This paper examines the impact of USD and EUR exchange rates on the Swedish stock market performance for different economic sectors over a time period of ten years (2003-2013). The growing integration between foreign exchange markets and stock markets with the wide spread use of hedging and diversification policies made it necessary to test the degree of impact these two distinct markets share between each other. Number of studies, were done studying the relationship between the exchange rates and stock performance combining and comparing different economies and currencies. Nevertheless, research gap prevailed when it came at the point of the studying the relationship on Swedish stock and foreign exchange market. The research was conducted with the quantitative method. Initially we have tested how the performance of Swedish stock market is correlated with the return of the USD and EUR in different economic sectors over different time periods. Later, we try to investigate if there is any spillover effect flows from the exchange market to the Swedish stock market. The Pearson’s correlation coefficient and GARCH (1,1) model were applied to study the correlation and spillover effect between the exchange and stock return respectively. Our empirical study showed that there is very low correlation which is statistically insignificant between the two different markets. Correlations were found to be significantly varied across the different economic sectors in different time periods. Moreover empirical study supported that the spillover effect exists and showed that movement of exchange rates will affect the future performance of stock market. The significant conclusions were that USD and EUR can be used as portfolio diversification and during the volatile exchange market, investors should diversify or hedge their risk domestically and vice versa. The implications of this finding is particularly very important for the portfolio managers when devising their hedging policies and diversifying their portfolios in order to minimize their unsystematic risk.

La dérégulation et la libéralisation des mouvements de capitaux ont permis un développement spectaculaire des marchés financiers ces dernières années. L'intégration des marchés financiers et l'émergence de nouveaux produits financiers offrent de nouvelles opportunités aux investisseurs nationaux et internationaux. D'abord, on peut constater dans les pays émergents un biais domestique élevé par rapport à celui des pays développés. En effet, dans l'échantillon de pays sur lesquels porte notre étude, le Royaume-Uni présente le biais domestique le plus faible tandis que celui d'Israël un pays émergent demeure le plus fort. Ensuite, nous remarquons que la diversification internationale de portefeuille offre peu d'opportunité entre pays développés. Par ailleurs, le nombre de secteurs de diversification de portefeuille entre pays développés varie en fonction du niveau de biais domestiques. Le Royaume-Uni qui a le plus faible biais domestique dispose de beaucoup de secteurs étrangers dans lesquels ses investisseurs peuvent acheter des titres. Il résulte donc de ces observations que le nombre de secteurs diminue au fur et à mesure que le biais domestique augmente. Le même constat s'observe entre les pays développés. Quant aux pays émergents, contrairement aux pays développés, malgré leur fort biais domestique, nombre de possibilités en secteurs d'activités se présentent à eux d'inclure dans leur portefeuille des titres étrangers. Ils peuvent également introduire dans leur portefeuille les titres de plusieurs secteurs étrangers. Enfin les secteurs dans lesquels les investisseurs d'un pays donné peuvent acquérir des titres financiers à l'étranger varient d'un pays à un autre. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : biais domestiques, diversification internationale, secteurs d'activités, portefeuille.

Using a sample of 678 property portfolio changes (acquisitions, dispositions and joint ventures) of U.S. REITs during the period 1990 to 2009, I investigate the issue of what drives the property sector focus of REITs. Geltner and Miller (2001) argue that investors prefer to make their own diversification decisions using narrowly focused REITs as an explanation for the lack of diversification. On the basis of their argument, I develop and examine the research question of how investors react to a change in a REIT’s property type focus. I find a significantly negative market reaction to acquisition and acquisitional JV events that decrease property-type focus. However, I do not find consistent supporting evidence that dispositional events, including property sales and dispositional JVs which increase property-type focus, yield significantly positive abnormal returns. Only in the limited case of other property-type dispositional JVs do I find a statistically significant positive market reaction relative to those derived from the dispositional events that do not change the property-type focus on the basis of a difference test. In terms of the results of cross-sectional OLS regressions, I also find strong evidence of a diversification discount derived from acquisitional events that decrease the property-type focus of a REIT regardless of the sample period and the type of property portfolio change. However, I do not find evidence of a wealth benefit received by dispositional events which increase the property-type focus. In addition, I find that the deal size of the property portfolio change relative to the size of the firm and the number of security analysts following the firm are both significant variables that affect the abnormal returns upon the announcement of a property portfolio change. I also find no evidence to support the idea that the diversification discount comes from endogeneity as argued by Villanova (2004).

