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To face the competition in the business environment, the company should continuously execute the capital investment to reinforce its competitive ability and to insure the endless business operation. Due to the capital investment involving huge money and long-term impact, the company should considerately and thoughtfully evaluate the financial feasibility of capital investment prior to making decision. Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) is usually used as benchmark to evaluate the capital investment. WACC is made up of two key elements. The cost of equity, one of both, however, is difficult to measure. This article, taking C company as an example, is focused on how to apply 3 different models such as Dividend Growth Model (DGM), Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and Free Cash Flow Model (FCF) to compute the cost of equity as well as on analyzing the outcomes of those models. The outcomes of DGM, CAPM and FCF are respectively 11.82%, 14.2%, and 10.50%, and the highest one is the outcome computed from CAPM. The outcomes computed from both DGM and FCF are narrowly different. As compared with actual rate of return of C company stock (11.6% adjusted from ex-cash dividend and ex-stock dividend), it is found that the outcome of DGM is the nearest to actual rate of return of C company stock, then FCF¡¦s is next one and CAPM¡¦s is most different. However, on condition that the company did not distribute cash dividend in its record or stayed on the abnormal growth stage, the DGM could not be applicable. Internal capital budgeting includes expansion of production expansion, replacement, improvement and innovation. Due to the fact that the attribute of this kind of capital investment is similar to that of the company¡¦s business of line, FCF would be the most appropriate model to estimate the cost of equity to determine the WACC for the purpose of internal capital budgeting evaluation.

Due to the mature of networks and communication technologies, electronic commerce is growing up rapidly and many advanced applications in electronic commerce are developed recently, such as on-line shopping, on-line bidding, and on-line gambling. There are numerous types of gambling like typical lottery, sport lottery, and poker gambling where our research will focus on the lottery games. Because of some special characteristics of the lottery games such as fairness and anonymity, it is hard to design a perfect electronic lottery protocol. The transaction mechanism in an electronic lottery protocol is an important issue since it will affect the benefits of customers if it is not fair or secure. The generating of random winning numbers in a lottery game has been discussed in many papers, but the fairness and anonymity for purchasing tickets and claiming the prizes are only discussed in few papers where these previous results cannot completely cope with the problems of fairness and anonymity. In the thesis, we will propose two electronic lottery protocols that can achieve the fairness and perfect anonymity simultaneously.

Lots of researches and reports analyzed the success of Samsung Electronics (SEC) mostly focusing on Samsung Group. This paper attempts to look into the relationship between SEC and Samsung Group in terms of SEC¡¦s capital management, and intends to find out if Samsung Group brings advantages to SEC. The analysis in this paper is divided into two parts: ¡]1¡^ examining the source and the use of SEC¡¦s capital by comparing with AUO and PSC¡F¡]2¡^scrutinizing SEC and the Group's financial performances. Firstly, from cash flow's point of view, AUO and PSC depend on substantial financing to meet their capital gap. Differences in working capital also cause impact on cash flow from operating activities. Same results are found similarly in analyzing the SEC and the Group. Moreover, regarding the purpose the capital, SEC evidently shows higher weights in cash outflows from investment activities than in property, plant and equipment. The difference mainly lies in the cross-investments between SEC and Samsung Group. On the other hand, based on the computation of financial ratios, SEC benefits from Samsung Group's integrated supply chains in comparison with AUO and PSC, especially in terms of account receivables and inventories. However, the same advantages are not shown in account payables conversely. It is inferred that SEC supports Samsung Group through giving looser credits. To sum up, as far as cash flows are concerned, SEC is capable of operating with sufficient working capital because of diversification and cross-investment within the Group. Meanwhile, SEC exhibits superior financial ratios than its peer companies as Group's cooperation. Subsequently, it is concluded that SEC gains much stronger competitive advantages from Samsung Group.

