This dissertation consists of two essays on corporate finance. Essay one examines whether corporate governance affects firm performance after capital investments. I find that among firms with weak corporate governance, those with high abnormal capital investments have significantly lower stock performance than those with low abnormal capital investments. In addition, a significant portion of the difference in abnormal stock performance between the two subgroups occurs around earnings announcements. In contrast, the level of abnormal capital investments is not related to subsequent stock performance or earnings announcement returns at firms with strong corporate governance. These findings indicate that corporate governance structure enhances firm value by mitigating the over-investment problem. Essay two examines how insider trading activity prior to seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) is related to subsequent investment, operating, and financing decisions of the issuer. I find that SEO firms with more abnormal insider sales issue more seasoned equity, hold more cash and increase dividend payouts more. They also perform more poorly. Following the SEO, these firms also issue less equity and the effects of the SEO on their capital structures gradually reverses. These findings suggest that SEO firms with more abnormal insider sales are more likely to have overpriced stock, while those with less abnormal insider sales are more likely to have good investment opportunities. Insider trading activity prior to the SEO provides valuable information about the firm’s incentives to issue seasoned equity and help to predict the real activities of the issuer following the SEO. / text

In Essay 1, I investigate the impact of corporate life cycle dynamics on the observed negative association between asset growth and stock returns in the crosssection. I find that the asset growth effect on average exists across some life cycle stages measured using cohorts. However, controlling for certain variables associated with the theoretical explanations, I find there is no relation between asset growth and returns. I argue this evidence is consistent with an agency-based explanation of the asset growth effect. Furthermore, a decomposition of the drivers of the effect shows that different components of assets (i.e. working capital and financing) drive asset growth effect at different life cycle stages. From a decomposition analyses, results show that in the youngest firms (cohort 1), asset growth effect is mostly driven by both operating liability and stock financing on one side (financing) and noncash current assets, PPE, and growth in other assets (for working capital) while cohort 3’s drivers appear to be stock issuances, together with noncash current assets, which I conclude offer further support for agency issues. In Essay 2, I examine how firms’ life cycle affect insider trading behavior, profits surrounding trades, price informativeness, and financing constraints. I argue that if firms’ policies and characteristics change over time as shown in lifecycle literature, then from firm characteristics that motivate insider-trading behavior, one should observe some differences across varying life cycle stages measured using age cohorts. I find that insiders are net sellers at all life cycle stages of a firm. Furthermore, insiders tend to trade more in younger firms than in older firms even though they have fewer numbers of insiders trading. Trading characteristics are generally statistically significant across cohorts. Overall, insiders appear to predict the correct direction for positive wealth generation when trading. Specifically, at all lifecycle stages, they appear to sell before negative CARs, and buy during periods associated with negative CARs that lead to positive CARs days after insider transactions. The findings on price informativeness suggest that in general insider purchases enhance price informativeness for firms at different lifecycle stages, however, this finding holds only for cohort 4 (oldest firms) in the case of insider sales. The implication of this finding is that regulation should be more lax towards purchases as compared to sales for firms, except for sales in firms that are older. Lastly, insider trades are linked with positive investment-cash flow sensitivities for both insider purchases and insider sales, which generally increase monotonically across cohorts. This finding is robust to using GMM approach. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2018. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

In the second part of the thesis, we investigate whether ownership structure has influence to long-term stock return. We use a risk adjustment method to make it possible to compare stock return in different terms, therefore, we can use GMM method to estimate the influence of ownership structure in a panel sample set. We find that, insider ownership and institutional ownership are all significantly favorable to long-term stock return. However, the quarterly insider ownership change and quarterly institutional ownership change do not show significant influence. We also use a Fama-MacBeth approach to compare the results from GMM estimation and we find that the results are similar. / This thesis consists of two related parts. In the first part, we develop a method to extract insider ownership information from insider transaction reporting files and by combining it with quarterly institutions holding report data, we obtain quarterly ownership structure for most common stocks listed in CRSP tape. We use ownership structure and quarterly ownership change to analyze how insiders, large institutions and individual investors differ from each other in their holding preference to stock characteristics and trading behavior. We find that, these three kinds of investors have significant difference in holding preference to size, price, monthly turnover, previous 12-months return. They also show significant difference in trading behaviors. Basically, institutions are momentum trader, and are interested in "growth" stocks. Insiders are anti-momentum trader, they sell more when past return is higher and they more focus on "value" stocks. / Zhu, Honghui. / "September 2002." / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 64-11, Section: A, page: 4150. / Supervisors: Jia He; Xiaoqiang Cai. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 94-101). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest dissertations and theses, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

