In the extensive literature on price dispersions that exists to date, there is a gap in the analysis of how market structure affects prices as well as the degree of dispersion in prices. Specifically, the literature is deficient in analyzing how price levels and price dispersion are affected by the number of firms operating in a market. I use secondary data to look at the prices of prescription drugs at the retail level in nine hundred and seventy pharmacies across one hundred and sixty five markets in Maryland and compare price dispersion across these brick and mortar pharmacies as well as across a separate set of pharmacies that only operate online. I compare online versus offline price dispersion, as well as price dispersion in purely offline markets from the structure of the market’s context. Stahl’s (1989) theoretical model is used to formulate and test the hypotheses that an increase in the proportion of positive search cost consumers in a market will cause price levels to rise and price dispersion to initially increase and then decrease. Furthermore, in markets with the proportion of positive search cost consumers above a threshold level, an increase in the number of firms will also lead price levels to rise and price dispersion to initially increase and then decrease. Conversely, in markets with positive search cost consumers below the threshold level, an increase in the number of firms will lead to lower price levels, i.e. the competitive outcome. For the analysis, I look at prices at the pharmacy level and price dispersion at the market level and determine the proportion of high search cost consumers for a specific pharmacy or a specific market relative to the other pharmacies and markets in the dataset. I find that a significant part of the differences in prices for a homogeneous prescription drug can be attributed to asymmetric information and that price dispersion is higher in markets with a greater number of firms, and price levels are higher in low income neighborhoods.

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In January, 1985, the rate-of-flow controls ("prorate") for the California-Arizona navel orange industry were suspended for half of the marketing season. This marked the first time in 32 consecutive years that the industry operated without market controls. This study compares the behavior of industry marketing margins during the deregulated period with that of regulated seasons in order to assess the impacts of the prorate suspension on the marketing system. Econometric results indicate that relative to subsequent regulated seasons, marketing margins contracted during the prorate suspension period. This implies that despite deregulation, the agricultural marketing sector was unable to exercise market power and maintain retail orange prices high while depressing grower prices, as some growers claimed. In addition, the results suggest that shortrun distributor reaction to a permanent termination of marketing order controls would result in changes in marketing system behavior which would be favorable to consumers.

The goal of this master thesis is to analyze impact of shocks in oil prices to automobile industry stock prices and returns. We decompose oil price shocks on oil supply shocks, aggregate demand shocks and oil-specific demand shocks and assess their individual impacts on these stock prices/returns. This is done using the vector autoregression (VAR) methodology which allows us to compute impulse responses, that is the reaction paths on the individual shocks. In addition to linear VARs we also employ threshold VAR models in order to capture nonlinearities in impulse responses and besides the aggregate automobile stock price index we compute these nonlinear impulse responses also for some selected individual car producers. We think that this analysis have two different uses. First, it can be beneficial to stock market investors. Second, it can be used by policymakers in countries such as Slovakia and the Czech Republic, which are relatively heavily dependent on automotive industry. 1

Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / Mykel Taylor / The agricultural commodity market has been experiencing previously unseen high prices in recent years. This new era of prices brings with it new challenges within agriculture for farmers and grain buyers within agriculture. This research explores the basis values of hard red winter wheat in Kansas and the elevator characteristics that provide a competitive advantage for elevators buying wheat in Kansas. This research explores hard red winter wheat basis values from elevators located around Kansas from 2002 to 2013. Two hundred twenty eight locations from around Kansas were used in the research. These locations provided the price data that was used for this research. The elevator characteristics used in the research were collected from the Kansas Grain and Feed Directory and the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe and Union Pacific railway companies. Five elevator characteristics were researched that may have a significant impact on an elevators basis. These characteristics are thought to provide a competitive advantage to the location in the form of stronger or narrower basis bids to the farmer, giving the farmer a higher price for his grain. The characteristics researched included elevator capacity, transportation capabilities, elevator terminal status, shuttle loading status, and cooperative or investor-owned business structure. Each characteristic was compared against their counterpart. For example, a location is either a shuttle loader or it is not. The research provides grain companies and farmers some data that they may find useful in marketing grain and setting basis levels in the ever changing and volatile market place in today’s grain industry.

