This thesis examines how industry differences affect both corporate financial policies and valuation. Chapter 1 studies the impact of a firm‟s product market power, through the channel of business risk, on its dividend policy. Using three measures of market power – the Herfindahl-Hirschman index, the degree of import competition and the Lerner Index, I find that market power positively affects a firm‟s dividend decision, both in terms of the probability of paying a dividend and the amount of the dividend. I also provide evidence that the route through which market power affects the dividend decision is business risk: a firm with greater market power is less risky and hence more likely to pay dividends and pay more dividends. Chapter 2 examines industry differences on the level of corporate cash holdings since the 1970s with a focus on high-tech versus non-high-tech firms. In contrast to the average cash-to-assets ratio of non-high-tech firms, which remained stable at a level close to that of the 1970s, the average cash ratio of high-tech firms more than tripled from 1980 to 2007. I find that this difference can be explained by changing firm characteristics across these two industrial sectors. This is due to high-tech new listings, whose changing characteristics and increasing proportion have caused the population characteristics of the high-tech sector to tilt toward those typical of firms that hold more cash. Chapter 3 investigates the industry impact on the marginal value of corporate cash holdings and how it has evolved over time. I find that on average the difference in the marginal value of cash between high-tech and non-high-tech firms has become larger during the sub-period which covers the 1990s and 2000s, as compared to earlier time periods. Furthermore, I show that this increase can be explained by changing firm characteristics related to the precautionary demand for holding cash. Overall, this thesis shows that industry differences, represented by varying degrees of market power and changing firm characteristics, have significantly affected corporate financial policies, both in terms of dividend policy and optimal cash holdings.

Efter den finansiella krisen 2007 har allt fler företag problem med likvida medel. Detta medför att riskerna för sena eller uteblivna betalningar ökar. En av de branscher som drabbats hårdast är träindustrin. För tillfället har många större företag inom branschen blivit tvungna till konkurs. Detta har en direkt påverkan på branschens underleverantörer som sätts i en försämrad situation.   Syftet med denna uppsats är att utifrån empirin beskriva och genom valda teorier förklara hur underleverantörer inom den trärelaterade industrin hanterar risken för sen eller utebliven betalning. Slutligen skapa en Cash Management-modell för att hantera risken för sen eller utebliven betalning hos en underleverantör inom den trärelaterade träindustrin.   Vi har genom semistrukturerade kvalitativa intervjuer samlat empiri från åtta underleverantörer inom träindustrin. Vi kan se att ett ökat informationsflöde, användning av tredje part, fördelning av kundportföljen, graden av beroendeskap samt aktiv betalningsuppföljning är faktorer för att minska risken för sen eller utebliven betalning.

Investment, financing and dividend policies are critical for firms. The natures of these three policies may be significantly influenced by bankers on the board. Previous studies have examined the relationship between financing policy and bankers on the board. However, the influence of bankers on the board on corporate investment and dividend policies remains unexamined. Therefore, this paper tries to shed further light on whether bankers on the board affect corporate investment-cash flow sensitivity and dividend policy. This study collects data from Taiwan publicly traded corporations that have banker directors between 2003 and 2007, together with a matching sample consisting of firms without banker directors. Variables used to construct empirical analyses are from the Taiwan Economic Journal (TEJ) database. The results show that the presence of bankers appointed to corporate directors and the percentage of banker directors positively affect the firm¡¦s investment-cash flow sensitivity positively. This study also finds a negative relationship between the presence of banker directors and the likelihood of dividend payment. The percentage of banker directors has negative impacts on the likelihood of dividend payment and corporate dividend payout ratio.