From the Asian Finance Crisis in 1997, to many scandals in U.S.A. in 2001, and lots of fraudulent practices for many years in Taiwan, these cases severely injured the investors and the whole society. In fact, before these fraud cases happening, a lot of scholars have proposed that manager can manipulate reports with accounting tactics to manage earnings and window dress the performance of the company. After these scandals bursting, the researches which discuss how to regulate CEO¡¦s behavior by using corporate governance mechanism get more attentions. A lot of researches point out that CEO¡¦s option-based compensation might be one of the reasons which result in the self-interested behavior, and provide their views about the monitoring effects of the corporate governance mechanism. However, the researches that discuss whether CEO¡¦s self-interested behavior will influence the monitoring effects of the corporate governance mechanism are few. This paper divides the pubic listed company that had issued warrants to CEO from 2001 to 2005 into two groups by the ratio of option-based compensation in CEO¡¦s total compensation. We want to know that whether the corporate governance mechanism has the same influence in earnings management and company¡¦s performance in different CEO¡¦s option-based compensation ratio. The corporate governance and compensation variables we used are institutional ownership in the firm, the number of institutional directors, board size, percent of independent outside directors on the board, percent of inside directors on the board, director and executive officer stock ownership, company size, and CEO¡¦s option-based compensation ratio. The conclusions as follows: 1. CEO¡¦s option-based compensation ratio forms the threshold effect to the monitoring effect of the corporate governance mechanism. When CEO¡¦s option-based compensation takes particular proportion of total CEO¡¦s compensation, the corporate governance mechanism will be more effective. 2. The corporate governance mechanism that has significant influence in earnings management and operating performance will be different when CEO¡¦s option-based compensation ratio is different. 3. Among these corporate governance mechanism, percent of independent outside directors on the board is the only one that can have similar and significant influence in earnings management no matter how high the CEO¡¦s option-based compensation ratio is. It may relate to the independence of independent outside directors.

Construction industry is a one of the most risky sectors due to high level of uncertainties included in the nature of the construction projects. Although there are many reasons, the deficiency of cash is one of the main factors threatening the success of the construction projects and causing business failures. Therefore, an appropriate cash planning technique is necessary for adequate cost control and efficient cash management while considering the risks and uncertainties of the construction projects. The main objective of this thesis is to develop a realistic, reliable and cost-schedule integrated cash flow modeling technique by using fuzzy set theory for including the uncertainties in project cost and schedule resulting from complex and ambiguous nature of construction works. The linguistic expressions are used for utilizing from human judgment and approximate reasoning ability of users for reflecting their experience into the model to create cash flow scenarios. The uncertain cost and duration estimates gathered from experts are inserted in the model as fuzzy numbers. The model provides the user different net cash flow scenarios with fuzzy formats that are beneficial for foreseeing possible cost and schedule threats to the project during the tender stage. The model is generated in Microsoft Excel 2007 using Visual Basic for applications and the model is applied to a case example.

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This dissertation studies the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and its effects on foreign exchange markets and corporate cash holdings. These two potential effects are examined in the dissertation in two separate essays. The first essay examines the validity of the purchasing power parity (PPP) condition during three distinct exchange rate regimes (floating-rate, target-zone arrangement, and fixed-rate or common currency) from January 1973 through January 2004. My results support PPP, but I find that PPP during the common currency regime holds in fewer EMU countries than during the alternative exchange rate regimes. In addition, PPP between currency blocs holds for all countries examined during the first two regimes, but deteriorates after the introduction of the euro for the EMU countries as opposed to the non-EMU countries. I do not obtain strong evidence supporting PPP for the EMU countries since the euro adoption, but the faster mean reversion I observe in the few EMU countries where PPP does hold, may signal higher market efficiency and economic integration in the future. The second essay investigates corporate liquidity (cash holdings of firms) from 15 European Union (EU) countries [12 Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) countriesthat adopted the euro, and 3 non-EMU countries] from 1993 to 2002 using a dynamic panel data model. My main contributions to the corporate liquidity literature are fourfold. First, I provide evidence that creditor rights also affect corporate liquidity and their effect is more consistent than that of shareholder rights. Second, I show that the recent formation of EMU affects corporate liquidity. Debt and net working capital are better substitutes for cash in EMU countries than non-EMU countries. The adoption of a common currency reduces cash holdings in EMU countries. Third, my results suggest that agency theory plays an important role in explaining corporate liquidity. In particular, the agency view explains corporate liquidity better for EMU firms, probably because of an enhanced capital market integration that weakens the transaction and precautionary motives of holding cash. Fourth, I show that dealing with the endogeneity problem in corporate liquidity studies is important.

