Small and medium enterprise (SME) business owners play a significant role in the Kenyan economy as they account for approximately 78% of total employment and 57% of the new jobs created. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore what strategies some Kenyan SME business owners used within the past 5 years to access credit to improve company profitability and growth. The target population consisted of 4 SME owners of businesses located in Kakamega Town, Kenya, who have had access to credit within the past 5 years. The conceptual framework for this study was the social capital theory. Semistructured interviews were conducted and company documents were gathered. All interpretations from the data were subjected to member checking to ensure the trustworthiness of findings. Based on the methodological triangulation of the data collected, 4 themes emerged after the data analysis: (a) group lending, (b) information access, (c) education and professional background of the entrepreneur, and (d) effect of access to credit on the performance of SMEs. The application of the findings from this study may contribute to social change by providing insights and strategies for SME business owners to access credit and ensure sustainable business growth that could potentially enhance community standards of living.

Taxicab owners are losing market share to technology companies including Sidecars, Lyft, and Uber. Whereas Uber is growing rapidly, operating in over 150 U.S. cities and 58 countries with an estimated market valuation of $62.5 billion, taxicab owners have experienced a significant decline in growth because of a deficiency of business strategies. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore business strategies taxicab owners use to sustain their operations. A purposive sampling of 6 taxicab owners and managers from 6 taxicab companies in Denver County, Colorado participated in semistructured face-to-face interviews. Data from the interviews were transcribed, coded, and analyzed to ascertain themes relating to business strategies that sustain taxicab operations. Methodological triangulation was used to validate data during the analysis process. Drawing from Christensen's disruptive innovation theory, 5 main themes emerged. The 5 main themes included excellent customer service, competitive strategies, market research, adaptation to technological and cultural changes, and training. Findings showed that successful taxicab business strategies included (a) providing effective customers services, (b) formulating and using efficient competitive strategies; (c) establishing appropriate training for drivers and employees; (d) conducting market research to ascertain market trends; and (e) adapting to the dynamics of technological and cultural changes to satisfy customers' requirements. The implication for positive social change includes taxicab business owners formulating effective business strategies, thereby improving the economic well-being of local communities.

The CEO's compensation policy is one of the most important factors in an organization's success. CEO's stock options are awarded to align the interests of the CEO with the interests of the firms' stakeholders. However, lack of understanding of the relationship between firm performance and a CEO's stock options could threaten the alignment of a CEO's interests with those of the stakeholders. Grounded in agency theory, the purpose of this correlation study was to examine the relationship between return on equity, return on investment, total annual revenues, and CEOs' stock options awards, while controlling for firm size, age of CEO, and CEO tenure. Archival data from 99 U.S. pharmaceutical companies were analyzed using hierarchical linear regression. The results of the hierarchical regression analysis indicated a significant predictive model F(6, 262) = 42.065, p < 0.05, R2 = .343. However, in the final model, only firm size and CEO tenure were significant. In addition, there was no significant relationship between return on equity, return on investments, and annual revenues to CEOs' stock options. The implications for positive social change include the potential for policy makers to utilize findings in furthering dialogue related to income inequality and feeling of unfair distribution of valuable resources in the society. Pharmaceutical business leaders might affect social change by structuring CEOs' compensation based on firm performance, encouraging innovation, and improving employment opportunities in the society.

In the United States, small businesses represent 99.7% of firms that provide employment and account for over 50% of all private sector employment. Nevertheless, the rationing of small business borrowing is an indicative of acute credit constraints emanating from poverty, lack of collateral, lack of cosigners for bank loans, high administrative fees associated with processing credit loans, and information asymmetry along with other socioeconomic factors. In a 4-year study from 2004-2008, it was determined that small businesses suffer tremendously from credit rationing. The purpose of this study was to determine the induced effect of loan guarantee scheme, collateral, and leverage on credit rationing. The seminal work of Stiglitz and Weiss served as a framework for the study. The research questions were developed to inquire the relationship (influence) of loan guarantee scheme on credit rationing while controlling for collateral and leverage. Data on small businesses were collected from the Small Business Administration and the National Survey of Small Business Finances websites. Collected data (n = 1,072) of small business firms in Florida for 2015 were analyzed through applying multiple regression methodology. The study results indicated that small business participation in loan guarantee scheme had a significant influence on credit rationing when the confounding effects of collateral and leverage were statistically controlled. The findings of this research could lead to positive social change by providing small businesses with loan guarantee scheme, a government subsidy that eliminates the need for credit rationing.

