Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston University

Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

archives@tulane.edu / Over the course of research from 2008-2010 in the Kaqchikel Maya community of Ch’aqa’ Ya’, Guatemala, in which I documented the sacred sites utilized by residents who practice costumbre, or indigenous Maya spirituality, I began to find links between concepts fundamental to this belief system and local strategies of ecological management. The report below details subsequent research (2011-2016) into local human interaction with the environment as mediated through a sacred relationship with the landscape. In the pages that follow I show how local sacred sites are vital to human-ecological interaction in Ch’aqa’ Ya’ as well as highlight how beliefs essential to costumbre engender a conservation ethic that assures the continuance of a healthy ecosystem over the long-term. Moreover, I describe how local sacred sites also illustrate the adaptive nature of Maya belief and ritual, indicating the means in which ecological knowledge has remained viable through the many changes of the last centuries (even millennia). I found that long-term traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) – the body of institutions, beliefs, and practices developed through interaction with the biophysical environment over a long period – is embedded in the local spiritual system. However, institutional or social frameworks nested across scales are necessary for the acquisition, transmission, and effective use of TEK. In this report I detail how Maya spirituality is such a framework, remaining highly adaptive and transcending scalar issues to mediate between short-term wants and long-term sustainability as well as transfer on-the-ground ecological knowledge into long-term social memory. In fact, even in the face of the abandonment of ‘traditional’ belief, prior conceptions of the sacred still impact ecological management practices in ways that safeguard the health and resilience of both the local landscape as well as the human population integral to it. Scholars have noted that the best means to learn how to manage resources is to inquire of those who have been doing it the longest (Berkes et al. 2000:1251-1253; Peters 2000:219), and it is through such enquiry that I gained an understanding of the system of environmental management practice and belief extant in Ch’aqa’ Ya’ that I offer in the dissertation below. / 1 / Michael P Saunders

Thesis (LL.M) (Labour Law) --University of Limpopo, 2009.

acase@tulane.edu / 1 / Michael Brachfeld

I study the topics of market efficiency and anomalies to market efficiency by focusing on finance professors in their joint roles as both researchers and market participants. I ask three main research questions: (1) how efficient do finance professors believe US stock markets are and does their opinion of market efficiency influence their investing behavior, (2) what really matters to finance professors when they buy and sell stocks, and (3) why do finance professors publish market anomalies? Related to the first question, I discover that finance professors agree that US stock markets are weak form efficient but not strong form efficient. However, there is much disagreement about the semi-strong form efficiency of US stock markets. Their investing behavior, though, suggests that finance professors accept markets as semi-strong form efficient; twice as many finance professors passively invest than actively invest. Surprisingly, their opinion about market efficiency has very little to do with their investing behavior. Instead, their investing behavior seems primarily driven by their confidence in their own abilities to beat the market, regardless of how efficient they perceive US stock markets to be. Related to the second question, I present three main findings. First, traditional valuation techniques and asset-pricing models commonly used in research and taught in the classroom are universally unimportant to finance professors when they buy and sell stocks. Second, the most important information to finance professors when considering stock purchases and sales are firm characteristics (PE ratio and market capitalization) and momentum related information (the stock's return over the past six to 12 months and 52-week high and low). Third, finance professors have less real-world investing experience than one might expect – the median professor has bought an individual stock between 10 and 19 times, and 14.5% have never done so. Related to the third question, I find that finance professors are, in fact, acting rationally when they publish market anomalies. The theory I develop suggests it is rational for researchers to publish market anomalies if they have relatively few previous publications or have lesser reputations. Accordingly, the theory implies that the likelihood of publishing an anomaly and the profitability of published anomalies should be inversely related to the authors' previous publications and reputation. These implications are empirically corroborated providing evidence for the theory and supporting the notion that researchers are behaving rationally when they publish. Sadly, this also suggests that it is very likely that profitable anomalies have been discovered but not published so that the discoverer can exploit the anomaly, which provides indirect evidence of market inefficiency. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Finance in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2007. / Date of Defense: May 22, 2007. / Investing, Market Anomalies, Market Efficiency, Investor Behavior, Overconfidence, P/E Ratio / Includes bibliographical references. / David Peterson, Professor Directing Dissertation; Michael Brady, Outside Committee Member; Gary Benesh, Committee Member; James Doran, Committee Member.

This dissertation examines if information extracted from the options markets is priced in the cross-section of equity returns and whether or not this information is a systematic risk factor. Several versions of the Intertemporal Capital Asset Pricing Model predict that changes in aggregate volatility are priced into the cross-section of stock returns. Literature confirms that changes in expected future market volatility are priced into the cross-section of stock returns. Several of these studies use the VIX Index as proxy for future market volatility, and suggest that it is a risk factor. However, prior studies do not test whether asymmetric volatility affects if firm sensitivity to changes in VIX is related to risk, or is just a characteristic uniformly affecting all firms. The first chapter of my dissertation examines the asymmetric relation of stock returns and changes in VIX. The study finds that sensitivity to VIX innovations affects returns when volatility is rising, but not when it is falling. When VIX rises this sensitivity is a priced risk factor, but when it falls there is a positive impact on all stocks irrespective of VIX loadings. The second essay of my dissertation uses the second, third, and fourth moments of the risk-neutral density extracted from options on the S&P 500 as the proxy for changes in the expected future market return distribution rather than just the VIX index. The VIX index, while easily obtained, contains limited information due to its construction. The risk-neutral moments map one-to-one to the real-world volatility smile from market options, and contain all the information in the cross-section of market option moneyness and provide a richer proxy for changes in expected future market return distribution. The analyses find that positive change in risk-neutral skewness is a risk-factor and that change in risk-neutral kurtosis is not. The evidence for change in risk-neutral volatility being a risk factor, however, is ambiguous. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Finance in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2010. / Date of Defense: March 29, 2010. / Implied Kurtosis, Implied Skewness, Implied Volatility, Asset Pricing, Risk Neutral Distribution, VIX Index, Assymetric Volatility / Includes bibliographical references. / David R. Peterson, Professor Directing Dissertation; Thomas Zuehlke, University Representative; James S. Doran, Committee Member; Bong-Soo Lee, Committee Member.

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Zugl.: Köln, Dt. Sporthochsch., Diss., 2005

Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 92-107)