities. Furthermore, their model shows that the OLS estimate of beta, used in most empirical studies requiring excess returns, underadjusts for a security's systematic risk when investors' expectations are highly dispersed and overadjusts when such divergence of opinion is low. This hypothesis is tested in the present study using various measures of divergence of analysts‘ forecasts of earnings per share for individual firms. The results of exhaustive data analysis strongly reject the notion of such a bias in the OLS derived excess returns or in actual returns. Market reaction to revisions in the mean and standard deviation of analysts' firm-specific forecasts of earnings per share is also examined. Security prices do not appear to react in a systematic manner to revisions in the standard deviation of analysts' forecasts. However, there is evidence of a reaction to revisions in the mean of such forecasts both before and after the publication of this information suggesting that new information is contained in consensus forecasts of earnings per share when released to subscribers.
Ph. D.

This thesis focuses on a central behavioral paradox in the asset management community. Recent decades have brought an upsurge in initiatives throughout the investment community to voluntarily integrate sustainability issues into investment decisions. The financial crisis has however revealed behavioral inconsistency and deepening irresponsibility. Today, sustainable investments represent USD 10.7 trillion, or 7% of the entire market, of assets under management and it is growing steadily.

One important driver of this growth was the emergence of specialized research agencies that standardized measurement of companies’ environment, social, and governance (ESG) performance and sold such information as a tool to evaluate or pressure corporate conducts. More recently, sell-side research, financial news, and market-index providers joined the ESG information market, where they aim to support more mainstream asset managers in integrating ESG information into investment decisions.

A dominant assumption has taken hold in a large part of the investment and regulatory circles: asset managers’ use of ESG information will induce a behavioral change so that they automatically integrate companies’ sustainability to investment return concerns. Understandings of what constitutes sustainable investment have been largely practitioner-driven. The academic community took little interest to challenge the assumption. Remarkably, more scholars have come to assume that conformance to institutional pressures to add ESG information to investment strategies will induce more sustainable and long-term behavior of investors and companies. ESG information integration is believed to be a behavioral enabler for mainstream investors to systematically embed sustainability in investment strategies. Because of the assumption, theory building of asset manager intrinsic motivations to engage in sustainable investment remains unexplored. Main contribution of this research is to generate a deep theoretical understanding of asset manager non-conformance to the ESG pressure to engage in sustainable investment.

The research starts by questioning the dominant assumptions made in the sustainable investment field. While working in the industry, I witnessed some asset managers’ practices of replacing the externally defined ESG information with their own research based on narratives to better understand investee companies. The research question came out of this experience: why do some asset managers use ESG information to engage in sustainable investment while others do not? Do pressures to integrate ESG information really induce more sustainable behaviors on the part of asset managers? These self-inquiries led to a wide array of literature review to search for conformance and non-conformance drivers. Surprisingly, non-conformance was an under-researched theme. Given the scarcity of the research, I sought a method that would enable grounded theorizing based on asset managers’ own experience and interpretations.

Grounded theory research draws on asset manager interviews, archival documents, expert and practitioner consultations and feedback during 2007 and mid-2011. To reflect the global nature of sustainability, I focused on global equity asset managers working in thirteen institutions in three lead markets with most geographically diversified sustainable investment, UK, the Netherlands and Belgium.

Theory building from the ground up does not happen in vacuum. I developed a framework to study conformance and non-conformance drivers to facilitate the concept elicitation. The question of conformance and non-conformance has been studied by institutional, resource-based view of the firm, behavioral finance, cognitive and sensemaking theorists but in a disintegrated manner. I enhanced insights by way of aggregating and exploring the drivers. The framework illuminates the viability of both conformers and non-conformers in sustainable investment practices. Both are leadership activities of asset managers based respectively on explicit and implicit motivations. It illustrates short-term and opportunistic motivations of conforming managers, as opposed to long-term and substantial motivations of non-conforming managers to integrate sustainability and return-making in their investment decisions.