A research report submitted to the School of Economic and Business Sciences, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment (50%) of the requirements for degree of Master of Commerce in Finance. Date of submission: April 2016 / International studies have widely documented the long-run underperformance of firms conducting secondary equity offerings (SEOs), a phenomenon commonly referred to as the ‘new issues puzzle’. Understanding the market’s reaction to SEOs is vital for managers who are commonly tasked with deciding on how to finance their firm’s operations. This study investigates the short-run and long-run performance of firms conducting SEOs on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) over the period of 1998 to 2015, by exploring both rational and behavioural models in predicting SEO behaviour. Event-study analysis reveals that the market generally reacts negatively to the announcement of SEOs with a statistically significant average two-day cumulative abnormal return of -2.6%. Using a buy-and-hold abnormal return approach, as well as factor regression analysis to study the long-run share performance of issuing firms, there is no evidence that issuing firms significantly underperform relative to non-issuing firms over a five-year period when testing for abnormal share return performance with the Capital Asset Pricing Model. Furthermore, issuing firms exhibit no consistent signs of operating underperformance in comparison to non-issuing firms over a fiveyear period. Finally, in evidence contradicting the market timing theory, investor sentiment appears to bear no consistently significant influence on either a firm’s decision to issue equity, or on the short-run and long-run performance of SEOs. Overall, the results imply that the longrun performance of SEOs conducted in South Africa is best described by rational explanations centred on the risk-return framework. There is no consistent evidence of any ‘new issues puzzle’ on the JSE. / MT2017

Thesis (M.Com. (Finance))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, School of Economic and Business Sciences, 2016. / Could not copy abstract

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management in Finance and Investment. Johannesburg, 2016 / The prediction of stock price and index level in a financial market is an interesting but highly complex and intricate topic. Advancements in prediction models leading to even a slight increase in performance can be very profitable. The number of studies investigating models in predicting actual levels of stocks and indices however, far exceed those predicting the direction of stocks and indices. This study evaluates the performance of ensemble prediction models in predicting the daily direction of the JSE All-Share index. The ensemble prediction models are benchmarked against three common prediction models in the domain of financial data prediction namely, support vector machines, logistic regression and k-nearest neighbour. The results indicate that the Boosted algorithm of the ensemble prediction model is able to predict the index direction the best, followed by k-nearest neighbour, logistic regression and support vector machines respectively. The study suggests that ensemble models be considered in all stock price and index prediction applications. / MT2017

By doing so, we contribute to the existing literature in at least the following aspects: / First, contrasted with Chakravarty (2001) which finds that cumulative price change is mainly caused by institutional investors, we document that, at least in the Chinese IPO market, it is the individual investors, rather than the institutions, that have the most dominant impact on the cumulative price change. This is consistent with the prediction of De Long et al. (1990a) and the fact that noise trader risks play an important role in Chinese stock market, which leaves the prices deviated from fundamental values and not arbitraged out. / Initial Public Offering (IPO) refers to the first sale of stocks by a company (called an issuer) to the public. Since the late 1960s high initial return, which is measured from the offer price to the first-day closing price, has become a hot topic. This phenomenon has been found in a range of countries, and in China the ratio is even much higher. / On top of that, we further investigate different types of individual investors by categorizing them according to their trading experiences. We find that those less experienced individuals tend to buy an IPO stock in a more impatient way, while investors who buy on the first non-hit day are more experienced. And waiting averagely 1.4 days can raise the return by more than 1.5% in 30 days. / Our research attempts to tackle the high initial return in China from the aspect of investor structure. First, we find empirical evidence that there are more sells than buys on the IPO day, and this demonstrates that flippers are responsible for the huge trading volume. Combining the identities of investors with the trading data, we also find that individual investors dominate the first day trading, in the sense that individuals, rather than institutions, contribute a larger part of the cumulative price change on the IPO day. / Our studies have many practical implications from several perspectives. First, analyzing the investor structure and their behavior during the IPO day can help us understand the characteristics of those investors who move the stock price. Second, our research can also help to know the different trading style of different kinds of investors. According to our research, investors maybe can design more favorable investment strategies. And for the regulators, our research can help them formulate more reasonable trading rules and regulations. / Second, existing literature show that more experienced investors tend to end up with better investment results, while our study builds a bridge between investor experiences and their decision making procedure. Our finding also contributes to the technical analysis literature, such as Lo, Mamaysky and Wang (2000), among others, in that we find experienced investors indeed tend to do more technical analysis and obtain better investment results. / Zhai, Weili. / Advisers: Jia He; Ying Foon Chow. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-08(E), Section: A. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 113-122). / 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. / Abstract also in Chinese.

by Lo Wai-chu, Lo Yiu-hee. / Abstract also in Chinese / Bibliography: leaves 138-139 / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1983