This master thesis is aimed towards answering the question What is the contribution from a company’s sector with regards to its survival of a financial crisis? with the sub question Can we use survival analysis on financial data to answer this?. Thus survival analysis is used to answer our main question which is seldom used on financial data. This is interesting since it will study how well survival analysis can be used on financial data at the same time as it will evaluate if all companies experiences a financial crisis in the same way. The dataset consists of all companies traded on the Swedish stock market during 2008. The results show that the survival method is very suitable the data that is used. The sector a company operated in has a significant effect. However the power is to low too give any indication of specific differences between the different sectors. Further on it is found that the group of smallest companies had much better survival than larger companies.

abstract: ABSTRACT This research reveals how governments cut budgets during fiscal crises and what pattern may emerge based on the cuts. It addresses a significant gap in literature by looking into the details of an agency for a full recession period to explain how cutback requirements were met. Through investigating a large Arizona state agency during the 2008 recession in the United States, the research reveals that cutback management is a stage-by-stage process lagging the immediate deterioration of the state’s economy and that patterns found among cuts are more often rational than not. Cutbacks in this agency proceeded through three stages: the beginning, middle and the end period of cuts. In each stage, the author used descriptive analysis, process map analysis and cause and effect analysis to explore the features of cuts made. These methods of analysis were used to break down an annual budget reduction into original appropriation budget cuts, mid year reductions and the final budget cuts required to end the fiscal year in balance. In addition, the analytical methods permitted more detailed analysis of specific appropriation line items. The information used was secondary data collected from seven fiscal years around the recession and from various sources, including budgetary materials, legislation, accounting materials and many program reports related to budget cuts. The findings suggested that across-the-board cuts are implemented at the beginning of cutback stage mainly to non-mandatory programs without jeopardizing the core functions of the agency. Later, in the middle period of the recession, selective cuts are made on large programs. Fund transfers and excess balance transfers are also preferred to reduce the budgets of other restricted funds. At the end stage of budget cuts, new revenue sources are established to support programs which had relied on general fund revenues in the past. Overall, the cutback process observed in this research reflects decremental and rational patterns of decision making, contrasting with the randomness observed in previous research on cutback management. Across the board cuts are decremental; the remainders are rational, even strategic decisions. This investigation reminds researchers to be aware of the context and the level of observation when analyzing cutbacks. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Public Administration and Policy 2018

This essay is an analytical study that examines the ideological features of the New Right, that has governed Britain and the United States after the 2008 financial crisis, regarding globalization. The purpose of the essay is to identify the most prominent similarities and differences in the positions of the New Right on globalization in both countries after 2008. The essay shows that the New Right differs, in Britain and the United States, in its position on globalization. In Britain, successive Conservative governments support globalization with its economic, political, cultural and ecological dimensions, but with conditions. On the other hand, Trump, the only Republican president in the United States after 2008, does not support globalization in any of its dimensions. However, there are similarities between the two doctrines on issues related to the assertion of sovereignty and national identity.

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The recent financial crisis has raised serious questions about the effectiveness of corporate governance (CG) in monitoring management and protecting investors’ interests. There is concern that ‘poor’ CG was, to a certain extent, a major cause of the current financial crisis. This thesis, therefore, investigates the crucial policy question of whether the quality of CG has any effect on financial performance, information asymmetry and on block shareholders’ investment decisions. This is achieved and presented in the form of three essays on CG practices in UK with a particular focus on the periods before and during the 2007/2008 financial crisis. The first essay aims to investigate the impact of firm-level CG on block shareholders’ investment decisions for a large sample of UK non-financial firms over the period 2005 to 2009. Using a panel data analysis, the results revealed the importance of CG for block shareholders’ investment decisions. Furthermore, the study results indicated that only institutional block shareholders consider CG to be important criteria for their investment decisions. Moreover, when the effect of CG on block shareholdings in both periods before and during crisis was examined, a significant difference in results appeared: an insignificant positive relationship in the pre-crisis period turned out to be significant during crisis. The result thus indicates that block shareholders viewed CG as particularly important during the crisis period. The second essay aims to examine the effect of CG on firm performance before and during the financial crisis. It also investigates the mediating effect of agency costs on the association between CG and firm performance. The results revealed that CG affects firm performance only in the period before the crisis, but no significant effect was found during the crisis period. Moreover, agency cost was proved to fully mediate the relationship between CG and performance in the pre-crisis period. The results point to an important issue, which is the need to re-evaluate CG not only in stable periods but also during turbulent times, and to evaluate its ability to perform effectively in such different conditions. The third essay investigates the effect of both CG and block ownership on information asymmetry. Further, the effects of CG in lessening the positive association between block ownership and information asymmetry is considered. The results revealed that CG affects information asymmetry only in the pre-crisis. In addition, block ownership was shown to have a significant and positive effect on information asymmetry during crisis periods suggesting that block shareholders benefit from their information advantage during crisis period which in turn worsens the information asymmetry problem. This suggests that block shareholders engage more in their private benefits rather than in efficient monitoring. The results also proved that CG is insignificant during turbulent period in lessening the negative effect of block ownership.

