<p>This thesis attempts to establish what determines financial development in Africa by making use of cross sectional and panel data techniques. Financial development, the dependent variable, is measured using the banking sector indicator liquid liabilities (M3) while trade openness, financial openness and the GDP growth rates are used as independent variables. The data used in this research ranges from 1975-200, though for the cross sectional analysis particular years (1975, 1985, 1995, and 2005) are focused on.</p><p>The empirical results from both regression types generally suggest that trade openness has a significantly positive effect on Africa’s financial development. Cross-sectional results show that financial openness and the GDP growth rate are significantly negative in 2005. With the panel data results, financial openness is significantly negative in explaining financial development, while the GDP growth rate is insignificant suggesting that it is not an important determinant of financial development for African countries.</p>

<p> </p><p>This bachelor thesis examines the credit market behaviour in the Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway), post financial liberalization, during the late 1980´s and early 1990´s. The explanatory variables used to determine bank lending are the time lags of bank lending, property prices, GDP and interest rates.</p><p>The variables’ impact on bank lending is tested and displayed by using an OLS model,presented by Goodhart and Hofmann (2007), and descriptive statistics.</p><p>The rolling OLS regressions show that during times of financial liberalization, property prices had an increased effect on real bank lending in Sweden and Finland. The same investigation method supports that although positive, property prices’ effect on lending did not increase in Norway and Denmark. Even so, investigations suggest that one should be careful to assume too many similarities between the countries in the causing factors of the crises. The crises occurred roughly during the same time, and the geographical connection is obvious, however each country’s individual factors differed from each other.</p><p> </p>

While finances are known to be a source of uncertainty for couples (Knobloch, 2008), the specific sources of financial ambiguity and the ways in which they are appraised and negotiated have not been explored. Framed by the lens of Uncertainty Management Theory (UMT; Brashers, 2001), the current study used face-to-face, semi-structured interviews of 40 diverse participants in married or cohabiting relationships to provide new insight into uncertainty management. The investigation uncovered the types of uncertainty experienced by participants (economic, personal, family, communication, and chronic), the ways in which people managed uncertainty (reducing, maintaining, and adapting to it through a variety of practical strategies), and barriers to uncertainty management (information, time management, sociocultural, and communication obstacles), shedding light on why people are (not) successful in managing their finances. Consistent with the tenets of UMT (Brashers, 2001), communication (or lack thereof) was critical to the process of uncertainty management, particularly with respect to reducing and maintaining uncertainty. However, this study uniquely found that collective negotiation of financial uncertainty was particularly salient. In many ways, financial uncertainty management can be conceptualized as a joint enterprise. Just as individuals negotiate uncertainty by seeking information through computer-mediated communication (e.g., the internet), mass media (e.g., magazines), and external interpersonal sources (e.g., financial advisors), this investigation found that people frequently negotiated their uncertainty with their romantic partner through communal coping. This study provides important insight into the ways in which financial uncertainty can influence people's communication, behavior, and relationships and proposes extending the theory to take into account the role that dyads, culture, and individual factors can play in shaping uncertainty management. / text

High quality financial reporting is critically important for bank regulation, particularly market discipline, but limited evidence exists on why banks provide different levels of financial reporting quality. I examine whether institutional investors and financial analysts impact bank financial reporting quality. Although I find no impact of analysts on bank financial reporting quality, institutional ownership is positively associated with financial reporting quality, and this relation is strongest for banks with high information asymmetry and for “monitoring” institutional investors. Institutional investors also sell shares following the announcement of a restatement, suggesting they are willing to use the threat of exit as a mechanism to influence bank managers and demand financial reporting quality. Finally, I find institutional investors demand financial reporting quality primarily for high risk banks and also reduce ex-ante bank risk and ex-post non-performing loans. Collectively, these results suggest institutional investors are an important component of bank governance. / text

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published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Yee Cheng Loon’s dissertation abstract Model uncertainty exists in the mutual fund literature. Researchers employ a variety of models to estimate risk-adjusted return, suggesting a lack of consensus as to which model is correct. Model uncertainty makes it difficult to draw clear inference about mutual fund performance persistence. We explicitly account for model uncertainty by using Bayesian model averaging techniques to estimate a fund’s risk-adjusted return. Our approach produces the Bayesian model averaged (BMA) alpha, which is a weighted combination of alphas from individual models. Using BMA alphas, we find evidence of performance persistence in a large sample of US equity, bond and balanced mutual funds. Funds with high BMA alphas subsequently generate higher risk-adjusted returns than funds with low BMA alphas, and the magnitude of outperformance is economically and statistically significant. We also find that mutual fund investors respond to the information content of BMA alphas. High BMA alpha funds receive subsequent cash inflows while low BMA alpha funds experience subsequent cash outflows.