Women-owned small businesses have grown 58% between 2007 and 2018. Some female owners of small businesses lack strategies to obtain financial capital to continue growth and raise profitability for their businesses. The purpose of this secondary data analysis was to examine the relationship between access to sources of financial capital, government regulations and business profitability. The resource-based theory was the theoretical framework for this quantitative ex-post facto study. Archival data from the 2016 Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs were collected. Data were analyzed using multiple linear regression. Results of the multiple linear regression analysis indicated a full model, containing two predictor variables (2, n = 3233). The results revealed a statistically significant relationship among financial capital, government regulations, and business profitability, F (2, 3285) = 5.812, p

Previous research on the coinsurance effect solely focuses on the coinsurance of corporate debt and ignores the possibility that a combined entity’s assets may coinsure other financial obligations with debt-like characteristics. The present study examines the breadth of the coinsurance effect by testing whether the theory extends to labor obligations. Using an event study methodology, I analyze merger events between the 2000-2012 period. I investigate how acquirer shareholders are affected by the coinsurance effect during this period by examining acquirer common stock returns at the announcement date of the merger event. My results do not produce significant evidence to suggest that the coinsurance effect can be extended to include labor obligations. Moreover, no significant evidence of the coinsurance effect is discovered in the analysis.

This study analyzes equity REIT returns between 2007 and 2015. After an examination, it concludes that systematic risk is conditional on broader market performance.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new theory of civil liability to hold tax return preparers liable to their clients for tax malpractice, applying to understatements, overstatements, and non-optimal tax advice. This paper discusses the tax return preparer’s (TRPs, both signatory and nonsignatory) current liability to the government and to the client, specifically addressing Circular 230, AICPA rules, state boards of accountancy, federal regulations, and malpractice for professionals. It will then go through several case studies to establish current gaps in malpractice law for TRPs, showing how the government is usually favored in court while clients are not. Ultimately, I will explain a general theory of liability to apply nationally for TRPs to increase their accountability to their clients.

Risk can be defined as the volatility of unexpected outcomes, generally for values of assets and liabilities. Financial risk, risk refer to possible losses in financial markets, includes markets risk, credit risk, liquidity risk, operational risk, and legal risk. This MPhil thesis is specializing on market risk, which involves the uncertainty of earnings or losses resulting from changes in market conditions such as asset prices, interest rates, and market liquidity. The primary tool to evaluate market risk is VaR that is a method of assessing risk through standard statistical techniques. VaR is defined a measure for the worst expected loss over a given time interval under normal market conditions at a given confidence level. The greatest benefit of VaR for an asset manager lies in the imposition of a structured methodology for critically thinking about risk. Institutions applying VaR are forced to confront their exposure to market risk. There are three methods to calculate VaR, parametric, nonparametric and semi-parametric. Parametric method includes The Equally Weighted Moving Average (EqWMA), The Exponentially Weighted Moving Average (EWMA), GARCH, Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) approaches. Parametric method includes The Historical Simulation approach (HS), and semi-parametric method includes filtered historical simulation (FHS), extreme value theory (EVT) approaches. At present stage, Chinese asset managers apply RiskMetrics approach, i.e. EWMA, proposed by J.P. Morgan to calculate VaR. But this approach assumes that error term is conditionally normally distributed. However, there has been criticism that the VaR is based on assumptions that do not hold in times when the financial markets are experiencing stress, and that the normal distribution does not make a good job in predicting the distribution of outcomes. Financial returns experience fat tails, skewness and kurtosis, which implies that the normal distribution works well in predicting frequent outcomes but is not a good estimator to predict extreme events. In addition, when applying EWMA approach, Chinese asset managers often use the decay factor proposed by J.P. Morgan instead of obtaining it on the basis of China’s financial markets’ data. The purpose of this MPhil thesis is to compare the applicability of different parametric VaR methods for Chinese equity portfolios. We will also analyze whether equity market cap has any impact on the VaR methods. To assess whether VaR can be considered as a reliable and stable risk measurement tool for Chinese equity portfolios, we have performed an empirical study. The study covers four VaR approaches at the 95% and 99% confidence levels. Moreover, in order to describe skewness and kurtosis, we propose EWMA approach with a mixture of normal distributions. Based on these results we discuss the implications of VaR for asset managers. Our conclusion is that GARCH-normal is superior to Riskmetrics approach at both 95% and 99% confidence levels. The LOG-MLE (maximum Likelihood Estimation) can be improved when GARCH-t approach is used to replace GARCH-normal. However, GARCH-t is more conservative than GARCH-normal at 95% confidence level. At the same time, EWMA with mixed normal distributions is superior to RiskMetrics approach at 99% confidence level, but it is too conservative at 95% confidence level. For EWMA with mixed normal distributions and GARCH-type models, the former is better at 99% confidence level and the latter perform better at 95% confidence level. Due to this fact we recommend EWMA with mixed normal distributions and GARCH-t at 99% confidence level. The performance of GARCH-normal and EWMA is fairly good at 95% confidence level.

Since 2001, publicly listed companies in China have been required by the Chinese Securities and Regulatory Commission (CSRC), the Shanghai Exchange and the Shenzhen Exchange to issue management earnings forecasts when they anticipate that earnings will be negative or change substantially from the previous period. This study examines the consequences and implications of this disclosure regulation. I find that the earnings forecasts are associated with an earlier incorporation of relevant earnings information into stock prices. However, I also find evidence that is consistent with the presence of overreactions to forecasts of extreme earnings changes. My study offers a cautionary note about the policy of mandating listed firms to issue earnings forecasts in a stock market that is dominated by individual investors.