The research results presented hereafter provide a significant theoretical and empirical contribution. Drawing from insights and perspectives from the practitioners, a grounded theory model of asset manager conformance and non-conformance highlights a pivotal concept of sensemaking capacities. It reveals a counter intuitive pattern of asset manager learning. Non-conforming asset managers have developed a distinctive capacity to integrate sustainability and investment return concerns regardless of public pressures to do so. This distinctive sensemaking capacity, founded on behavioral integration of external expectations with own motivation, goal, competence and know-how, was the strategic resource for the organization. Their behavioral integration of sustainability and return generation is so highly developed, that adding the ESG information in their investment strategy would actually impair their capacity to make sense of sustainability. Indeed, I find that non-conforming asset manager teams have sustained consistent returns and increased client assets throughout the financial crisis. In absence of such behavioral integration and sensemaking capacities, conforming managers failed to sustain consistency or suffered from under-funding. To stay competitive, the latter managers have fervently demonstrated the ESG information use in their investment strategies. However, such explicit demonstration of leadership has not been accompanied by distinctive sensemaking capacities. I find that conforming managers were less capable of integrating sustainability and return-generation, which subsequently reinforced their short-termism and opportunism.

The finding of this thesis points to the importance of ‘behavioral integration’ instead of ‘explicit conformance’ of asset managers. The academic community may need to shed a more critical eye on ESG integration by asset managers. Institutional pressures to adopt such information may not induce more sustainable behavior, as ESG know-how is likely to deprive a chance to develop distinctive sensemaking capacities. Furthermore, it may even hurt the sensemaking capacities of managers who have behaviorally integrated sustainability and return-generation. While I hope to trigger a re-think amongst academics how to promote sustainable investment, my findings has theoretical and empirical contributions. The most important theoretical contribution is identification of non-conformance variables to engage intrinsically in sustainable investment. Empirical evidence on non-conformers, corroborated with resource-based view of the firm, also enhances the understanding of non-conformers’ motivation to sustain competitive advantage.

Findings also lead to managerial and policy implications. I carried out this research in the midst of the financial crisis, a time of mounting European policy debates how to build investor capacity to induce long-term and sustainable behaviors. The European Commission’s Internal Market Directorate-General is set to publish a directive proposal that mandate ESG information disclosure to companies and ESG reporting by investors. This adds weight to already published procedural measures to strengthen corporate governance at financial institutions. These policy initiatives emerged largely because of expert consultation and anecdotal evidences. In addition to recommendations to specific pieces of legislative proposals, this research makes an overarching policy proposal. The EU Commission needs to reexamine if the current policy measures lead to further symbolic demonstrations of ESG usage without accompanying sustainable behavior at the cost of real economy. EU equally needs to pay more attention to non-conforming asset managers’ distinctive capacities and enabling mechanisms. Reporting burdens may inadvertently impair non-conforming managers’ capacities to sustain long-term performance and may induce a contradictory policy consequence of increased public distrust.

Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The objective of this paper is to explain differences in the economic performance of selected advanced capitalist countries between 1960 and 1980, such as rates of unemployment, level of inflation rates and economic growth rates, with the presence or absence of corporatist arrangements between major interest groups and the State, and with the strength of leftist parties in these nations.

In reviewing the literature, I have found basically two approaches to corporatism: ( 1) a 'structural' approach, which emphasizes sociological characteristics of the actors, especially labor unions; and (2) a 'functional' approach, which stresses elements of policy formation and implementation. Using factor analysis, I will create a corporatism score for each country.

According to Olson's 'Logic of Collective Action', nations with corporatist arrangements (large and centrally organized interest groups) should do better economically (in terms of growth rates) than nations without these arrangements. However, this application has been criticized, since economic growth would be a relatively automatic function of size and degree of organization of interest groups in a given nation, and would not leave any room for strategic considerations, which can be influenced by political parties.

Therefore, I will perform a LISREL analysis for two competing models: (1) an 'additive' model, where I compare the independent effects of corporatist arrangements and leftist parties on strike activity, unemployment rates, inflation rates, and GDP growth rates; and (2) a 'multiplicative' or conditional model, where the effects of corporatism on economic performance depend on the strength of left parties, and vice versa.

