Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 77-78).

Inaug.-diss.--Giessen. / Cover title. Lebenslauf. "Literaturverzeichnis": p. v-[vi].

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1970. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Modigliani and Miller's (1958) irrelevance theory established the foundations of capital structure theory. They showed that, in a capital market free of taxes, transaction costs, asymmetric information, and other frictions, the value of the firm is independent of its capital structure choice. Most of the capital structure theory development that followed tested the irrelevance theory with more realistic assumptions regarding market frictions and information asymmetries. The vast amount of empirical research into the extent and effects of bankruptcy costs and taxes on capital structure, as well as cross-industry and cross-country examination of observed capital structure, led to the mainstream view that firms act as if there is a unique, optimal capital structure that results from the tradeoff between tax and agency cost benefits of increased debt use and the increased bankruptcy and agency costs that higher levels of debt entail. As an alternative to the trade-off model, Myers (1977) put forward the Pecking Order hypothesis of capital gearing. This states that because of information asymmetry and different stock market reactions to debt and equity issues, firms follow a "pecking order" in their financing decisions, i.e. they would first prefer to use internal funds rather than issuing securities. If forced to resort to external financing they would use debt before equity. Section one of this study undertakes a comprehensive review of the theoretical literature on capital structure to date, emphasising those theories that are more pertinent to the empirical study carried out in section two. Another school of thought which tries to explain the use of debt is transaction cost economics (Williamson, 1975, 1996), which sees debt and equity as two governance mechanisms, the choice between which is strongly dependent on asset specificity. Empirical tests are carried out in this study using regression analysis to try to establish whether the capital structure of firms in the UK hotel and retail industries is better explained by a pecking order model or by a target adjustment model. The last chapter presents an empirical analysis of different variables that are likely to influence the observed capital structure patterns. This panel data analysis assesses the role of size, earnings volatility, profitability, asset structure, non-debt tax shields, leasing and management contract (this latter is specific to the hotel industry) variables on gearing ratios. The conclusions of the empirical study are that the industry data analysed are much better explained by the target adjustment model than the pecking order model. However, a number of independent variables appear to contribute to the "target adjustment effect" and the debt tax shield is just one of them.

Improving access and building inclusive financial systems is not just a goal but also a necessity for economies at every level of development. Unsecured lending was first introduced with the intention of addressing society's ills yet recent violence experienced at the Marikana mines in Rustenburg aroused the attention of both the general public and government. The impact of unsecured lending on the financial wellbeing of consumers has subsequently been brought under the spotlight. Unsecured lending has taken and will continue to take an increasingly central role in our social, political and economic landscape. This study intended to determine the impact of unsecured lending on the financial wellbeing of consumers and made use of three research hypotheses towards this aim. A survey was used to gather data which was statistically analysed by means of a quantitative research strategy. The findings of the research indicated that those who make use of unsecured lending as a means of accessing finance have a better subjective view of their financial wellbeing than those who do not make use of unsecured lending, further, consumers who make use of multiple unsecured loans have an improved outlook with regard to their financial position than those who do not make use of multiple unsecured loans. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / mn2014 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Improving access and building inclusive financial systems is not just a goal but also a necessity for economies at every level of development. Unsecured lending was first introduced with the intention of addressing society's ills yet recent violence experienced at the Marikana mines in Rustenburg aroused the attention of both the general public and government. The impact of unsecured lending on the financial wellbeing of consumers has subsequently been brought under the spotlight. Unsecured lending has taken and will continue to take an increasingly central role in our social, political and economic landscape. This study intended to determine the impact of unsecured lending on the financial wellbeing of consumers and made use of three research hypotheses towards this aim. A survey was used to gather data which was statistically analysed by means of a quantitative research strategy. The findings of the research indicated that those who make use of unsecured lending as a means of accessing finance have a better subjective view of their financial well being than those who do not make use of unsecured lending, further, consumers who make use of multiple unsecured loans have an improved outlook with regard to their financial position than those who do not make use of multiple unsecured loans. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / pagibs2014 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

The recent dramatic increase in the corporate bankruptcy rate, coupled with a similar rate of increase in the bank failure rate, has re-awakened investor, lender and government interest in the area of bankruptcy prediction. Bankruptcy prediction models are of particular value to a firm's current and future creditors who often do not have the benefit of an actively traded market in the firm's securities from which to make inferences about the debtor's viability. The models commonly used by many experts in an endeavour to predict the possibility of disaster are outlined in this paper. The proportional hazard model, pioneered by Cox [1972], assumes that the hazard function, the risk of failure, given failure has not already occurred, is a function of various explanatory variables and estimated coefficients multiplied by an arbitrary and unknown function of time. The Cox Proportional Hazard model is usually applied in medical studies; but, has recently been applied to the bank failure question [Lane, Looney & Wansley, 1986]. The model performed well in the narrowly defined, highly regulated, banking industry. The principal advantage of this approach is that the model incorporates both the survival times observed and any censoring of data thereby using more of the available information in the analysis. Unlike many bankruptcy prediction models, such as logit and probit based regression models, the Cox model estimates the probability distribution of survival times. The proportional hazard model would, therefore, appear to offer a useful addition to the more traditional bankruptcy prediction models mentioned above. This paper evaluates the applicability of the Cox proportional hazard model in the more diverse industrial environment. In order to test this model, a sample of 109 firms was selected from the Compustat Industrial and Research Industrial data tapes. Forty one of these firms filed petitions under the various bankruptcy acts applicable between 1972 and 1985 and were matched to 67 firms which had not filed petitions for bankruptcy during the same period. In view of the dramatic changes in the bankruptcy regulatory environment caused by the Bankruptcy reform act of 1978, the legal framework of the bankruptcy process was also examined. The performance of the estimated Cox model was then evaluated by comparing its classification and descriptive capabilities to those of an estimated discriminant analysis based model. The results of this study indicate that while the classification capability of the Cox model was less than that of discriminant analysis, the model provides additional information beyond that available from the discriminant analysis. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

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Thesis advisor: Shakeeb S.K. Khan / Thesis advisor: Zhijie Z.X. Xiao / Binary choice models can be easily estimated (using, e.g. maximum likelihood estimation) when the distribution of the latent error is known, as in Logit or Probit. In contrast, most estimators with unknown error distribution (e.g., maximum score, maximum rank correlation, or Klein-Spady) are computationally difficult or numerically unstable, making estimation impractical with more than a few regressors. The first chapter proposes an estimator that is convex at each iteration, and so is numerically well behaved even with many regressors and large sample sizes. The proposed estimator, which is root-n consistent and asymptotically normal, is based on batch gradient descent, while using a sieve to estimate the unknown error distribution function. Simulations show that the estimator has lower mean bias and root mean squared error than Klein-Spady estimator. It also requires less time to compute. The second chapter discusses the same estimator in high dimensional setting. The estimator is consistent with rate lower than root-n when the number of regressors grows slower than the number of observations and asymptotic normal when the square of the number of regressors grows slower than the number of observations. Both theory and simulation show that higher learning rate is needed with higher number of regressors. The third chapter provides an application of the proposed estimator to bankruptcy prediction. With more than 20 regressors, the proposed estimator performs better than logistic regression in terms of Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristics using firm data one year or two years prior to bankruptcy, but worse than logistic regression using firm data three years prior to bankruptcy. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.