本篇論文目的在檢視壽險業資本結構的影響因素，樣本為美國壽險公司。金融及保險市場的特殊性質會造成保險公司有動機去調整控制資本結構與資產風險，以維持公司失卻清償能力的風險在適當的範圍內。我們的實證結果中顯示槓桿比率與資產風險的負向關係的確存在於美國壽險業當中。 此外，一般公司資本結構理論中的公司大小、代理問題皆顯示對壽險公司的資本結構造成影響；公司的評比對公司的槓桿比率有顯著影響；使用獨立代理人銷售業務的公司有較高的槓桿比率與風險；實證結果亦顯示壽險公司的資產風險與投資的集中度及經營險種的集中度有正相關，意味著資產風險可以透過分散投資與險種多樣化的方式來分散降低。 / This study examines the capital structure determinants of life insurance companies in U.S. The decision of capital structure in insurance industry should be a joint decision of capital structure and firm risk. Insurers have incentive to keep firm risk within a safe range, due to the special features in the insurance markets. We find evidence supporting the negative relationship between leverage ratio and firm risk, suggesting that insurers will balance risk and leverage to keep the insolvency risk within a desired range. In addition, general capital structure theories such as size and agency theory are significant in our empirical result. Rating is shown a significant factor of capital structure in life insurance industry. Evidence suggests the independent agents have less incentive to monitor insurers. Firm risk is also shown significant relationship with undiversified investments and concentrated business line, which suggests that life insurers can reduce firm risk by diversifying investment risk and business risk.

給定一個設計矩陣X,當從X刪去一列或數列以後,X的特徵結構可能產生很 大的改變。在本文中,計算帽子矩陣H的高槓桿值,刪去如此有影響力的觀 察值後,X的特徵結構是否有改變,以及探討它的條件數。舉一些特殊的定 理, 討論從X刪去一列或數列之後的條件數。因此,我們也探討近似的條件 數,考慮兩者之間有何關係。 我們計算設計矩陣X的條件數與設計矩陣X 刪去一列或數列後的條件數,及診斷刪去有影響力的列對共線性之影響。 舉二個實例,使用 Matlab軟體計算條件數,分析它們的共線性性質, 以及 討論隱藏共線性與創造共線性的強度何者為強。

Till följd av en ständigt ökad konkurrens blir det allt svårare att som ny aktör att ta sig in på olika marknader. Vad som däremot kan underlätta etableringsprocessen för nya företag och varumärken är att associeras och förknippas med redan etablerade och välkända varumärken. Företaget gooh! är ett nytt måltidskoncept som funnits i drygt två år och är ett samarbete mellan Lantmännen och Operakällaren. Det intressanta här är att företaget gooh! har två kända varumärken som medverkar och står bakom konceptet. I den här uppsatsen kommer vi att undersöka hur Marketing mix modellens faktorer påverkar en konsuments första köp av en gooh! produkt, med syfte att se om någon av dessa faktorer är mer viktig än någon annan samt att se hur dessa samverkar med varandra. Vi vill också i denna uppsats se hur konsumentens första köp påverkas av att två starka varumärken står bakom konceptet gooh!. Undersökningen baseras på en kvantitativ undersökning där vi slumpmässigt frågat 50 konsumenter som alla handlat i en och samma gooh! butik. Resultaten vi kommit fram till i denna undersökning tyder på att den valda ”platsen” av butik, dvs. lättillgängligheten till butiken är den faktor som påverkar konsumentens första köp mest, men även de andra faktorerna i Marketing mix modellen är av stor betydelse. Vidare visar även våra resultat på att Lantmännens och Operakällarens samverkan, har en positiv inverkan på konsumentens köpbeteende. I vår slutsats kommer vi bl.a. fram till att dessa två aktörers medverkan bidrar till en kvalitetsstärkning av gooh! produkterna och skapar ett mervärde hos konsumenten.