My findings do not strongly support the 'additive' model, whose policy implications for countries that wish to be more successful economically in terms of growth of GDP would be to pursue more corporatist strategies. With the notable exception of economic growth rates, on which the combined effects of corporatism and left parties have a strong, negative effect, the 'multiplicative' model is far more successful in explaining differences in economic performance among nations: I have found strong negative. indirect effects of this combined index on unemployment and inflation rates. An implication is that those countries with strong left parties and already existing corporatist arrangements could pursue strategies to extend corporatist arrangements with the hope of gain, while countries without strong left parties and corporatist arrangements might abstain from a policy of becoming more corporatist, since absence of strong labor-based parties might impede rather than promote economic growth. They might even try to reduce their extent of corporatism.

Master of Arts

ABSTRACT “Almost all places are in trouble, but some are in more trouble than others" Kotler, Haider & Rein (1993) Kotler, Haider & Rein (1993) contend that all places are in trouble now, or will be in the near future. The onset of globalisation of the world's economy, country political dynamics and the accelerating pace of technological changes are some of the forces that require all places to learn how to compete on the world arena. Porter (1990) states that the framework for understanding a company’s sources of competitive advantage can be extended to the level of nations. It is basically concerned with the question as to why some nations succeed in global competition when others fail. Nations must learn how to think more like businesses if they are to survive and should begin by identifying their competitive advantages and building on them. As countries compete for inward investment, tourism and export of goods and services- success or failure can accurately be chartered, and questions of reputation, image, identity and hence marketing and branding become central to the competitive edge (Olins, 1999). Faced with the challenge of a negative image, a country must adopt a proactive stance to correct this image. This is where the question of country branding comes in. Branding a country for many is misconstrued and interpreted to simply mean designing a new logo for their country and possibly a slogan to go underneath it. However country-banding proponents highlight that there is a difference between nation branding and tourism promotion. It helps even less that there are so many communications agencies that perhaps frustrated by lack of pure strategy capacity to sell to governments, have fallen into the habit of i Sibonokuhle GUMPO - 34462481 pandering to this misconception and simply selling logos and slogans to any government prepared to buy them (Anholt, 2003). However faced with the urgent need to address the crippling impact of a negative image, countries like Zimbabwe cannot simply wait and expect things to turn out for the better. Kotler et al (1993) stress that places are not able to respond to negative images concerning their nations as quickly as negative perceptions are built, be it through media, word of mouth or other channels. As a result the importance of a pro-active response cannot be overemphasized. This study explores the current negative image of Zimbabwe and tries to define the root or source of this negative image. Having defined or spelt out what is thought to be the problem, the researcher than explores possible ways of how the stakeholders of Zimbabwe can rebrand their country reflecting on known success stories. Kotler et al (1993) contend that the central tenet of marketing places is that in spite of the powerful internal and external forces that buffet them, places have within their collective resources and people the capacity to improve their relative competitive positions. Zimbabweans in general believe that their situation has been sensationalised by the media and is not a reflection of what is on the ground. By adopting a proactive stance in rebranding their country, Zimbabweans will perhaps finally realise that when it comes to image, “being in possession of the truth is not enough, the truth has to be sold” (Anholt,all places are in trouble now, or will be in the near future. The onset of globalisation of the world's economy, country political dynamics and the accelerating pace of technological changes are some of the forces that require all places to learn how to compete on the world arena. Porter (1990) states that the framework for understanding a company’s sources of competitive advantage can be extended to the level of nations. It is basically concerned with the question as to why some nations succeed in global competition when others fail. Nations must learn how to think more like businesses if they are to survive and should begin by identifying their competitive advantages and building on them. As countries compete for inward investment, tourism and export of goods and services- success or failure can accurately be chartered, and questions of reputation, image, identity and hence marketing and branding become central to the competitive edge (Olins, 1999). Faced with the challenge of a negative image, a country must adopt a proactive stance to correct this image. This is where the question of country branding comes in. Branding a country for many is misconstrued and interpreted to simply mean designing a new logo for their country and possibly a slogan to go underneath it. However country-banding proponents highlight that there is a difference between nation branding and tourism promotion. It helps even less that there are so many communications agencies ABSTRACT “Almost all places are in trouble, but some are in more trouble than others" Kotler, Haider & Rein (1993) Kotler, Haider & Rein (1993) contend that all places are in trouble now, or will be in the near future. The onset of globalisation of the world's economy, country political dynamics and the accelerating pace of technological changes are some of the forces that require all places to learn how to compete on the world arena. Porter (1990) states that the framework for understanding a company’s sources of competitive advantage can be extended to the level of nations. It is basically concerned with the question as to why some nations succeed in global competition when others fail. Nations must learn how to think more like businesses if they are to survive and should begin by identifying their competitive advantages and building on them. As countries compete for inward investment, tourism and export of goods and services- success or failure can accurately be chartered, and questions of reputation, image, identity and hence marketing and branding become central to the competitive edge (Olins, 1999). Faced with the challenge of a negative image, a country must adopt a proactive stance to correct this image. This is where the question of country branding comes in. Branding a country for many is misconstrued and interpreted to simply mean designing a new logo for their country and possibly a slogan to go underneath it. However country-banding proponents highlight that there is a difference between nation branding and tourism promotion. It helps even less that there are so many communications agencies that perhaps frustrated by lack of pure strategy capacity to sell to governments, have fallen into the habit of i Sibonokuhle GUMPO - 34462481 pandering to this misconception and simply selling logos and slogans to any government prepared to buy them (Anholt, 2003). However faced with the urgent need to address the crippling impact of a negative image, countries like Zimbabwe cannot simply wait and expect things to turn out for the better. Kotler et al (1993) stress that places are not able to respond to negative images concerning their nations as quickly as negative perceptions are built, be it through media, word of mouth or other channels. As a result the importance of a pro-active response cannot be overemphasized. This study explores the current negative image of Zimbabwe and tries to define the root or source of this negative image. Having defined or spelt out what is thought to be the problem, the researcher than explores possible ways of how the stakeholders of Zimbabwe can rebrand their country reflecting on known success stories. Kotler et al (1993) contend that the central tenet of marketing places is that in spite of the powerful internal and external forces that buffet them, places have within their collective resources and people the capacity to improve their relative competitive positions. Zimbabweans in general believe that their situation has been sensationalised by the media and is not a reflection of what is on the ground. By adopting a proactive stance in rebranding their country, Zimbabweans will perhaps finally realise that when it comes to image, “being in possession of the truth is not enough, the truth has to be sold” (Anholt,
Graduate School of Business Leadership
MBL

