Concerns about the state of public finances in the main advanced economies have increased as a result of the global financial and economic crisis that started in late 2007 - 2008. The fiscal solvency of several euro area peripheral countries has been put under the spotlight of the market participants who started to believe that a sovereign default was likely to happen in an advanced economy member of the euro area. This thesis seeks to investigate the sovereign risk in the euro area countries during the period before, during and after the crisis by focusing on the sovereign bond and credit default swaps spreads and the factors that drive them. In Chapters 2, we investigate the determinants of the government bond yields and sovereign credit default swaps. In our analysis for the government bond yields we find that the macroeconomic fundamentals used in our analysis are highly significant for the periphery countries, while they are less or not significant at all for the core euro area countries. We also find evidence that during the crisis the fluctuations of the government bond yields are not only explained by the macroeconomic fundamentals but also explained by factors related to the uncertainty in the euro area. In Chapter 3, we employ the panel cointegration approach in order to investigate the macroeconomic and financial indicators that impacted the sovereign credit default swaps in the crisis period using data from October 2008 until December 2014. We provide fresh evidence that the financial indicators, proxied by the iTraxx index as well as liquidity indicators, proxied by the bid-ask had a dominant role in explaining the CDS in almost all countries. In Chapter 4, in regard to the study of the price discovery relationship between the government bond yields and sovereign CDS, we suggest the use of cointegration methodology and also test for a structural break using the Gregory and Hanson approach to investigate the linkages between the two instruments. The structural break test suggests that the relation changed during the crisis and that the price discovery took place in the CDS market. Finally, in Chapter 5, we investigate the main factors causing the sovereign defaults. We use a panel of 99 countries to assess the impact that various macroeconomic and political risk indicators have on sovereign defaults on foreign currency bank loans, foreign currency bonds and local currency debt, utilizing an extended database constructed by the Bank of Canada. Our results suggest that the favorable economic indicators, lower debt levels, and higher political stability all reduce the likelihood of default. We also find that the capital outflows restrictions are positively associated with higher probability of default.

acase@tulane.edu / 1 / HyunJun Na

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 128-130).

Since early after its discovery in 1981, AIDS has often been framed as a sexual disease spread through deviant and hypersexualized populations, perhaps nowhere more so than in Africa. Much has been written about the pandemic in Africa, with the majority of recent attention placed on the sexual transmission of the virus. Omitted from the discourse are other possible avenues of transmission. My thesis hopes to highlight this problem by identifying key works contributing to the sexual discourse, and drawing attention to other possible areas of research which could broaden the scope of research on AIDS in Africa. In this thesis, Edward Saids idea of Orientalism is used as a framework through which to understand the creation of the sexual discourse, arguing that it has become dominant and therefore obstructing alternate avenues of scholarship and investigation. Due to this focus on promiscuity and sex, the literature on the transmission through medical injections was omitted. The focus on sexual transmission as the basis of the pandemic has excluded much discussion on other contributing factors, such as poverty. Arguments for the role of poverty in HIV transmission often centre on sex. For example, women forced into transactional sexual relations or sex work, or movements to urbanization that weaken cultural mores and norms and result in promiscuous sexual relations. The emphasis on the sexual transmission of AIDS in Africa, at the expense of thorough analysis of the non-sexual transmission, has stunted the understanding AIDS, placing blame for the transmission onto Africans themselves, turning AIDS into an African problem.

Small businesses significantly rely on debt financing. However, it is challenging for them to convince the lenders on their creditworthiness because of the agency problems rooted in information asymmetry. Professionalization, as one of the signal devices, may carry positive information about a small firm since it helps enhance the firm value by aligning owner and managers interests. If firm value goes up, the financial leverage drops without any new external debt financing. Thus, it is safer for the lenders to provide the capital. Unfortunately, whether professionalization helps mitigate the lender-borrower conflict of interest has not been investigated in the previous literature. This study intends to help fill in this gap by investigating the influence of professionalization on small business debt financing. Our empirical results show that professionalization tends to increase the use and the amount of new venture debt financing. Findings also indicate that the solution to owner-manager agency problem can also help alleviate the creditor-shareholder conflict of interests in new venture debt financing.