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Financial bubbles are characterized by a large increase in the economic growth on the market as a whole or in specific industries. The change gives rise to an increase in the capital needed to finance this growth. Companies typically have a choice between equity and debt capital to finance its business and the mix of these types of capital is often referred to as the company’s capital structure. There has been a lot of research done in the field of financial bubbles and of capital structure, as of yet no studies seem to address these two areas in combination. The aim of this study is to examine if financial bubbles affect a company’s capital structure and through this also examine if the supposed changes in capital structure can be generalized. The study comprise of two identical time-series which examines the changes in leverage and the choice of financing during the Swedish real estate bubble in the early nineties and the IT-crash at the end of the 2000th century. The study examines changes in leverage, price-to-book ratio and the choice between issuing convertible debt versus issuing equity, of eleven real estate companies and twelve IT-companies respectively. This paper shows that a company’s capital structure is indeed affected by a financial bubble though the way it is affected during different financial bubbles differs. Significant changes in leverage and the choice between different types of financial instruments are identified in both time-series. The study also shows that neither the Pecking Order Hypothesis as presented by Myers (1984) nor the traditional trade-off theory can in whole explain these changes. A significant difference in leverage between the two groups can be identified which is consistent with earlier empirical studies on the difference between capital structures in different industries. The results in this study seem to indicate that the changes in capital structure can be explained either by a supposed disturbance in the cost of different types of capital during the financial bubble or by the assumption that companies in specific industries (as the IT-industry) do not have the possibility to chose the type of financing freely.

<p>This dissertation explores the role of executive compensation in determining the capital structure decisions of a firm. CEOs experience a large personal cost of default that interacts through the risk adjusted probability of default with their compensation contract. Since default happens in a particularly costly state of the world for a CEO whose compensation contract consists primarily of pay for performance elements, i.e. a CEO who has a large personal equity stake in the firm, a large pay performance sensitivity is negatively and significantly associated with firm leverage choice. I document this effect in detail for the first time, and I show that it is both statistically robust and significant in magnitude, approximately 1\% of firm value. I show that this effect is driven by the stock holdings of the CEO, not the option holdings. I provide a simple principal agent model that explains the observed negative relationship and makes additional predictions on the relationship of other firm characteristics to pay performance sensitivity and leverage. I then test and confirm these predictions empirically using a standard OLS framework and an instrumental variable approach to control for endogeneity in the compensation contract. I also look at leverage adjustment speeds and show that CEOs with higher pay performance sensitivity adjust leverage upwards towards target values more slowly and downwards more quickly than their peers, and I interpret this as direct evidence that CEOs are actively managing personal risk through firm leverage choice.</p> / Dissertation

In this paper, we examine the relationship between political risk as an international environmental determinant of capital structure as well as other factors that contribute to capital structure including leverage, foreign exchange risk, agency costs of debt, and collateral value of assets. We conducted this research on a sample of 200 Singaporean, non-financial, listed domiciled multinational firms over the period of 2005 to 2009. The results suggest that political risk is irrelevant to the multinational capital structure, foreign exchange risk, agency costs of debt, and (netted) collateral value of assets. We find that the results remain unchanged after controlling for size and industry. The findings produce evidence that foreign exchange risk, as another international factor is also irrelevant to the Singaporean multinational capital structure choice. Additionally, agency costs of debt and (netted) fixed assets have a negative association with leverage for Singaporean multinational corporations.