This thesis models the Australian-US Dollar (AUD/USD) exchange rate with particular attention being paid to investor risk aversion. Accounting for investor risk aversion in AUD/USD exchange rate modelling is novel, so too is the method used to measure risk aversion in this thesis. Investor risk aversion is measured using a technique developed in Bliss and Panigirtzoglou (2004), which makes use of Probability Density Functions (PDFs) extracted from option markets. More conventional approaches use forward-market pricing or Uncovered Interest Parity. Several methods of estimating PDFs from option and spot markets are examined, with the estimations from currency spot-markets representing an original application of an arbitrage technique developed in Stutzer (1996) to the AUD/USD exchange rate. The option and spot-market PDFs are compared using their first four moments and if estimated judiciously, the spot-market PDFs are found to have similar shapes to the option-market PDFs. So in the absence of an AUD/USD exchange rate options market, spot-market PDFs can act as a reasonable substitute for option-market PDFs for the purpose of examining market sentiment. The Relative Risk Aversion (RRA) attached to the AUD/USD, the US Dollar-Japanese Yen, the US Dollar-Swiss Franc and the US-Canadian Dollar exchange rates is measured using the Bliss and Panigirtzoglou (2004) technique. Amongst these exchange rates, only the AUD/USD exchange rate demonstrates a significant level of investor RRA and only over a weekly forecast horizon. The Bliss and Panigirtzoglou (2004) technique is also used to approximate a time-varying risk premium for the AUD/USD exchange rate. This risk premium is added to the cointegrating vectors of fixed-price and asset monetary models of the AUD/USD exchange rate. An index of Australia???s export commodity prices is also added. The out-of-sample forecasting ability of these cointegrating vectors is tested relative to a random walk using an error-correction framework. While adding the time-varying risk premium improves this forecasting ability, adding export commodity prices does so by more. Further, including both the time-varying risk premium and export commodity prices in the cointegrating vectors reduces their forecasting ability. So the time-varying risk premium is important for AUD/USD exchange rate modelling, but not as important as export commodity prices.