Small businesses significantly rely on debt financing. However, it is challenging for them to convince the lenders on their creditworthiness because of the agency problems rooted in information asymmetry. Professionalization, as one of the signal devices, may carry positive information about a small firm since it helps enhance the firm value by aligning owner and managers interests. If firm value goes up, the financial leverage drops without any new external debt financing. Thus, it is safer for the lenders to provide the capital. Unfortunately, whether professionalization helps mitigate the lender-borrower conflict of interest has not been investigated in the previous literature. This study intends to help fill in this gap by investigating the influence of professionalization on small business debt financing. Our empirical results show that professionalization tends to increase the use and the amount of new venture debt financing. Findings also indicate that the solution to owner-manager agency problem can also help alleviate the creditor-shareholder conflict of interests in new venture debt financing.

Since early after its discovery in 1981, AIDS has often been framed as a sexual disease spread through deviant and hypersexualized populations, perhaps nowhere more so than in Africa. Much has been written about the pandemic in Africa, with the majority of recent attention placed on the sexual transmission of the virus. Omitted from the discourse are other possible avenues of transmission. My thesis hopes to highlight this problem by identifying key works contributing to the sexual discourse, and drawing attention to other possible areas of research which could broaden the scope of research on AIDS in Africa. In this thesis, Edward Saids idea of Orientalism is used as a framework through which to understand the creation of the sexual discourse, arguing that it has become dominant and therefore obstructing alternate avenues of scholarship and investigation. Due to this focus on promiscuity and sex, the literature on the transmission through medical injections was omitted. The focus on sexual transmission as the basis of the pandemic has excluded much discussion on other contributing factors, such as poverty. Arguments for the role of poverty in HIV transmission often centre on sex. For example, women forced into transactional sexual relations or sex work, or movements to urbanization that weaken cultural mores and norms and result in promiscuous sexual relations. The emphasis on the sexual transmission of AIDS in Africa, at the expense of thorough analysis of the non-sexual transmission, has stunted the understanding AIDS, placing blame for the transmission onto Africans themselves, turning AIDS into an African problem.

There is international trend for the enterprises to develop to business groups. There are more and more large-sized or medium-sized business groups in Taiwan. However, the groups¡¦ diversification strategies often result in high risks. Especially the unrelated diversification. The Management has a motivation to do the earnings management when dealing with the non-core business. If the earnings quality is manipulated by the management, it will cause the investors to ignore the risk which diversification strategy will bring. So far, there is no research about the the impact of earnings management on medium-sized business group. The purpose of this research is to examine whether medium-sized business groups¡¦ management has a motivation to make earnings management. The results show that¡G 1. There are no direct relationships between related diversification, unrelated diversification and earnings management. It is considered that medium-sized group business probably be family enterprises with centralized shareholding. The management doesn¡¦t have strong intention to make earnings management. 2. Debt/Equity has positive correlation on earnings management. The creditor often has restriction to minimum working capital and highest-level liability ratio of the borrower. The management has a motivation to choose appropriate accounting principle to correspond with the each given financial ratio.

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This dissertation examines issues in banking and the financing of corporate investment. The first chapter investigates the impact of changes in a bank's health on the investment behavior of its current borrowers for a panel of U.S. firms. I find that, after controlling for aggregate credit availability and the condition of outside banks, firms reduce their investment when the health of their primary bank deteriorates. This effect is only present while the firm maintains a borrowing relationship with the bank and does not appear to be driven by changes in region or industry specific investment opportunities. The health of the existing lender is more important for younger, more opaque firms with greater reliance on their primary bank. I also find that this effect became less significant after the early 1990s, suggesting that bank dependence appears to diminish during long periods of stability. However, results from the recent financial crisis show that healthy banking relationships remain very important to U.S. firm investment. The second chapter, adapted from joint work with Richard Lowery, examines the determinants of covenant structure in private debt contracts. While previous studies have demonstrated a relationship between firm characteristics and the overall strictness of loan contracts, few studies have examined why covenants are written on a range of accounting variables and what determines their selective use. Using a simple model of firm investment where firms face uncertain cash flows and investment opportunities, this essay characterizes the conditions under which it is optimal for a debt contract to specify a restriction on investment or to specify a minimum cash flow realization. Consistent with this model, empirical evidence demonstrates that the application of covenants based on these variables is not necessarily monotonic in firm risk. While the financially riskiest firms tend to employ capital expenditure covenants, cash flow and net worth covenants are most common among moderately risky firms with greater profitability and firms with stronger baking relationships. The results also highlight the importance of debt covenants in both mitigating agency frictions and maximizing the value of future private information. / text