In this thesis the author investigate the overreaction effect of Asian country exchange traded funds (ETFs) to US stock market returns, trading strategies of leveraged exchange traded funds (LETFs), and the regime switching behavior of emerging market sovereign credit default swaps. In the Asian country ETF paper the author studies the overreaction effect of US investors towards US market return when they formulate Asian country ETF prices. The Asian country ETFs are special because when the ETF shares are traded in the US the underlying Asian stock markets are closed resulting in stale Net Asset Values (NAVs) of ETFs. This feature of Asian country ETFs offers a unique setting to study the relation between security price and market sentiment. With a dynamic contrarian trading strategy the author records economically significant abnormal returns over the buy-and-hold benchmark suggesting that US investors’ sentiment does lead to abnormal returns in the Asian country ETF market. The author also studies the correspondence of the abnormal return with US market sentiment index and finds that they are positively correlated. Furthermore the author documents asymmetric responses of overreaction in bullish vs. bearish market sentiment. The results pose significant implications for both the academics and practitioners. iii The LETF trading strategy paper is a joint work with my supervisor Dr. Peter Miu and my supervisory committee member Dr. Narat Charupat. The authors investigate the market conditions that tip the balance between the market trending effect and the volatility drag in governing the performance of LETFs. The market conditions that promote a stronger former effect than the latter will result in a positive compounding effect, thus enhancing the profitability of a long LETF position at the expense of a short one. On the other hand, those market conditions that promote a dominating latter effect will result in a negative compounding effect, which benefits the short LETF position as opposed to the long position. To address our research questions, we conduct a series of simulation exercises by gauging the sensitivity of the LETF returns on key parameters of the return generating process of the underlying benchmark as represented by the GJR model. We first study the return distributions of a long strategy in a +3x LETF, a short strategy in a -3x LETF, and the pair strategy of a 50% short position in the +3x LETF together with a 50% short position in the -3x LETF, all on the same S&P 500 index. We examine different performance measures and study the risk-return trade-offs of LETF investment. We contribute to the literature by establishing the link between the performance of LETFs and characteristics of the return dynamics of the underlying benchmark through pinpointing the underlying drivers of the compounding effects to facilitate the decision-making process of LETF investors. In the sovereign Credit Default Swap (SCDS) paper the author investigates the dependency of sovereign CDS spread change on a sovereign’s country specific fundamental, local, regional and macro global factors. Using Markov regime switching model the author reveals that in a tranquil state a sovereign market’s fundamental factors mainly determine the direction of the SCDS spread movement, while in a turmoil state the global factors become dominant. Cross sectional analysis to examine the behavior of the same explanatory variable on countries of different macroeconomic characters and reveal that more “open” countries are more integrated with the regional economies with the contagion effect being more salient in the bad state, and smaller countries with less diversified economies would be more affected a global crisis because economic links are more important for such countries than larger countries. Furthermore, it shows that the influence of rating is more significant for “closed” than for “open” countries, and the market sentimental effect of flight-to-quality magnifies in the bad state that US equity market return has the strongest influence for small countries indicating stronger economic ties of smaller countries to larger countries with diverse economies in the bad state. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Emerging market enterprises (EMMs) are on the rise and are quickly becoming significant contributors to the global economy. The fast-paced growth of EMMs generates an interest in understanding the impact of home country advantages that EMMs have and how they use them. Emerging markets, in different ways and forms, experience institutional voids within their markets. This can be in the form of, among others, an inefficient regulatory system, a lack of skilled labor force or poor infrastructure. The different advantages and disadvantages the EMMs have can be explored by applying the OLI framework. Which details different advantages in the form of ownership-specific, location-specific and internalization advantages. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding how different EMMs use their OLI advantages in order to more effectively plug institutional voids. This has been answered through a semi-structured interview and collected transcripts from EMM leaders. The findings of this study indicates that EMMs most important advantage is the knowledge and inventive thinking possessed by the managers.

Since continuously the companies in developed country always acquire the companies in emerging country in order to cost down or diversification. Under global competition, the emerging country becomes better and better. According to KPMG¡¦s data, the companies in emerging country acquire the developed country accelerated, especially product and natural resource are the largest goal; in the other hands, the multinational acquisitions are going down for two years. The amount of the company in emerging market acquires the company in developed country is 47 percentage of the amount the company in developed market acquires the company in emerging country. It¡¦s the highest statistic in KPMG since 2003. The study try to understand the strategy which the company in emerging market acquires the company in developed country as follows, what drove the decision to ¡§ go global¡¨, how did the company strike the balance between using foreign country management teams, and what is the challenge? How did the company accomplish integration and leverage synergies with overseas business? What advice would you give other emerging market companies on how to be successful in developed markets? The result show: the emerging market is seek to develop brand to international brand, avoid trade tax and get the core skill from oversea enterprise. Non-traditional buyer should accept the acquired company totally. In the beginning, the leader of oversea management team should be the executive officer from the acquired company to keep the loyal customers and reduce the rate of key men. To use the double brand strategy, the loyal customer could feel the innovation of R&D and set up the headquarter in oversea to let the customer feel the brand is new

Universiẗat der Bundeswehr, Diss., 2006--München.

