Responsible Investment considers environmental, social and corporate governance criteria. These criteria, as an investment strategy, aim to have a positive impact on society as well as maximize financial returns. The concept of Responsible Investment is becoming more prominent and important to investors, both internationally and locally, with evidence from the negative reaction of share prices to recent events such as the BP oil spill. The Johannesburg Stock Exchange, in collaboration with FTSE4Good, has developed Responsible Investment criteria. The aim of the criteria is to ensure global alignment, with regards to environmental criteria, and also ensure local relevance, with criteria that deals with issues such as black economic empowerment, skills development and HIV/Aids. This research examines the share price behaviour of companies that are recommended by analysts as ‘Top Companies’ on the basis of their compliance to set Responsible Investment criteria, with specific reference to the annual ‘Top 20 Companies’ as recommended by the Financial Mail magazine. Using event study methodology, the short- and long-term behaviour is studied for the 140 companies mentioned in the list from 2003 up until 2009. Positive, significant abnormal returns of around 2% are observed in the first 10 days following the announcement for the companies mentioned in the list for the first time. No positive abnormal returns are however observed for longer-term holding periods of up to 200 days following the announcement. The result suggests that the Financial Mail analysts’ annual recommendation is of value only to low transaction cost, short-term traders. Longer-term investors, who buy the recommended shares, generally receive returns similar to the market rate of return. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Thesis advisor: Eyal Dvir / This research studies the effect of exchange rate expectations on A-H share discount in China and Hong Kong. The A-H class listing of Chinese stocks offers an interesting framework to examine asset price in segmented markets. This research wants to contribute to the existing literatures by adding other currencies into the exchange rate model and verify their effect, introducing and controlling for company specific information, such as earnings. I find that the effect of both Euro and US dollar to be significant in explaining the share price disparity, and companies in different sector and with different market capitalization react to currency information differently. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics Honors Program. / Discipline: Economics.

Many articles have been written on the effect and potential benefit of cost reduction, downsizing and expense management. Most of these articles have conflicting messages, some even internally within the same article.The objective of this research was to critically evaluate these articles and to see if there was any evidence of the economic effects of cost reduction from the South African experience. The evaluation of the articles was done by a process of deductive reasoning with some help from the principles found within the application of the Theory of Constraints. The research further used a quantitative design to analyse the effect of a cost reduction event on certain ratios and the share price performance relative to an appropriate index over a period of six years after the event.The research has shown that at least some of the academic articles on this subject made different implicit assumptions during the research process. The results from the quantitative research have shown that there were no significant evidence of any effect on the ratios and share price performance from the South African market experience. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This dissertation presents a variety of empirical studies in financial accounting with an emphasis on the association between published accounting data and share prices. These studies are the first attempt at empirical research in accounting in South Africa. There has been an alarming lack of research in this discipline in this country and only 14 doctorates in the accounting field have ever been conferred by South African universities. The major aim of the dissertation is to contribute to the understanding of the usefulness of accounting data and the effect that certain financial disclosures (and non-disclosures) have on share prices and consequently on the wealth of the users and potential users of these data. An essential premise of this thesis is that the primary purpose of financial reporting is the provision of information useful for economic decision making.