This dissertation is an ethnographic description of the process by which private equity investors buy, manage, and sell companies for profit, all while private equity, as an industry, manages around $3.5 trillion of capital. Drawing from data gathered from the summer of 2012 through fall of 2014, this dissertation offers an account of investing that diverges from other ethnographic cases in that it relies on ongoing conversations about value and time that investors have, which seek to justify the decisions investors make. Once I explain how investors find and create value as well as the opportune time to invest, I explain how this negotiation fits into a stereotyped, formalized deal process, which acts like a total social fact in rearranging people and wealth in social life. I ultimately suggest that this approach to explaining the action of private equity investors has a broader use in rendering other financial capitalists ethnographically comparable to private equity investors, as well as in rendering other societal distributions of wealth and poverty comparable to that which exists in the contemporary United States.

Working capital management assists a firm in achieving improved liquidity through management of the components of receivables, inventory and payables. Previous studies have established that working capital has a strong positive correlation to profitability. These studies have also shown that the components of receivables and inventory have a positive correlation to profitability, while payables have an inverse relationship. The inverse correlation of payables in relation to profitability is contrary to the theory that advocates extending payables’ payment terms as a means of managing working capital and improving liquidity. This study attempted to ascertain whether, by applying a style-based test, to an extensive database of Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) listed South African companies, there is evidence to support a positive relationship between returns to investors and payables days. The study further applied the style-based test to the relationship between returns to investors and the management of payables in the form of change in payables days. Further data stratification was applied to industries that are more significantly invested in payables as well as to companies of increasing or decreasing momentum to differentiate the payables strategy of an increasingly profitable company versus an increasingly unprofitable company. The results of the study indicated that for those companies in industries that have significant investment in payables, management of their payables will achieve superior returns. The study also revealed that this relationship is significant for companies in the top 40% momentum return and that higher change in payables could be applied as a means of obtaining a competitive edge.
Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2014.
zkgibs2015
Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS)
MBA
Unrestricted

Two essays on the stock preference and performance of institutional investors are included in the dissertation. In the first essay, I document that mutual fund managers and other institutional investors tend to hold stocks with higher betas. This effect holds even after precisely controlling for stocks’ risk characteristics such as size, book-to-market equity ratio and momentum. This is contrary to the widely accepted view that betas are no longer associated with expected returns. However, these results support my simple model where a fund manager’s payoff function depends on returns in excess of a benchmark. For the manager, on the one hand, he tends to load up with high beta stocks since he wants to co-move with the market and other factors as much as possible. On the other hand, the manager faces a trade-off between expected performance and the volatility of tracking error. My model thus shows that the manager prefers to choose higher beta than his benchmark, and that his beta choice has an optimal level which depends on his perceived factor returns and volatility. My empirical findings further confirm the model results. First, I show that the effect of managers holding higher beta stocks is robust to a number of alternative explanations including the effects of their liquidity selection or trading activities. Second, consistent with the model predictions of managers sticking close to their benchmarks during risky periods, I demonstrate that the average beta choice of mutual fund managers can predict future market volatility, even after controlling for other common volatility predictors, such as lagged volatility and implied volatility. The second essay is the first to explicitly address the performance of actively managed mutual funds conditioned on investor sentiment. Almost all fund size quintiles subsequently outperform the market when sentiment is low while all of them underperform the market when sentiment is high. This also holds true after adjusting the fund returns by various performance benchmarks. I further show that the impact of investor sentiment on fund performance is mostly due to small investor sentiment. These findings can partially validate the existence of actively managed mutual funds which underperform the market overall (Gruber 1996). In addition, when conditioning on investor sentiment, the pattern of decreasing returns to scale in mutual funds, recently documented in Chen, Hong, Huang, and Kubik (2004), is fully reversed when sentiment is high while the pattern persists and is more pronounced when sentiment is low. Further results suggest that smaller funds tend to hold smaller stocks, which is shown to drive the above patterns. I also document that smaller funds have more sentiment timing ability or feasibility than larger funds. These findings have many important implications including persistence of fund performance which may not exist under conventional performance measures.
text