Regensburg, Univ., Diss., 2009.

Universiẗat, Diss., 2005--Freiburg.

The adoption of electronic self-service systems (SSTs), using information technology (IT) devices and channels, for the provision of banking services (also known as electronic banking or e-banking) has evolved in the last decade in emerging markets. In Nigeria, for instance, this development is driving the movement towards a cashless economy. These services, however, are fraught with problems ranging from incidents of fraud, empty automated teller machines (ATMs), the inability of the ATMs to dispense cash, and outright service unavailability. Thus, the primary objective of this study is to identify service improvements following current electronic banking service performance measures. Given the dearth of developing country research and appropriate constructs, secondary objectives include the: 1) conceptualisation of e-service using service science principles; 2) description of factors and attributes of electronic banking quality (EBQ) in Nigeria; 3) identification of consumer perceptions of EBQ; 4) proposal of a model of EBQ; and 5) rank and score EBQ performance. A three-step sequential mixed-methods research design is conducted. This consists of a substantial qualitative (QUAL) process that posits EBQ constructs using grounded theory techniques. This is followed by an equally substantial quantitative (QUAN) process that employs survey methods in the formulation of a scale to measure EBQ. The final quantitative (quan) process scores EBQ using survey research methods and intelligent decision system (IDS) analysis. Consumer perception measurements of Nigerian bank customers using the derived dimensions of EBQ - acceptability, accessibility, competence, convenience, reliability, responsiveness, security/privacy, access to support, availability of support, and usability - generated an unimpressive industry performance score of 56%. The thesis concludes that even though Nigerian bank customers are desirous of participating in the cashless economy, issues of cash security and responsiveness are paramount. Service improvement spaces for e-banking operators, centred on rigorous strategic planning initiatives, are identified alongside additional initiatives for bank customers and regulators. In summary, this thesis presents an alternative scale to measure consumer perceptions of EBQ that adds to the existing body of knowledge.

Africa as an emerging market offers firms from Multinational Corporations (MNCs) significant opportunities to expand and capitalise on the continents economic growth and combined consumer spending. Africa has significantly higher levels of state fragility and political risk in comparison to the rest of the World. Managers of firms looking to enter the African market need to analyse political risk in Africa when the firm risk taking and financial return relationship is considered. The objective of this research study was to establish if there is a relationship between political risk and financial performance of firms in Africa. This study used various financial performance ratios of 406 firms operating in five African countries and numerous country political risk variables to investigate if such a relationship exist over an eight year period. The findings indicate that there is a positive political risk financial return relationship for firms operating in Africa. Firms seem to achieve higher financial performance results in countries with higher overall political risk. This study suggest that African countries need to be analysed on an individual basis when considering political risk and published political risk data should not be used for decision making without deeper understanding and analyses of the country. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This paper argues that greater levels of risk, generally thought to be detrimental to business performance in emerging markets, are actually a benefit and an important source of competitive advantage for emerging multinational enterprises (EMNEs) competing in the global arena. EMNEs that have survived despite these challenging business environments are more comfortable with and skilled at managing risk than their developed market peers as evidenced in two ways. First, EMNEs are able to stabilise their business performance to statistically match the risk spread of those in developed markets despite their more volatile environments, and second, EMNEs perform progressively better than developed market firms at increased levels of risk. Interestingly, EMNEs react identically to risk drivers that developed market firms responded to twenty years ago, but developed market firms no longer respond the same way. Today, these risk drivers vary significantly between EMNEs and multinational enterprises (MNEs). For example, in every EMNE-MNE comparison, expectation, firm age, firm independence and available slack had contrasting influences. These differences may be attributed to the earlier stage of development for EMNEs rather than an emerging market influence. Most firms, regardless of origin, strive for low risk levels while the best returns are to be made at medium risk levels. This evidence both supports and contradicts Bowman’s Paradox of a negative risk-performance relationship. The strongest risk drivers are internationalisation, recoverable slack and past performance. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This paper investigates the impact of diversification and the financial crisis on firm performance in India.The dataset of this paper is focused on Indian publicly listed firms between 2006 and 2012. By analyzingaccounting-based and market-based measures of firm performance, this study tries to explain the factorsthat influences the costs and benefits of diversified firms compared to non-diversified firms. This studyfound that diversified firms have on average a higher firm performance than non-diversified firms.During the global financial crisis, the performance of both diversified and non-diversified firms in Indiadeteriorated caused by a meltdown of global economic activities. This study does not find evidence thatdiversified firms perform relatively better than non-diversified firms during crisis times. Diversification isexpected to be more beneficial in the absence of well-developed and integrated capital markets due theeffects of “more money” and “smarter money”, arising from an increased efficiency of the internalcapital market. The analysis gives an impression that the total number of diversified firms increased afterthe crisis.