The subject of the study for this dissertation is the relationship between pricing and reserving risks for property-casualty insurance companies. Since the risk characteristics of insurers differ based on their structure, objectives and incentives, segmenting the insurers into subgroups would allow for a better understanding of group-specific risks. Based on this approach to analyzing insurer financial risks, we find that, in a given accident year, the pricing and reserving errors are positively correlated, especially in long-tailed lines of business. Large insurers, stock insurers, and multi-state insurers, in general, exhibit a strong correlation between accident-year price and reserve errors. However, only size of insurers appears to be a factor that influences the interaction between price changes and the calendar year loss reserve adjustments. Furthermore, we find that the pricing risk and reserving risk are marginally more homogenous within a market segment when size, type and number of states are employed as criteria for market segmentation, hence insurance regulators should consider the refined market segments for the RBC formula. The empirical results also indicate that, in general, Chain-Ladder reserving method likely contributes to loss reserve errors when there is a change in the loss development pattern and the magnitude of the errors is worse for large insurers. Finally, we find that our proposed measurement method for the product diversification benefit provides support for the notion that the diversification benefit on the incurred losses increases with the number of lines in the portfolio. Yet, the diminishing returns tend to decrease the diversification benefit on the incurred losses for insurers that write the business in more than six of the selected lines. To the contrary, our proposed measure does not provide clear evidence that writing business in many product lines increases the product diversification benefit with respect to adverse loss development. We do find that the diversification benefit for both incurred losses and loss development is higher for larger insurers. Hence, for risk management and regulatory purposes, a stronger case can be made for considering firm size than product diversification.

<p>Morphological characters from the gametophyte and sporophyte generations have been used in land plants to infer relationships and construct classifications, but sporophytes provide the vast majority of data for the systematics of vascular plants. In bryophytes both generations are well developed and characters from both are commonly used to classify these organisms. However, because morphological traits of gametophytes and sporophytes can have different genetic bases and experience different selective pressures, taxonomic emphasis on one generation or the other may yield incongruent classifications. The moss order Hookeriales has a controversial taxonomic history because previous classifications have focused almost exclusively on either gametophytes or sporophytes. The Hookeriales provide a model for comparing morphological evolution in gametophytes and sporophytes, and its impact on alternative classification systems. Sometimes, placement of certain groups within Hookeriales remains challenging even at the molecular level. That is the case of the genus <italic>Calyptrochaeta</italic>. We study diversification dynamics in this genus to elucidate possible mechanisms obscuring its placement and we address biogeographic questions using the Tropical Conservatism scenario as our null hypothesis. Furthermore, to better understand biogeographic patterns in the Southern Hemisphere, infraspecific molecular patterns are compared in two species of the genus <italic>Calyptrochaeta</italic> (i.e., <italic>C. apiculata</italic> and <italic>C. asplenioides</italic>) and vicariance and recent long distance dispersal are tested to explain the disjunct distributions observed in these species. </p><p>In this study we reconstruct relationships among pleurocarpous mosses in or associated to the Hookeriales, in <italic>Calyptrochaeta</italic>, and within <italic>Calyptrochaeta</italic>. Six molecular markers are explored in total from all three genome compartments to reconstruct the evolution of morphological characters and habitat preferences in our phylogenies. Divergence times are estimated in a Bayesian framework using a relaxed molecular clock, and diversification rates are calculated on the chronograms resulting from these estimations. </p><p>As a result, we found that the Hookeriales, as currently circumscribed, are monophyletic and that both sporophyte and gametophyte characters are labile. We documented parallel changes and reversals in traits from both generations. We show that diversification rates in <italic>Calyptrochaeta</italic> have changed through its history. Also, though we lack support to clearly reject the tropical conservatism hypothesis, our data point to a more complex scenario where both temperate and tropical species can be ancient and give rise to one another, since shifts between tropical and temperate regions seem to be possible in any direction. Finally, we have show that recent long distance dispersal best explains the distribution of both <italic>C. apiculata</italic> and <italic>C. asplenioides</italic> in the Southern Hemisphere.</p> / Dissertation

The purpose of the study is to discuss the effect of three kinds of diversification strategies in the smart phone industry: self-brand strategy, upward integration strategy and brand extension strategy. Based on the moderate effect of evaluation of firm and product involvement, the influence of these three strategies will be evaluated by consumer¡¦s view when firms who are smart phone-related consider entering smart phone industry. Hon Hai, Canon and CHT were selected as cell phone equipment manufacturer, digital camera firm and internet service provider through pre-test 2. A 3(diversification strategy: self-brand strategy, upward integration strategy, brand extension strategy)x 2 (brand evaluation: high, low) experimental design collected data from white color workers and master students in NSYSU through 6 color printed advertisements. First of all, the result of search suggests that the willingness to buy is effected by different evaluations on cell phone equipment manufacturer and digital camera firm. Willingness to buy will be high if the evaluation of cell phone equipment manufacturer and digital camera firm is high too. However, for consumer, willingness to buy is not different whether the evaluation of internet service provider is high or low. Second, consumer involvement influences the behavior of buying smart phone. Consumer who is high-involvement has higher willingness to buy than low-involvement under three different strategies. Finally, willingness to buy is not different under these three strategies no matter what strategies firms adapt when they try to enter smart phone Industry.

