A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management in Finance and Investment, 2017 / Capital markets reforms in emerging, and particularly African markets are of a growing concern. Despite various institutional reforms that began in the early 1980s, the capital markets in emerging countries still exhibit signs of illiquidity, high volatility of returns, high concentration levels and inefficiency. Ambiguous results for such reforms have brought into question the affectivity of major capital markets reforms such as change of settlement cycles, particularly in countries where stock markets are sponsored with public funds. This thesis, therefore, intends to assess the effectiveness of capital markets reforms on development of stock markets by looking at the impact of changing settlement cycle on risk and liquidity at JSE. The objective is met through an assessment of a link between institutional structures and stock micro-structural variables, especially liquidity and risk in the literature review and an assessment of past studies on effects of stock market reforms and changes of settlement cycle on liquidity, risk and efficiency of stock markets. The study then tests the effects of settlement cycle on risk by assessing changes in abnormal returns and changes of variance of returns as a result of settlement cycle change at JSE. It also looks at the impact on liquidity by assessing the effects on the illiquidity measure first proposed by Amihund and Mendeison (2002). The study finds that change of settlement cycle at JSE had positive effects of reducing risk and increasing liquidity. The study also finds that there are no effects on trading activity and concludes that changing settlement cycle impacts largely on risk and to a smaller extend liquidity. / MT 2019

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In Fulfilment of the Ph.D. Programme in Finance Graduate School of Business Administration University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg, South Africa / E.K. 2019

Given the numerous benefits noted in academic research from having social capital, investigators may now turn to looking at what makes a person likely to create it. In this study I examine whether building social capital in high school through participation in religious, athletic, and volunteer activities makes individuals more likely to continue to create it as adults through participation in similar activities. Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study, I employ both multilevel and seemingly unrelated regression models. I find that early participation in religious and athletic activities increases the likelihood of doing two out of three social activities as adults, and that volunteering in high school increases the likelihood of doing all three activities in adulthood. This suggests that one way of maintaining high social capital levels in this country is by promoting teenagers' participation in religious, athletic, and especially volunteer activities while in high school.

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For the past forty-two years, the debate has raged over the optimal use of debt in the firm?s capital structure. Numerous studies have looked at the factors that affect a firm?s capital structure, in both the domestic and foreign markets. Many of these studies have focused their attention on the U.S. and developed countries. Similarities and differences between the U.S. and other industrialized countries have been explored and noted. The objective of this study is to determine if there are similarities between the factors that determine capital structure in emerging markets and those of more developed nations. Are the determining factors different for emerging markets and what are possible explanations for these difference? This study attempts to determine if factors that have been shown to influence the capital structure of developed nations are, in fact, influential in emerging market. The study also incorporates additional factors that may be particular to emerging markets to determine if they have an impact of the firm?s choice of capital structure. This study finds that capital structure determinants are more portable to firms in Asian markets than in Latin American markets. The study also finds that the means by which debt is measure does, in fact, have a bearing on the significance of the explanatory variables.

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