Interest rate futures have been traded in TAIFEX (Taiwan Futures Exchange) since 2004, but its trading volume is relatively behind expected. However, based on the scale of cash market and the hedge demand for bond, interest rate futures should have potential to boom. According to the definition of Success or Failure of future contract and suggestion to Taiwan interest rate future, this project intends to analyze Bond Futue and Commerical paper future through six parts: ¡§the size of cash market¡¨, ¡§Trading volume and cash price¡¨, ¡§Concentration in cash market¡¨, ¡§cash and future price¡¨, ¡§Trading volume of interest rate future¡¨, ¡§Cross Hedge Market¡¨. Then searching the dependent variable is suitable for practical model. This article is based on model of Black(1986), which trading volume as independent variable and hedge ratio, cash price, and size of cash market as dependent variable, and add ¡§Promtional policy to interest rate future¡¨, ¡§Trading volume of substitue contract¡¨, ¡§Concentraction ratio of large four traders¡¨ to be new dependent variable. The result reveals thar the key factor to influence trading volume is¡§Promtional policy to interest rate future¡¨, and trading volume of interest rate future will fall without promotion policy. The relation between trading volume and ¡§liquidity of cross hedge market¡¨ is significantly negative, hedgers prefer to use cross hedge than interest rate future. ¡§The size of cash market¡¨ and trading volume are significantly positive. The larger size of cash market is, the less price control power of traders will get.

Computer industry is one of the most outstanding paradigms of value growth in the twentieth century. And Taiwan¡¦s computer-related industry has also developed since the early beginning of the twentieth century. Since 1980, the electronics industry in Taiwan has taken only twenty years or so to be the main competence advantage, which creates the highest value of output. Seeing the module characteristic of Taiwan¡¦s electronics industry, and the awareness of the entrepreneur network, this study hopes to combine the two concepts to have a clear understanding of the phenomenon about how the electronics industry rose rapidly in Taiwan, and also hopes to figure out the business performance of each leading firm in the most important five component areas in Taiwan¡¦s electronics industry. This study has chosen current operating value (COV) to be the main concept, which was advocated by G. Bennett Stewart (1990). And through the study of each company¡¦s free cash flows, this study then further examines the relationships among the free cash flows (FCF), the company¡¦s current operating value (COV) and market value (MV). That is, this thesis is to study whether a firm makes proper use of its cash flows will help bring positive market values to itself, and to see the range of the market value added (MVA) it will bring to the firm. This study has used the dimensions mentioned above. Based on the references, the sample firms are those with a long history or the leading companies in the areas of the top five components in Taiwan¡¦s electronics industry. And all the finance-related information of the sample firms is derived from the TEJ Database with a period of from 1991 to 2006. The variables then are calculated, and the hypotheses are defined and testified. At last, statistics is used to analyze the data of the outcomes. The study shows that if we examine a firm¡¦s performance by way of the free cash flows, the more stable business performance the sample firms has, the more the firm¡¦s current operating value at the t period can anticipate the firm¡¦s market value at the t+1 period. Besides, for those component firms with a higher accumulated operating cash flows than accumulated investment cash flows, their current operating value can create more added market values. Based on the two results, a firm¡¦s conduction of free cash flows will have a direct influence on the firm¡¦s stability of business performance, and those firms with more stable performance will create positive added market values.