According to the existing literatures, there are few directly discussions about the relations of cash flow volatility on firm value and the issues of cash flow volatility are relatively disadvantage to those of earning volatility, arousing the interest of this study.Therefore, this study verifies the effect of cash flow volatility on firm value by using data of listed companies in Taiwan and the method of Pooled Regression. Also, the number of companies are divided up based on the median of cash flow¡Bdebt ratio and total asset, and examine which circumstances are more significant statistically. Finally, this study verifies the effect of earning volatility and earning management on firm value to explain that cash flow volatility is more effective on firm value. The empirical results show that cash flow volatility is negatively on firm value, and the effects are more significant statistically in small asset firms¡Blow debt ratio firms and high cash flow firms. But earning volatility is not significant statistically on firm value, and earning management is ineffective on firm value. The results indirectly explain that cash flow volatility is a more effective indicator on firm value and explain that managers managing earning to increase firm value are useless. According to the empirical results, there is no benefit when managers continue stabilizing earnings based on earning management. If investors continue selecting companies to invest based on earning volatility, the effects could be less than the ones of cash flow volatility. Therefore, the empirical results provide one indicator of the evaluations of firm value with managers and investors.

With the convenience of mobile network, people can do different kinds of activities, such as payments, shopping, auctions, and so on, whenever and wherever. Electronic commerce (e-commerce) has become so popular that the number of people using these online services has been increasing enormously in recent years. Hence, the security issues of e-commerce and the rights of users in transaction have raised our concerns. Electronic cash (e-cash) is definitely one of the most popular research topics among e-commerce area. It is very important that e-cash has to be able to hold the anonymity and accuracy in order to preserve the privacy and rights of customers. There are two types of e-cash in general, which are online e-cash and offline e-cash. Both systems have their own pros and cons, and they can be used to construct various applications. In this thesis, we propose a provably secure and efficient offline e-cash scheme with date attachability based on blind signature technique, where expiration date and deposit date can be embedded in an e-cash, simultaneously. With the help of expiration date, the bank can manage the huge database much more easily against unlimited growth, and the deposit date cannot be forged so that users are able to calculate the amount of interests they can receive in the future correctly. Furthermore, our scheme maintains the properties of e-cash, which are anonymity control, double-spending checking and unforgeability. We also provide security analysis and formal proofs in this thesis.

Issuing cash cards brings banks a large amount of money from interest and fees. Because of the reason, many banks that refused to join the competition in the beginning changed their minds and offer the similar product to compete with each other. In such intensified competition environment, in order to earn customers¡¦ attention and grab the market shares, banks simply loosen the approved criteria, increase the approved speed, and lower the interest rates. However, if banks take these actions without thinking carefully or planning cautiously, it is very easy to have problems in the risk management. This research try to from the organization staffs¡¦ point of view to discuss what kinds of policies will affect their risk management perception and if there is any relationship between perception and achievement. Besides, this research also tries to understand where risk management should put great emphasis and what kinds of risks banks should pay attention when operating the business of cash cards This research assumes different card approved time, interest rates, credit limit update time, and credit evaluation systems will affect cash cards risk management perception. And the results find that higher interest rates and credit evaluation systems designed by foreign have significant effect for cash cards risk management perception. Besides, procedures planning and customers choosing will also affect the perception. All in all, banks with better risk management perception have better performance in the market shares. As for the risk sources, the main risks come from customers choosing. Therefore, banks should have developed credit risk measure systems, or in the future banks will suffer because of these problems.

Customer is one of the most important profit resources for a firm. It is increasingly apparent that management will make a decision by customer value. This research focuses on the most critical aspect of a firm: customer lifetime value. It is used to valuing customer lifetime value by discount cash flow approach. This research uses the real option approach (ROA) and connects the concept of customer lifetime value in marketing to build a new valuation model. Real option approach is a new method for estimating the value. It resolves some disadvantage which traditional financial models such as discount cash flow approach can not value the managerial flexibility. In practice, management has many options. These options provide flexibility that adds to the value of customers. The customer investment (e.g., service and advertising) can be deferred at the design phase and under uncertainty, it can be expanded or extended if it does better than expected, or abandoned if it gets worse. There are various types of options that are related to valuing customers, such as deferral, abandonment, expansion, and contraction of investment. This research provides good solution to value customer lifetime value by using real option approach and uses bank wealth management programs as practice evidence. This research builds a fitness model to value managerial flexibility. This research finds out that the domestic banks original set up the VIP migration boundary according to American experience are unreasonable and should be adjusted. Besides, when domestic banks set up the VIP migration boundary, the most important factor they should consider is deposit growth rate instead American experience. Finally, the practice evidence of the influence the expected factors on VIP migration boundary confirms with this research¡¦s expectation.