With contribution of Modigliani and Miller in 1958, capital structure has attained animportant place in finance field. The path breaking contribution has stimulated subsequentresearchers to put emphasis on this topic. Therefore, other theories and researches have beenrevealed and many aspects have been included to capital structure studies so far. However, it has always been controversial topic and the consensus has not been reached yet. Nevertheless,there are many important theories and hypotheses, which explain and investigate this topicvery well such as agency cost theory, trade-off theory, pecking order theory, signalling theory,efficiency-risk hypothesis and franchise-value hypothesis. When we reviewed the literature and extended our understanding of these theories andhypotheses, we found that the relationship between capital structure and firm performance isinteresting aspect and worthwhile to research. Therefore, we started an extensive literaturereview and found a research gap, which is the relationship between capital structure and afirm's financial performance from the perspective of capital structure theories in the Swedishcontext during the period 2002-2011. Since researchers investigate the relationship betweencapital structure and firm performance in many different countries and there is nothing in theSwedish context, we thus decided to write the thesis about it. Accordingly, our study began with discussing the problem background. We also stated theresearch question, the objectives, and the expected contribution to clarify the scope ofresearch. After that, we present the existing theories regarding capital structure and providetheir interplay with firm performance. After we constituted research question and reviewed literature, we knew what kind of data weneeded to utilize. Therefore, we started to search the best database provider for our study. Asa result, we decided on using Thomson Reuter’s database, DataStream. The study sampleincluded 174 non-financial Swedish firms listed on Nasdaq OMX (Stockholm StockExchange). We used ordinary least squares regression analysis over a period of ten years from2002 to 2011. After we collected the data, we imported it to SPSS and ran regression anddescriptive analysis. According to our empirical findings and analysis, we identify that there is a significantnegative relationship between capital structure and firm performance of listed Swedish firms.In other words, the financial performance of Swedish listed firms for the past decade isnegatively influenced by its leverage ratio. In practical terms, the more debt in relation toassets that firm takes in to finance its operations, the worse does the firm perform financially.When we elaborated our investigation and looked at each industry, we found no differencefrom the general results when dividing the Swedish firms into four major industry categories.However, health care industry has a different relationship. With this study, we provide further evidence about the interplay between capital structure andfinancial performance and make a contribution both to theory regarding capital structure andfinancial performance as well as giving practical insight for Swedish CFO’s and CEO’s.

Recently, there are more and more literatures discuss on the issues of investment strategies of leveraged ETFs. In our works, we concentrate our issues on optimal leverage of ETF of S&P 500 index. Based on ARMA-GARCH model¡¦s assumption, we find out that the forecasting optimal leverage can be shown in a formula which contains return and characteristic function. In this paper, we use MA(1)-GARCH(1,1) to forecast volatility based on 1008 rolling window to forecast one day ahead¡¦s volatility; and our estimation time is start from 1954 to March 2011. In this paper, we present four dynamic leverage models (Normal, Student T, VG, and Best model¡¦s leverage) to find out the payoffs under these models. In our model, the forecasting accuracy is just about 55% which is slightly higher than SPX raise probability. But during long-term compound effect, the dynamic leverage models can out-perform than constant leverage. There may exist some important factors in these results, one of them is the crash forecasting ability. During 1980 to 2011 SPX has 14 big crashes and these models can effectively avoid 10 big crashes. In short-term investment horizon none of these five models are always outperform than others but in long-term investment horizon the strategy of best model¡¦s leverage can always earn money when investment horizon is 2400 days.

Past studies often discussed competition strategies in terms of SWOT analysis for establishing development strategies or in terms of game theory for drawing up short-term Co-opetition strategies. Yet, none of them can reveal the cause-and-effect phenomenon of information system integration companies that develop resources for performing contracts and the Co-opetition strategy at tendering period according to the condition of organizational resources; also, the companies improve knowledge and resources that will affect the tender game and the operation strategy. Hence, from a broader view, the enterprise competition strategies were discussed at ordinary and tender periods through case study of an information system integration company for department stores to investigate the Co-opetition model. From the history of the target company, this study analyzed the intended strategy at ordinary times and the emergent strategy for tendering, and investigated how enterprises accomplish strategic goals by means of resource leverage. Findings indicated that enterprises ¡§develop¡¨ the required resources according to the SWOT analysis and ¡§make full use¡¨ of existing resources to win the tender according to the PARTS analysis; and ¡§resource maintenance¡¨ affects the strategy and opportunity in subsequent games. The application of resource leverage in the above three arguments was also investigated. Furthermore, the ¡§synergy¡¨ of organizational resource development can affects the subsequent strategies and operations. Finally, a Co-opetition model for companies of information system integration is proposed as a reference model for Co-opetition strategy analysis.