Since mining companies depend on debt and/or equity funding to sustain their operations, investors, in theory, could influence mining company policy by making financing conditional on environmental and social performance factors. The rise in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting combined with the increasing trend of Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) - different sides of the same coin - CSR provides sustainability information to the market and SRI principles influence the investment decisions of investors. The purpose of this research was to gain a deeper insight into the influence of sustainability metrics on the investment behaviour of investors when investing in the South African mining industry. The research was conducted by performing in-depth, qualitative interviews with members of the investment community which included asset owners, asset managers, chief investment officers, investment analysts and fund managers. By and large, the investment community does not consider sustainability metrics published by mining companies when making investment decisions, and the principles and use of sustainability metrics have yet to be integrated into the decision-making process of most asset managers. There is, however, an increasing awareness of the principles of responsible investment and a correlating increase in the number of asset owners and asset managers subscribing to the principle guiding bodies which augurs well for the future.
Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2014.
zkgibs2015
Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS)
Unrestricted

by Chan Cheuk Tung.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1998.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 86-90).
Abstract also in Chinese.
ABSTRACT (IN ENGLISH) --- p.ii
ABSTRACT (IN CHINESE) --- p.iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.vi
LIST OF TABLES --- p.ix
LIST OF FIGURES --- p.x
CHAPTER
Chapter I. --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1
Overview: Neglected Role of Investors' Emotion --- p.1
Inadequacies in Existing Theory and Research --- p.3
Significance of Present Study --- p.5
Chapter II. --- LITERATURE REVIEW --- p.6
Demographic Studies of Investors --- p.6
Decision Research on Choice Behavior --- p.7
Personality Trait / Cognitive Style Approach --- p.7
Situationist Approach --- p.8
Interactionist Approach --- p.9
Summary --- p.10
Findings in choice behavior research --- p.10
"Notion of ""Bounded Rationality""" --- p.10
Frameworks for task and context effects --- p.12
Decision-making as a Conflict Resolution Process --- p.13
Generalized Cost/Benefit Analysis - the Emotional Dimension --- p.14
Summary --- p.16
Chapter III. --- HYPOTHESES --- p.18
Information Acquisition --- p.18
Negative Information --- p.20
Positive and Irrelevant Information --- p.23
Evaluation and Judgment --- p.25
Strategies Formulation --- p.28
Trading Performance --- p.30
Chapter VI. --- METHODS --- p.32
Overview --- p.32
Material and Apparatus Selection --- p.33
Selection of Music --- p.33
Selection of Currency Pair --- p.35
System for Trading Simulation --- p.36
Selection of News Items --- p.37
Pretest of Treatments --- p.39
Subjects --- p.40
Procedure --- p.41
Manipulation Check - Pretest --- p.42
Likert scale Measure --- p.43
Affect Grid Measure --- p.44
Convergent Validity of Measures --- p.45
Summary --- p.46
Estimation of Power and Optimal Sample Size for the Main Experiment --- p.46
Main Experiment --- p.46
Subjects --- p.47
Procedure --- p.47
Measures of Studied Variables --- p.48
Control Variables --- p.49
Chapter V. --- RESULTS & DISCUSSIONS --- p.51
Manipulation Checks --- p.51
Reliability of Mood Measures --- p.51
Effect of Manipulations --- p.52
Effects of Control variables --- p.54
Trading Performance --- p.55
Information Acquisition --- p.59
Negative Information --- p.59
Positive and Irrelevant Information --- p.62
Time Allocation --- p.64
Summary --- p.66
Evaluation and Judgment --- p.66
Decision Time --- p.66
Decision Complexity --- p.68
Decision Accuracy --- p.70
Summary --- p.71
Strategy Formulation --- p.72
Use of Cut-loss Order --- p.72
Use of Limit-profit Order --- p.73
Investment Size --- p.73
Summary --- p.75
Discussion --- p.75
Chapter VI. --- CONCLUSION --- p.78
Discussion --- p.78
Limitations and Suggestions for Future Studies --- p.80
Suggestions to Investors --- p.76
Individual Investors --- p.82
Institutional Investors --- p.84
BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.86
APPENDICES --- p.91
Appendix 1 News Selection Phase One: Judges' Rating --- p.91
Appendix 2 Screen Layouts of the Internet Trading System --- p.92
Appendix 3 Coding Scheme -Complexity of Reasoning --- p.93
Appendix 4 Questionnaire --- p.94

