Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1976. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 353-371). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.

Thesis--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 118-124). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1961. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 135-150). Also available in electronic version.

The core of thesis lays in quantitative analysis of microeconomic data on public procurement and alternative forms of dealing with public money. It consists of three essays with one common attribute: extensive groundwork with data, including overlaps into legal and technical disciplines. The fist essay examines the relationship between transparency of ownership structure and (i) profits of firms winning public procurement contracts and (ii) competition for the contracts and savings of the public authority. It identifies a significant advantage of firms with opaque ownership structure in terms of access to public money. It concludes with a possible explanation of conflict of interest and corruption, which might channel such advantages. The second essay proposes and tests a novel methodology for benchmarking of contracting authorities. The proposed rating measures a deviation from best practice recommendations in the areas of openness, competition and transparency. Indirectly it measures efficiency and corruption potential in public procurement. The pilot results of the methodology are provided and extensively discussed for a group of Czech municipalities. Third essay investigates issue of crowding out effect potentially introduced by EU funds provision. It studies direct budgetary impacts of...

I examine the motivations of mutual fund families when deciding what mutual funds to launch, when to launch them, and how they are going to be launched. I begin by analyzing the influence of investor preferences on the flow to open-end mutual funds by associating flow to a fund with the degree to which the fund has an in-favor or trendy name. Results show that funds which conform to market-wide trends generate significantly higher inflows compared to less trendy funds. In my third chapter I examine the decision to launch a fund and show that investment companies have motivation, in the absence of any investment ability, to launch a trendy fund. Launching a trendy fund is beneficial to the fund family, generating additional revenue through fee collection, but is potentially harmful to investors with trendy fund startups underperforming non-trendy fund startups by over 1% per year. My fourth chapter examines the process of mutual fund incubation and shows that funds generate greater inflows post-incubation as a result of investors' positive response to incubation period performance. However, incubation appears to be used for reasons beyond generating a track record of performance. Specifically, fund families are more likely to release underperforming incubated funds if they are struggling to attract inflows to a large objective class.

Este trabalho teve como objetivo principal desenvolver um modelo para estimar o retorno anual de fundos privados de previdência complementar, PGBL/VGBL, que investiram em ativos de renda variável, entre 2007 e 2015. As variáveis utilizadas para discriminar as estratégias implementadas pelos gestores de fundos foram o beta do portfólio de ações, a taxa de administração cobrada pelo fundo e a porcentagem do patrimônio do fundo aplicada em ativos de renda variável. Os dados de 671 fundos diferentes foram extraídos do banco de dados Economática®. Os fundos estavam associados a 29 administradoras diferentes. Com esses dados, foi possível investigar a composição das carteiras de ações dos fundos administrados pelas principais instituições financeiras que operam no mercado brasileiro. Cada uma das principais administradoras de fundos manteve, no período, um padrão de seleção de portfólio de ativos de renda variável: a composição das carteiras acionárias de boa parte dos fundos pertencentes a uma mesma administradora, quando não idêntica, apresentou alto grau de similaridade. Para verificar se houve alguma diferenciação na estratégia de gerenciamento de fundos entre as principais administradoras, foram aplicados testes multivariados de igualdade de Wald. Foram encontradas diferenças estatisticamente significantes nas médias das variáveis que discriminaram estratégias de gestão dos fundos, dentro de um intervalo de confiança de 95%, em pelo menos uma das cinco principais administradoras de fundos. Os retornos anuais médios dos fundos, obtidos no período, estavam positiva e fortemente correlacionados ao principal índice de mercado de ações do Brasil, o Ibovespa. Esta descoberta indica uma possível passividade no gerenciamento de fundos, conforme encontrado por outros estudos acadêmicos. Especificamente, os fundos PGBL/VGBL com investimentos em ativos de renda variável que foram administrados pela administradora Itaú Unibanco SA obtiveram melhor desempenho médio, quando os retornos foram ajustados aos riscos incorridos. Para ajustar os retornos anuais ao risco, este trabalho apresentou, com base em um conjunto de premissas descritas no capítulo introdutório, uma metodologia que simplifica o cálculo das betas dos fundos, permitindo ordená-los com base em desempenhos ajustados ao risco. O modelo encontrado para estimar os retornos anuais dos fundos foi obtido por meio da técnica de regressão multinível com dados em painel. Tal modelo apontou, dentro do domínio temporal do estudo, que a cada ponto percentual adicional de taxa de administração cobrada pela instituição financeira, a estimativa de retorno ao investidor de determinado fundo era reduzida em um ponto percentual. Esta descoberta é mais uma evidência de passividade na gestão de fundos. Finalmente, a variação dos retornos anuais dos fundos é explicada principalmente pela variação na interação entre a porcentagem do patrimônio do fundo investido em ativos de renda variável e o retorno anual do Ibovespa. / This work aimed to develop a model for estimating the annual return of the most popular private retirement funds in the Brazilian market, PGBL/VGBL funds, that invested in variable-income assets, between 2007 and 2015. The variables used to discriminate the strategies implemented by the fund managers were the beta of the stock portfolio, the management fee charged by the fund, and the percentage of the fund assets applied in variable-income assets. Data from 671 different funds were extracted from the Economática® database. The funds were associated to 29 different financial institutions. With these data, it was possible to investigate the composition of the stock portfolios of the funds held by the main financial institutions that operate in the Brazilian market. Each of the main financial institutions maintained a pattern of portfolio selection for variable-income assets in the period: the composition of the equity portfolios of most of the funds managed by the same financial institution, when not identical, presented a high level of similarity. In order to verify if there was any differentiation in the fund management strategy among the main financial institutions, multivariate Wald equality tests were applied. Statistically significant differences in the average of the variables that discriminated fund strategies were found, within a 95% confidence interval, in at least one of the top fund financial institutions. The average annual returns of the funds obtained in the period were positive and strongly correlated to the main stock market index of Brazil, the Ibovespa. This finding indicates a possible passivity in fund management, as found by other academic studies. Specifically, the PGBL/VGBL funds with investments in variable-income assets that were managed by Itaú Unibanco SA obtained better average performance over the almost whole period, when returns were adjusted to the incurred risks. In order to adjust the annual returns to risk, this work presented, based on a set of assumptions described in the introductory chapter, a methodology that simplifies the calculation of the betas of the funds, allowing to order them based on risk adjusted performances. The model found to estimate the annual returns of the funds was obtained through the multilevel regression technique with data in panel. Such a model pointed out - within the time domain of the study - that at each additional percentage point of management fee charged by the financial institution, the estimated return on the investor of a given fund was reduced by the same one percentage point. This finding is one more evidence of passivity in fund management. Finally, the variation of the annual returns of the funds is mainly explained by the variation in the interaction between the percentage of the fund equity invested in variable-income assets and the annual return of the Ibovespa.