What explains the creation and strengthening of international securities market standards through the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO)? This thesis addresses this question by analyzing the creation and strengthening of four of IOSCO’s international securities market standards between 1991 and 2010 relating to the following issues: the governance of cross-border financial crime, the objectives and principles of domestic securities market regulation, the regulation of credit rating agencies, and the regulation of hedge funds. This thesis argues that the creation and strengthening of these standards is derived from the role and influence of three different political actors: the transgovernmental network of securities market regulators, domestic legislatures, and states. The role and influence of these different political actors differs across issue areas and across time. To account for the differentiated sources of international securities market standards, this thesis proposes a Principal-Agent (PA) analytical framework. Domestic legislatures (the principal) delegate to securities regulators (the agent) the authority to oversee and regulate domestic securities markets by granting regulators specific forms of statutory authority. Exercising discretion within this act of delegation, domestic securities regulators act together in a transgovernmental network to create and strengthen international securities market standards. They are prompted to act by threats to the integrity and stability of developed financial centers from under-regulated or ineffectively regulated foreign financial centers, as well as by new policy preferences of domestic legislatures seeking to regulate previously unregulated financial market actors. Domestic legislatures also use multiple agents to ensure that agents act consistent with their policy preferences: their concerns about the costs of under-regulated foreign jurisdictions can generate direct pressure from states on international financial regulatory institutions to strengthen the implementation of international financial standards. This thesis makes an empirical contribution to existing literature by analyzing previously understudied international securities market standards. This thesis also makes a theoretical contribution to both IPE literature and PA theory within International Organization (IO) literature. For IPE literature, this thesis establishes a theoretical framework that accounts for the differentiated role and influence of the transgovernmental network of securities market regulators, domestic legislatures, and states in the creation and strengthening of international securities market standards. For PA theory within IO literature, this thesis highlights the role of the principled professional interests of the transgovernmental network of securities market regulators in creating and strengthening international securities market standards.

This dissertation consists of three essays on different attributes of immigrants and remittances over time. Using the recently available three waves of the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants in Canada (LSIC), our first essay investigates the relationships between socio-economic characteristics and remittance behaviour of Indian and Chinese immigrants in Canada. After conducting a logistic regression on the likelihood of remitting and an instrumental variable regression of the amount remitted, the study observes significant differences between the remittance behaviour of Chinese and Indian immigrants. While Chinese remittances are mostly affected by age, income, level of education and personal investment in home country, Indian remittances are influenced by marital status, having family members in the host country, and being involved with social/religious organization in the host country. Financial variables play significant roles for both types of immigrants. Using data from the LSIC, our second essay explores the link between health and education among recently arrived immigrants in Canada. The empirical evidence suggests that education has a positive impact on the health of newly arrived immigrants. This relationship remains valid for a few years after arrival. More educated immigrants seem to be better informed and appear to make use of health-related information. If differences in health can be explained using educational inequality then education might directly affect the quality of life. The likelihood of being in better health increases amongst those with higher levels of education. Our third essay examines whether the financial sector of a country plays a significant role in explaining a country’s capacity to take advantage of remittances to influence economic growth. Using data from 1979 to 2011 for the 33 top remittance recipient developing countries and employing the GMM approach, the study observes a positive association between remittances and growth. However, no conclusive evidence on the importance of financial development on remittance-growth nexus could be established. Moreover, remittances have the strongest effect on economic growth under repressed financial regimes. Ensuring that remittance recipients have access to financial intermediaries and promoting financial literacy may increase the positive influence of the financial sector on the relationship between remittances and economic growth.

This paper examines 878 mergers and acquisitions between 2003 and 2012 to investigate the impact of advisor choice on transaction performance. Differentiating between bulge bracket, boutique and mixed team advisors, this analysis uses cumulative abnormal announcement returns, purchase premiums, completion ratios, and deal durations as indicators of outcome. Using ordinary least squares and probit regressions an analysis of premium outcomes and target abnormal returns point to there being significant shareholder benefits to using boutique advisors. However, the use of boutiques significantly increases the length of the transaction, and appears to have no impact on the likelihood of a successful completion.