abstract: For systems having computers as a significant component, it becomes a critical task to identify the potential threats that the users of the system can present, while being both inside and outside the system. One of the most important factors that differentiate an insider from an outsider is the fact that the insider being a part of the system, owns privileges that enable him/her access to the resources and processes of the system through valid capabilities. An insider with malicious intent can potentially be more damaging compared to outsiders. The above differences help to understand the notion and scope of an insider. The significant loss to organizations due to the failure to detect and mitigate the insider threat has resulted in an increased interest in insider threat detection. The well-studied effective techniques proposed for defending against attacks by outsiders have not been proven successful against insider attacks. Although a number of security policies and models to deal with the insider threat have been developed, the approach taken by most organizations is the use of audit logs after the attack has taken place. Such approaches are inspired by academic research proposals to address the problem by tracking activities of the insider in the system. Although tracking and logging are important, it is argued that they are not sufficient. Thus, the necessity to predict the potential damage of an insider is considered to help build a stronger evaluation and mitigation strategy for the insider attack. In this thesis, the question that seeks to be answered is the following: `Considering the relationships that exist between the insiders and their role, their access to the resources and the resource set, what is the potential damage that an insider can cause?' A general system model is introduced that can capture general insider attacks including those documented by Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) for the Software Engineering Institute (SEI). Further, initial formulations of the damage potential for leakage and availability in the model is introduced. The model usefulness is shown by expressing 14 of actual attacks in the model and show how for each case the attack could have been mitigated. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Computer Science 2019

This paper examines the lockup expiration date event for technology firms post Global Financial Crisis to investigate the existence of abnormal returns around this date and determine the explanatory power that insider trading and the increase in available shares have on the abnormal return. Contributions to literature include using an updated sampling, targeting the technology industry, and constructing unique variables such as the dollar value of insider trades around the lockup expiration date. There exists statistically significant three-day cumulative abnormal returns of -1.33%. Firms with higher percentages of insiders who sell their positions tend to experience a further decrease in cumulative abnormal returns (CAR). The supply effect of these shares being opened to the market is not significant at the 95% confidence level. Thus, insider trading rather than increased supply accounts for variations in the abnormal returns across technology firms.

The competition for external capital amongst small and developing financial markets has resulted in a growing awareness of the importance of investor protection laws if markets are to be competitive. One particularly important aspect of such laws is the need to control the behaviour of insiders. Insider trading, widely perceived as trading by investors who have an unfair advantage by virtue of access to confidential information, represents a significant threat to market confidence and investors' willingness to invest in the market. For small markets therefore, not controlling such behaviour represents a significant cost in terms of the development of the market and the economy as a whole. However, while insider trading can do significant harm to the market, it also has the potential to be beneficial to the market as a signal of incorrectly priced information. The question becomes therefore how best to balance the advantages and disadvantages of insider trading. Most markets have relied on regulations to control insiders, however, little research has been done to establish if this is effective.This thesis seeks to provide additional evidence with respect to the role of regulation in controlling insider trading. The issue is explored within the context of the New Zealand market where recent legislation, the Securities Market Amendment Act 2002, offers a prime opportunity to seek further understanding on the issue. In particular, four studies focussed on the role of regulation with respect to insider trading are undertaken within this thesis. In the first the impact of the law change on the profitability and informational base of insiders is examined. A significant decline in profitability is observed in addition to evidence of a change in the informational basis of insiders' trades from knowledge of upcoming announcements to short-term market mispricing. The impact of the new law on four aspects of the market is then examined. A significant increase in liquidity is found following the introduction of the new law, as well as significant reductions in the cost of equity, bid-ask spread and return volatility. The law therefore appears to have improved these aspects of the market. The bid-ask spreads were then examined in more depth by observing the impact of the laws on the cost of informed trading. Strong evidence of a decline in the cost of informed trading was observed, along with significant decreases in the proportion of the spread composed of information asymmetry costs. The declines were largest for those firms most prone to insider trading.Lastly, the elements of an effective insider trading regime were investigated by examining the impact of various legal variables on the cost of informed trading and the total spread. The results indicated that stronger laws have resulted in lower spreads and less informed trading costs, and that effective regimes should prevent insiders passing on their information, should rely on financial penalties over criminal sanctions, and should be both enforceable and policed by a strong public regulator. Overall this thesis finds strong evidence that insider trading laws can be effective in controlling the behaviour of insiders, and that well drafted statutory regulations can be of significant benefit to the market.