Background: Sustainable development is the buzzword of the decade, yet developing countries struggle to comply with environmental guidelines. A study was done to determine the possibility of financial gain by means of share price prosperity as a result of compliance with environmental accounting principles. Objective: To investigate the relationship between the commitment to environmental accounting principles and the share price of Main Board listed companies on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Design: A quantitative, cross-sectional design with descriptive, explanatory and contextual elements was undertaken. Setting and Sample: An all-inclusive sample of the announcements of the Main Board listed companies of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange between 1 June 2008 and 1 June 2013 was used, as well as a stratified random sample of 32 companies – 16 as listed on the SRI Index and 16 not. Measurements: Data related to compliance with environmental accounting principles were correlated with share price fluctuations of Main Board listed companies. T-tests were done to determine whether a correlation exists between compliance with environmental accounting principles and fluctuations in share price. Results: 56 instances of upward trends and 80 instances of downward trends after one month followed announcements that included compliance to environmental accounting principles (one constant and one unknown). 52 instances of upward trends and 54 instances of downward trends after one year followed these announcements (30 unknown). 48 out of 336 listed companies (14%) announce environmental accounting principle compliance with their shareholders. More announcements referring to environmental accounting compliance were posted in 2012 and 2013 (n = 17 and n = 22 averaged for six months) compared to those in 2008 to 2011 (n = 9; n = 15; n = 14 and n = 15 averaged for six months). 56% of companies complying with environmental accounting principles are from the mining industry. 39.19% of principles complied with was within the diverse principle division. P-values derived from t-tests done to investigate correlations between share price and compliance with environmental accounting principles on various levels all revealed P-values of more than 0.25. Conclusions: No statistically significant correlation could be made between compliance with environmental accounting principles and fluctuations in share price. There is low divulgence of compliance practices to shareholders from mentioned companies. An upward trend for compliance with environmental accounting principles is noted during the past five years. The mining industry showed the greatest compliance with these principles when judged according to divulgence of compliance by means of announcements to their shareholders as well as when judged according to stance on the SRI Index. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Background: Sustainable development is the buzzword of the decade, yet developing countries struggle to comply with environmental guidelines. A study was done to determine the possibility of financial gain by means of share price prosperity as a result of compliance with environmental accounting principles. Objective: To investigate the relationship between the commitment to environmental accounting principles and the share price of Main Board listed companies on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Design: A quantitative, cross-sectional design with descriptive, explanatory and contextual elements was undertaken. Setting and Sample: An all-inclusive sample of the announcements of the Main Board listed companies of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange between 1 June 2008 and 1 June 2013 was used, as well as a stratified random sample of 32 companies – 16 as listed on the SRI Index and 16 not. Measurements: Data related to compliance with environmental accounting principles were correlated with share price fluctuations of Main Board listed companies. T-tests were done to determine whether a correlation exists between compliance with environmental accounting principles and fluctuations in share price. Results: 56 instances of upward trends and 80 instances of downward trends after one month followed announcements that included compliance to environmental accounting principles (one constant and one unknown). 52 instances of upward trends and 54 instances of downward trends after one year followed these announcements (30 unknown). 48 out of 336 listed companies (14%) announce environmental accounting principle compliance with their shareholders. More announcements referring to environmental accounting compliance were posted in 2012 and 2013 (n = 17 and n = 22 averaged for six months) compared to those in 2008 to 2011 (n = 9; n = 15; n = 14 and n = 15 averaged for six months). 56% of companies complying with environmental accounting principles are from the mining industry. 39.19% of principles complied with was within the diverse principle division. P-values derived from t-tests done to investigate correlations between share price and compliance with environmental accounting principles on various levels all revealed P-values of more than 0.25. Conclusions: No statistically significant correlation could be made between compliance with environmental accounting principles and fluctuations in share price. There is low divulgence of compliance practices to shareholders from mentioned companies. An upward trend for compliance with environmental accounting principles is noted during the past five years. The mining industry showed the greatest compliance with these principles when judged according to divulgence of compliance by means of announcements to their shareholders as well as when judged according to stance on the SRI Index. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

The objective of this study was to analyse the impact of business magazine cover stories, albeit positive, neutral or negative, on the share price of the featured company. Two of the aspects of investment finance are rational behaviour and efficient markets. Both of these concepts were explored to understand why a cover story would have an impact on a company share price. Causal research was conducted to analyse the correlation between a magazine cover story and the featured company’s share price. The cover stories were collected form the Financial Mail and Finance Week archives. The holding period returns were calculated and compared to zero to analyse whether there was any momentum or contrarian signals. The holding period returns were also adjusted for that of the average of the resources index (J258) to ascertain whether the returns were abnormal or not. The results have shown that in some instances, such as with neutral cover stories, the markets show strong signs of efficiency. The results of positive cover stories showed these to be momentum indicators, however when the results were adjusted for the resource index, many the positive returns dissipated. Negative cover stories had the strongest results, where after the cover story there were clear contrarian signals. Most of the companies stopped showing negative returns. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This study focuses on the ten most valued groups on the Nasdaq Stockholm exchange and their reported results for the period of 2009-2015. The purpose of the study was to investigate correlation between reported results on different levels and the progress of the share prices. Using Pearson’s correlation coefficient I was able to compare operating profit, net result and other comprehensive income to one another. I found that operating profit and net result came very close to each other, whilst other comprehensive income fell behind.  As it seems, share prices are affected by a numerous of variables, not only by reported results and earnings.

Share price returns on different time scales can be well modeled by a superstatistical dynamics. We provide an investigation which type of superstatistics is most suitable to properly describe share price dynamics on various time scales. It is shown that while chi-square-superstatistics works well on a time scale of days, on a much smaller time scale of minutes the price changes are better described by lognormal superstatistics. The system dynamics thus exhibits a transition from lognormal to chi-square-superstatistics as a function of time scale. We discuss a more general model interpolating between both statistics which fits the observed data very well. We also present results on correlation functions of the extracted superstatistical volatility parameter, which exhibits exponential decay for returns on large time scales, whereas for returns on small time scales there are long-range correlations and power-law decays. We also apply the symbolic dynamics technique from dynamical system theory to analyse the coarse-grained evolution of share price returns. A nontrivial spectrum of Renyi entropies is found. We study how the spectrum depends on the time scale of returns, the sector of stocks considered, as well as the number of symbols used for the symbolic description. Overall our analysis confirms that in the symbol space transition probabilities of observed share price returns depend on the entire history of previous symbols, thus emphasizing the need for a model of share price evolution based on non-Markovian stochastic processes. Our method allows for quantitative comparisons of entirely different complex systems, for example the statistics of coarse-grained share price returns using 4 symbols can be compared with that of other complex systems.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-71). Also available on the Internet.