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Dramatic changes in medical science and a general improvement in living standards has led to significant reduction in the morality rate of certain age groups in South Africa. As a result the average age at which people are likely to die increased significantly in the 2oth century. The implications of this has not only to increase the number of people who survive to retirement age, but it has also seen larger numbers of people live for much longer periods in retirement. Opposite to the above, is the HIVIAids pandemic, which will increase the mortality rates of individuals at a younger age and undoubtedly affect pension plans and the costs thereof. The effect of all these changes have been the ultimate cost of providing a given pension benefit. At first the paper examines the trend in retirement saving away from Defined Benefit (DB) towards Define Contribution (DC) funds. It looks at the reasons why this shift has occurred in South Africa, and provided confirmation of the retirement savings plans away from DB structures and towards DC type of plans in South Africa. Secondly the paper briefly looks at the operation of DC plans in South Africa. The potential consequences of the shift are then reviewed in the context of roleplayers in the retirement savings decision and personal involvement in retirement planning process. Upon completion of the literature study, a model was developed in which data from DC funds were used to make projections regarding the sufficiency and adequacy of funding within DC funds. This study has proved that the shift from DB to DC funds had an enormous impact on provision for retirement. It was found that a significant part of the population will not be independent at retirement and therefore might potentially became a responsibility of the state. The paper suggests that the level of personal involvement in the retirement savings decision may be a critical factor in determining the propensity of an individual to save for retirement. As a result research is proposed to consider the importance of the three elements in the involvement of the individual in the retirement savings decision: the perceived ownership of retirement savings, the awareness of the need to save for retirement and the understanding of how to save for retirement. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2004.

This thesis comprises three essays on international business strategy with regards to services and technology. The first essay investigates why the average expense ratio paid by Canadian mutual fund investors is 50% higher than that paid in U.S. This discrepancy is commonly thought to exist because Canadian funds do not take advantage of economies of scale and have less competition. A monopolistic competition framework is used to develop a model for the mutual fund industry. By allowing each fund to have different attributes, the model permits funds to charge different expense ratios in equilibrium and is found to strongly fit the North American mutual fund market. Empirical analysis indicates that these two common explanations and measurable fund attributes account for 15% of the discrepancy. The second essay analyses the U.S. mutual fund decision to enter the Canadian market through either foreign direct investment (FDI) or trade in advisement services. The total value of U.S.-controlled funds amounts to 18% of the Canadian equity fund market. This paper investigates how the fund-level and firm-level characteristics affect the channel used to enter the Canadian market. Empirical results indicate that the funds offered through FDI are not especially successful in the U.S. market but are associated with companies with large market shares, whereas the funds offered through trade in advisement services are highly successful in the U.S. market and are from companies with relatively few successful funds. The third essay compares the motivation for acquisition between foreign and domestic acquirers of U.S. drug companies, especially with regard to technology transfer. An estimation of the acquisition decision reveals that foreign acquirers choose targets with high research intensity more as their own intensity decreases while domestic acquirers choose targets with high research intensity more as their own intensity increases. Domestic acquirers' post-acquisition innovative productivity increases mostly due to efficiency of knowledge synthesis because the targets are usually have familiar product lines. Foreign acquirers' innovative productivity does not increase after acquisition because they tend to take over firms in unfamiliar research areas that are usually highly technical and require a long-term commitment of R&D.

By construction, actively managed portfolios must differ from passively managed ones. Consequently, the manager’s problem can be viewed as selecting how to deviate from a passive portfolio composition. The purpose of this study is to see if we can infer the presence of superior skills through the analysis of the portfolio deviations from a benchmark. Based on the Black-Litterman approach, we hypothesize that positive signals should lead to an increase in weight, from which should follow that the largest deviations from a benchmark weight reveal the presence of superior skills. More precisely, this study looks at the subsequent performance of the securities corresponding to the largest deviations from different external benchmarks. We use a sample of 8385 US funds from the CRSP Survivorship bias free database from June 2003 to June 2004 to test our predictions. We use two external benchmarks to calculate the deviations: the CRSP value weighted index (consistent with the Black-Litterman model) and the investment objective of each fund. Our main result shows that a portfolio of the securities with the most important positive deviations with respect to a passive benchmark (either CRSP-VW or investment objective), would have earned a subsequent positive abnormal return (on a risk-adjusted basis) for one month after the portfolio date. The magnitude of this return is around 0.6% for all the funds, and can be as high as 2.77% for small caps value funds. This result is robust to all the performance measures used in this study.

The purpose of this thesis is to explain theoretically and empirically the demand for international reserves by the major industrialized countries in the context of the present highly integrated and extremely volatile international financial system. The reserves demand behaviour of each of the G7 countries along with seven non-G7 industrialized countries have been empirically examined. The demand functions are estimated using the cointegration approach on autoregressive distributed lag and simple distributed lag models. / This study has revealed that a country's reserve demand is significantly influenced by its level of capital flows in addition to the traditionally used trade flow variables. It is shown that the greater the external vulnerability of an economy as measured by its net capital flows in relation to its GNP, the higher is its demand for international reserves. The results have striking similarity for all the 14 industrialized countries despite their structural and institutional differences. / This study points to the need of international monetary policy coordination to reduce large fluctuations in exchange rates and lessen massive flows of speculative capital which carry a potential threat of becoming inflationary.