The pattern of American institution building through private funding began in metropolises of all sizes soon after the nation's founding. But by 1840, Manhattan's geographical location and great natural harbor had made it America's preeminent commercial and communications center and the undisputed capital of finance. Thus, as the largest and richest city in the United States, unsurprisingly, some of the most ambitious cultural institutions would rise there, and would lead the way in the creation of a distinctly American model of high culture. This dissertation describes New York City's cultural transformation between 1840 and 1940, and focuses on three of its enduring monuments, the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Opera. It seeks to demonstrate how trustees and financial supporters drove the foundational ideas, day-to-day operations, and self-conceptions of the organizations, even as their institutional agendas enhanced and galvanized the inherently boosterish spirit of the Empire City. Many board members were animated by the dual impulses of charity and obligation, and by their own lofty edifying ambitions for their philanthropies, their metropolis, and their country. Others also combined their cultural interests with more vain desires for social status. Although cohesive, often overlapping social groups founded and led most elite institutions, important moments of change in leadership in the twentieth century often were precipitated by the breakdown of a social order once restricted to Protestant white males. By the 1920s and 1930s, the old culture of exclusion--of Jews, of women, of ethnic minorities in general--was no longer an accepted assumption, nor was it necessarily good business. In general, institutions that embraced the notion of diversity and adapted to forces of historical change tended to thrive. Those that held fast to the paradigms of the past did not. Typically, when we consider the history and development of such major institutions, the focus often has been on the personalities and plans of the paid directors and curatorial programs. This study, however, redirects some of the attention towards those who created the institutions and hired and fired the leaders. While a common view is that membership on a board was coveted for social status, many persons who led these efforts had little abiding interest in Manhattan's social scene. Rather, they demanded more of their boards and expected their fellow-trustees to participate in more ways than financially. As the twentieth century beckoned, rising diversity in the population mirrored the emerging multiplicity in thought and culture; boards of trustees were hardly exempt from this progression. This dissertation also examines the subtle interplay of the multi-valenced definition of "public" along with the contrasting notion of "private." In the early 1800s, a public institution was not typically government funded, and more often functioned independent of the state, supported by private individuals. "Public," instead, meant for the people. Long before the income tax and charitable deductions for donations, there was a full range of voluntary organizations supported by private contributions in the United States. This dissertation argues that in a privatist spirit, New York elites seized a leadership role, both individually and collectively, to become cultural arbiters for the city and the nation.

It is generally acknowledged that the share price of listed companies is not usually a true reflection of the value imbedded in the said companies. The main purpose of this study is to explore the correlation between selected performance measurement tools, namely Return on Equity (ROE) and Economic Value Added (EVA®), and the share price of companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The study is a quantitative one as it uses data extracted from McGregor BFA database to investigate the relationship between the variables studied. Correlation and linear regression analyses were used in determining such relationships. This study found that there is a synergy in using ROE and EVA® as performance measurement tools and that their interaction explains 8.06% of the movement in the share price of listed companies, all things being equal. Hence it is recommended to identify and study possible synergies between other performance measurement tools.
Management Accounting
M. Phil. (Accounting Sciences)