This study measures the short-term and long-term contagion effects in U.S. stock markets and REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) markets during the periods of subprime mortgage and financial crises. First, we test contagion between the U.S. stock market and the U.S. REITs market. Then, we test the contagion effects between the U.S. REITs market and eighteen international REITs markets, selected from North America, Oceania, Asian and Europe. To catch the asymmetric effect in the volatility structure of index returns and consider the time-varying data, this study employs asymmetric dynamic Copula models that measure contagion effects. The test result in this study shows that the contagion effect exists because of the fact that during the subprime mortgage crisis, the correlation between the U.S. stock market and REITs market significantly increased. Thus, the two markets lost ground together. While managing not to emerge in Asian REITs markets, the contagion then spread from the U.S. REITs market to Canada, Australia and most of the European REITs markets. In the later financial crisis period, however, the number of European REITs markets impacted by contagion from the U.S. REITs market decreased. Except for Singapore, contagion is absent from the Asian REITs markets. Contagion is more obvious in the short term than in the long term. These results imply that the Asian REITs markets are not easily affected by the U.S. REITs market, which in turn implies that investors could obtain the positive effects of international diversification by investing in this portfolio. In addition, investors should reduce the proportion of their investments placed in REITs markets, as well as focus on a long-term diversification strategy.

The financial sector due to the particularity of the industry, the government set a lot of control provisions, therefore most of the earnings management research will set financial sector excluded. In fact, the financial sector, in order to comply with the legal provisions, which the motives of earnings management may be even higher than the average company. This study used The Modified Jones Model to calculate the proxy of discretionary accruals as an earnings management¡Ffinancial holding company engaged in the amount of the core subsidiary of the format category to measure the extent of its related diversification¡Fand the implementation of SFAS No. 34 divided into two study period, to explore the relationship between the relevant level of diversification and earnings management, earnings management and financial asset disposition gains and losses, earnings management and financial performance is different. Empirical results show that: (1)Before and after of SFAS No. 34 implementation , the higher the degree of diversification of financial holding company, the earning management were higher.(2) Before and after of SFAS No. 34 implementation, the financial holding company will make use of the disposal of financial assets in order to increase the gain on disposal for earnings management.(3) Before and after of SFAS No. 34 implementation, the financial holding company will engage in earnings management operations in order to enhance the company's financial performance.

Taiwan's Uni-President Enterprise Corp. started its business from flour. In order to save costs, Uni-President proceeded with a vertical industrial integration at the initial stage, opened additional businesses at the middle stage, and diversified until recently. He has been playing a pivotal role as a pioneer for marketing, product development, and even diversification strategies in this industry. With the expansion of overseas investments, Uni-President Enterprise Corp. received significant benefits from economies of scale. South Korea has been a formidable competitor to Taiwan. Our market is not only flooded with various Korean electronic equipment, household appliances and audio-visual entertainment, but also the foods. For example, the koala-shape biscuits and chocopie, which are rather popular, are from Lotte, the food industry leader of South Korea. These two enterprises are both leaders in the food industry, and take integration and diversification as parts of their development process. Diversification of product and business is the main method to facilitate growth. M&A (Merger & Acquisition) is the fastest and safest way to enter a new business field. Taiwan's Uni-President Enterprise Corp. and Korea's Lotte Group are the main cases for this study. Here we analyzed their strategies and motivations to understand the synergy and business performance these groups have as well as their differences.

As wind exploitation gains prominence in the power industry, the extensive use of this intermittent source of power may heavily rely on our ability to select the best combination of wind farming sites that yields maximal reliability of power systems at minimal cost. This research proposes a general method to minimize the wind park global power output variance by optimally distributing a predetermined number of wind turbines over a preselected number of potential wind farming sites for which the wind patterns are statistically known. The objective is to demonstrate the benefits of diversification for the reliability of wind-sustained systems through the search for steadier overall power outputs. Three years of wind data from the recent NREL/3TIER study in the western US provides the statistics for evaluating each site for their mean power output, variance and correlation with each other so that the best allocations can be determined. Some traditional reliability indices such as the LOLP are computed by using sequential Monte Carlo simulations to emulate the behavior of a power system uniquely composed of wind turbines and a load modeled from the 1996 IEEE RTS. It is shown that configurations featuring minimal global power output variances generally prove the most reliable for moderate load cases, provided the sites are not significantly correlated with the modeled load. Under these conditions, the choice of uncorrelated/negatively correlated sites is favored. The correlations between the optimized global wind power outputs and the modeled load are studied as well.