While several studies examine the managerial structure of privately owned agribusinesses, few studies take a comprehensive look at publically traded agribusiness firms. Our study examines the historical position of agribusiness compared to the market, and then studies the impact of the global economic and financial crisis. The objective of this study is to pinpoint effects of corporate financial management strategies, commonly researched in financial literature on agribusiness firms’ performance. Through utilizing a quantile regression we find that agribusiness position in times of financial crisis is directly related to firm performance. As we examine internal factors, several interesting impacts of managerial factors emerge. These results are useful for agribusiness firms seeking to improve their performance, as we show which management strategies related to capital structure, and firm size are associated with an increase in profitability based on the performance record of the agribusiness. Additionally, we examine how these factors impact internal financial distress of the agribusiness firms. Our conclusions clarify the impact of traditional financial management techniques on agribusiness firms and lead to questions for further research. Ultimately, the presented research provides a foundational knowledge of corporate agribusinesses financial performance.

This study explores the impact of ESG Scores on firm performance and seeks to establish whether the impact increased since the 2008 financial crisis. This is done by performing regressions on ESG Scores, and the respective pillars of Environmental, Social, and Governance, and firm performance, measured as both accounting-based performance, using ROA, and market-based performance, using Tobin’s Q. The study adopts a quantitative approach, utilising a random-effects model to analyse panel data across two sample periods - a pre-crisis period, from 2003-2006, and a post-crisis period, from 2010-2019. In addition, t-tests were performed to see if the impact changed significantly from the pre-crisis to post-crisis period. The study analyses data from 218 firms from the STOXX Europe 600 index, with four smaller sub-samples. The results indicate that ESG Scores have a positive impact on firm performance, with market-based firm performance being significantly correlated both before and after the crisis. Accounting-based performance, however, was only significantly correlated with ESG Scores before the crisis. In addition, the Environmental pillar was positively correlated with both measures of performance before and after the crisis, and the same was true for the Social pillar, except for with post-crisis accounting-based performance. Interestingly, the Governance pillar was not significantly correlated with performance in any of the regressions. Finally, while the average ESG Score among the observed companies increased in the post-crisis period, the impact of ESG performance on firm performance did not change significantly. The results of this study are supportive of the stakeholder theory perspective over the principal-agent theory, and show that ESG performance does indeed positively impact firm performance. Future research could explore whether other events have played a significant role in the rising importance of ESG, or if the results of the present study can be replicated across different time periods and geographical regions.

The United Kingdom Combined Code is today the most fundamental corporate governance code applicable in United Kingdom. The nation of United Kingdom encourages governance practices by implementing the Directive 2006/46/EC on a voluntary basis before being mandatory. While corporate governance is applicable to many corporations, pension providers may be seen as one of the ideal market sector for governing, since they act as institutional investors representing a major shareholder group. Institutional investors may even improve corporate governance practices as they represent a major part of public sector capital. Owning large amount of shares, their function is to supervise in the firms’ corporate governance activities in order to monitor the transparency and disclosure procedures. To be able to monitor other companies' activities, pension providers must set up an example for enforcing corporate governance practices themselves and follow them respectively.   This descriptive case study observes the corporate governance structures represented in annual reports of five large chosen pension providers during the years 2007 to 2009 capturing the financial crisis occurring in 2008, in United Kingdom. The purpose of the study is to examine if strong corporate governance is incorporated in the following pension providers, Aberdeen Asset Management plc, Aviva plc, Prudential plc, Royal London Mutual Insurance Society Limited and Standard Life plc. The focus is on board composition and established committees. The scope of this study answers the following research question: How do the five pension providers, Aberdeen, Prudential, Royal London, Standard Life and Aviva, comply with or explain deviations found in their respectively annual reports from 2007-2009 in accordance with the Combined Code 2008 and the Annotated Combined Code 2005?   Fundamental for pension providers is to work on a long-term basis with value creation as goal. Still the core focus of corporate governance remains, to create a system offering protection for all stakeholders. As the result shows, all of the five chosen corporations strongly implement national corporate governance practices throughout 2007-2009 on both board composition and established committees. Still, they suffered short-term negative fluctuations from the United Kingdom financial crises in 2008, but recovered shortly afterwards. Even though these fluctuations occurred, all of the corporations have long-term value as one of their main objectives. The long-term value can partly be sustained by strong corporate governance practices as it a main objective in corporate governance.

Economic resilience has recently enjoyed increased popularity in academic discourse, especially after the 2008 Global Crisis played havoc across the globe, but is as of now still in its infancy: A commonly agreed upon definition is yet to be found, and papers devoted to this concept are still rather scarce. It is commonly known that the manufacturing industries in European economies have generally been in decline for decades, and that they have primarily been replaced by the services sector. It has however been argued in the past that due to relatively high sunk costs, there is increased incentive for investors to keep manufacturing enterprises afloat during difficult times as long as possible, making them less likely to go out of business compared to others, thereby minimizing the initial blow of an economic shock to the respective economy and subsequently foster recovery. These assumptions are being examined in this paper by analysing data from the EU-28 starting at the outbreak of the 2008 crisis until 2015, followed by an investigation of individual economies in greater detail. The results show that more industrialised economies tend to have fared better during the crisis years and also managed to recover sooner.

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