Due to the growing interest in electronic commerce, more and more transactions now happen online. Thus, fair transactions between customers and merchants are getting important. To gain the fairness of the exchange of digital items, fair exchange protocols have been proposed and well studied. Most of the traditional fair exchange protocols are concerned about the exchange of digital items, such as digital signatures, contracts, and documents. Recently, researchers pay attention to the exchange of digital goods along with electronic cash, and have proposed some fair transaction protocols based on electronic cash. To buy digital contents via electronic cash through network, the anonymity property as traditional cash possesses must be guaranteed. It means that the payment information of the customer cannot be revealed to anyone else including the trusted third party (TTP) who helps the customer and the merchant with resolving possible disputes in the protocol. Since the customer and the merchant may not trust each other in an electronic transaction. In a fair exchange protocol, a TTP is employed to achieve true fairness. An on-line TTP has to take part in all transactions while they are proceeding. Despite it can gain true fairness, it is inefficient due to on-line interaction with the TTP. On the other hand, an off-line TTP does not need to join in the transaction protocol in normal cases. Instead, it participates in the protocol only when disputes happen. It is efficient and fair, and more feasible in practical situations. In this thesis, we propose a fair transaction protocol based on electronic cash. With the extended research on electronic cash, we have designed a fair transaction protocol that is suitable for any electronic cash system. By using an off-line TTP, the protocol is more efficient and practical. Furthermore, payment information of the customer cannot be known to anyone else including the TTP, and thus, the anonymity of the customer is protected completely in our protocol.

The technology of electronic cash makes it possible to transmit digital money over communication networks during electronic transactions. Owing to the untraceability and unforgeability properties, electronic cash can protect the privacy of customers and guarantee the security of payments in the transactions. This manuscript introduces an efficient electronic cash protocol where it only requires minimal storage for each customer to withdraw w dollars from the bank and spend the w dollars in a sequence of transactions. Compared with traditional electronic cash protocols, the proposed method greatly reduces not only the storage required for the customers but the communication traffic in the transactions as well. Furthermore, the computation cost of the entire protocol is lower than the traditional ones and it also achieves the customer efficiency property. It turns out that the proposed protocol is much more suitable for the storage-limited or hardware-limited environments, such as smart card computing or mobile commerce, than the traditional electronic cash protocols in a sequence of payments. In addition, we examine the security of the proposed electronic cash protocol from the customer¡¦s, the shop¡¦s, and the bank¡¦s points of view, respectively. Since the proposed protocol is based on a generic partially blind signature scheme, it can be implemented by any partially blind signature scheme as long as it is secure and user efficient.

Based on the trend of dividend payout ratio from 1986 to 2004 in Taiwan, it appears the companies have experienced two different stages of cash dividend policies. Before 1997, the cash dividend payout ratio declines slowly. But starting 1998, the payout ratio raises substantially, and the sum of cash dividend appears the same trend. Investigate the companies that pay cash dividend out, discover that they concentrate on those make a earning, and focus on those have high profit year by year. The sample is selected from listed companies in Taiwan Stock Market from 1988 to 2004 , not including financial and utility companies. This thesis uses binary logistic regression to test the relationship between company¡¦s characteristics and paying cash dividend, and survey whether this characteristics are the reason to make the cash dividend payout ratio raises quickly. The result of this research found that there is positive relationship between the payout of cash dividend, the company size, profitable ability, and free cash flow ratio. Moreover, there is negative relationship between the payout of cash dividend, growing opportunity, and liability ratio. But among the two variables measuring the growing opportunity, the asset growing ratio has a better interpretation in the earlier stage; and the market-to-book ratio does in the later stage. On the base period of 1988 to 1997, use binary logistic regression and portfolios to set up a model to fit the cash dividend policies. The overall empirical evidence implies the company¡¦s characteristic don¡¦t change the companies¡¦ tendency of paying cash dividend. In other words, the phenomenon of cash dividend payout ratio raising actually is caused by the increasing fundamental tendency of the sample companies paying cash dividend.