The IEEE 802.15.4 has attracted time-critical applications in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) because of its beacon-enabled mode and guaranteed timeslots (GTSs). However, the GTS scheme’s security still leave the 802.15.4 MAC vulnerable to attacks. Further, the existing techniques in the literature for securing 802.15.4 either focus on non beacon-enabled 802.15.4 or cannot defend against insider attacks for beacon-enabled 802.15.4. In this thesis, we illustrate this by demonstrating attacks on the availability and integrity of the beacon-enabled 802.15.4. To proof the attacks, we implement the attacks using Tmote Sky motes for a malicious node along with regular nodes. We show that the malicious node can freely exploit the beacon frames to compromise the integrity and availability of the network. For the defense, we present beacon-enabled MiniSec (BCN-MiniSec) and analyze its cost.

I have examined the common stock investments made by members of the U.S. Senate between 2006 and 2009. I find that the average stock portfolio in the Senate exhibits one and two year cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) of -0.15 % and 0.43%, respectively. This suggests that members of the Senate are not trading on insider knowledge as indicated by one previous researcher who calculated a one year CAR of 25%. However, my findings are in line with another previous researcher who found a one year CAR of about -2% and concluded that Congressmen are not trading on inside information. I also examine election-year trades made by senators who lose a reelection bid. This cashing out effect amounts to a CAR of 0.43% during the first year post loss, but after two years these trades exhibit a CAR of -0.03%. The cashing out group performs no better than the group as a whole, indicating that this group did not use their informational advantage to profit during the lame duck session.

Denna C-uppsats undersöker norrköpingsstudenters förankring i staden samt vilka faktorerstudenter finner viktiga vid valet av framtida bostadsort. Uppsatsen undersöker även detarbete och de insatser som bedrivs med och gentemot norrköpingsstudenter. Undersökningenbygger på en webbaserad enkätundersökning vilken skickades till studenter i slutskedet avsina utbildningar, vid Campus Norrköping, Linköpings universitet. Enkätresultaten haranalyserats utifrån migrationsteorier och tidigare liknande forskning. Resultatet avundersökningen visar att de viktigaste faktorerna vid valet av en framtida bostadsort är;arbete, bostad, stadens miljö samt familj och vänner. Resultatet visar även att de studentersom är förankrade i Norrköping i form av exempelvis sociala relationer och boende i högreutsträckning kan tänka sig en framtid i Norrköping jämfört med mindre förankrade studenter.Uppsatsen diskuterar även ytterligare exempel på verksamheter och arbeten vilka kan ökasamarbetet mellan Norrköping som stad och Norrköpings studenter.

In the aftermath of the verdict of acquittal in “Sweden’s largest insider trading case” once again a debate concerning illegal insider trading has arisen and a lot of criticism is directed towards the laws. The purpose of this master´s thesis is to investigate the occurrence of insider trading and whether or not Swedish legislation has decreased the presence of insider trading on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. For this purpose the legal aspects and relevant arguments are presented and discussed. An event study is performed in order to see if profit warnings show evidence of insider trading on the Swedish stock exchange. The event study show statistically significant evidence of illegal insider trading in 21 out of 44 cases on the Stockholm stock exchange. There is no significant difference in insider trading between profit warnings and reversed profit warnings. The regression show evidence of that the law has had a small negative impact on insider trading in the sample which is surprising and that insider trading is industry correlated. The high frequency of insider trading shows evidence of that the laws are inefficient in stopping insider trading. Since it is clear that the law is seriously flawed in stopping insider trading and that insider trading actually may positively affect the market and its participants, it is argued that it is very questionable if the legislation is necessary and if insider trading should be prohibited at all.