The Capital Asset Pricing model (CAPM) is the most widely used equity valuation model in both the United States of America (U.S.) and South Africa, thus its importance in corporate finance cannot be underestimated. The largest criticism of the CAPM lies in the difficulties with estimating its parameters and in particular the return on the market parameter. Roll (1977) believed that it is impossible to estimate the market portfolio let alone find a good proxy for it. The common trend amongst practitioners is to use a broad based stock index such as the S&P 500 or in South Africa‟s case the All Share Index (ALSI) as a proxy for the market portfolio. However these methods are questionable, as the market portfolio theoretically contains all risky assets held in proportion to their market value, and stock indices ignore large asset classes such as bonds. Furthermore, using a broad based stock index in the South African context ignores South African specific problems such as the supposed segregation of the market to the Resource and Financial and Industrial sectors. Therefore the purpose of this study was to determine whether simply using the broad based stock index, the ALSI, as a proxy for the market portfolio would suffice or whether the inclusion of debt instruments and the acknowledgement of the segregation on the JSE would enhance the proxy‟s performances. First a set of theoretical requirements that a proxy must satisfy to be considered a suitable proxy for the market portfolio were derived. Then a review of literature on the matter was undertaken, which showed that studies in both the U.S. and South Africa had had mixed results. Next, the various proxies were formed, and tested using the two-pass regression method. The two-pass regressions that were run with the model comprising solely of the ALSI as a proxy, produced a negative sloping SML. This result suggested an inverse relationship between risk and return, which is contradictory to the theory set out in chapters two and three. Thus robustness tests were performed on the model, but none solved the problem. Next the proposed multifactor models were tested to see if they would enhance the results of the first model. Although the results improved slightly, they too did not solve the problem. Thus, in conclusion it was found that incorporating a bond index into the proxy for the market portfolio did not significantly enhance the use of the CAPM in South Africa. / Thesis (M.Com.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2011.

Dramatic changes in medical science and a general improvement in living standards has led to significant reduction in the morality rate of certain age groups in South Africa. As a result the average age at which people are likely to die increased significantly in the 2oth century. The implications of this has not only to increase the number of people who survive to retirement age, but it has also seen larger numbers of people live for much longer periods in retirement. Opposite to the above, is the HIVIAids pandemic, which will increase the mortality rates of individuals at a younger age and undoubtedly affect pension plans and the costs thereof. The effect of all these changes have been the ultimate cost of providing a given pension benefit. At first the paper examines the trend in retirement saving away from Defined Benefit (DB) towards Define Contribution (DC) funds. It looks at the reasons why this shift has occurred in South Africa, and provided confirmation of the retirement savings plans away from DB structures and towards DC type of plans in South Africa. Secondly the paper briefly looks at the operation of DC plans in South Africa. The potential consequences of the shift are then reviewed in the context of roleplayers in the retirement savings decision and personal involvement in retirement planning process. Upon completion of the literature study, a model was developed in which data from DC funds were used to make projections regarding the sufficiency and adequacy of funding within DC funds. This study has proved that the shift from DB to DC funds had an enormous impact on provision for retirement. It was found that a significant part of the population will not be independent at retirement and therefore might potentially became a responsibility of the state. The paper suggests that the level of personal involvement in the retirement savings decision may be a critical factor in determining the propensity of an individual to save for retirement. As a result research is proposed to consider the importance of the three elements in the involvement of the individual in the retirement savings decision: the perceived ownership of retirement savings, the awareness of the need to save for retirement and the understanding of how to save for retirement. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2004.

No description available.

This thesis investigates key issues concerning how active equity fund managers add value: measuring alpha (Chapter 3), generating alpha (Chapters 4, 5 and 6) and transaction cost minimisation (Chapter 7). Chapter 3 proposes important methodological adjustments to the widely adopted benchmarking methodology of Daniel, Grinblatt, Titman and Wermers (1997). Applying this modified benchmark to a sample of active funds and simulated passive portfolios that mimic fund manager style characteristics, statistically lower tracking error is documented, compared with using the standard methodology. These findings suggest that improved specifications of characteristic benchmarks represent better methods in accurately quantifying fund manager skill. Chapter 4 examines a portfolio strategy which selects stocks using the undisclosed monthly holdings of Australian active funds. When considering a large range of strategies incorporating portfolio holdings information, the top performing strategies are robust to data-snooping and are economically and statistically significant when incorporating transaction costs. Accounting for look-ahead bias in the formation of a strategy, statistically significant alpha of at least 6.88 percent per year is found when following the best performing strategy holding 20 stocks or more in the previous month. Chapter 5 examines the relation of active equity fund managers location proximity to a stock??s corporate headquarter using portfolio holdings data. Contrary to much international research, this study reveals evidence inconsistent with a location advantage for Melbourne and Sydney-based funds. Chapter 6 examines retail investor trading on the Australian Stock Exchange. The performance of retail investors is highly heterogeneous: discount (non-discount) retail brokerage investors lose -0.59 (-0.05) percent intraday and experience negative (positive) returns over the subsequent year. These findings are inconsistent with retail investors exerting price pressure or providing liquidity to institutions. Chapter 7 examines whether equity fund managers use multiple brokers in a trade package in order to lower their price impact and brokerage costs. Using the daily trades of funds, multiple broker trades are not found to have lower costs compared to a single broker, even when controlling for the informativeness of the trade package and potential endogeneity. These findings suggest that fund managers do not lower their costs when using multiple brokers.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1976. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-126). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.