This thesis investigates the performance of hedge funds, funds of hedge funds and alternative Ucits together with the determinants of this performance by using new or well-suited econometric techniques. As such, it lies at the frontier of finance and financial econometrics and contributes to both fields. For the sake of clarity, we summarize the main contributions to each field separately. <p>The contribution of this thesis to the field of financial econometrics is the time-varying style analysis developed in the second chapter. This statistical tool combines the Sharpe analysis with a time-varying coefficient method; thereby, it is taking the best of both worlds. <p>Sharpe (1992) has developed the idea of “style analysis”, building on the conclusion that a regression taking into account the constraints faced by mutual funds should give a better picture of their holdings. To get an estimate of their holdings, he incorporates, in a standard regression, typical constraints related to the regulation of mutual funds, such as no short-selling and value preservation. He argues that this gives a more realistic picture of their investments and consequently better estimations of their future expected returns.<p>Unfortunately, in the style analysis, the weights are constrained to be constant. Even if, for funds of hedge funds the weights should also sum up to 1, given their dynamic nature, the constant weights seem more restrictive than for mutual funds. Hence, the econometric literature was lacking a method incorporating the constraints and the possibility for the weights to vary. Motivated by this gap, we develop a method that allows the weights to vary while being constrained to sum up to 1 by combining the Sharpe analysis with a time-varying coefficient model. As the style analysis has proven to be a valuable tool for mutual fund analysis, we believe our approach offers many potential fields of application both for funds of hedge funds and mutual funds.<p>The contributions of our thesis to the field of finance are numerous. <p>Firstly, we are the first to offer a comprehensive and exhaustive assessment of the world of FoHFs. Using both a bootstrap analysis and a method that allows dealing with multiple hypothesis tests straightforwardly, we show that after fees, the majority of FoHFs do not channel alpha from single-manager hedge funds and that only very few FoHFs deliver after-fee alpha per se, i.e. on top of the alpha of the hedge fund indices. We conclude that the added value of the vast majority of FoHFs should thus not be expected to come from the selection of the best HFs but from the risk management-monitoring skills and the easy access they provide to the HF universe.<p> <p> <p>Secondly, despite that the leverage is one of the key features of funds of hedge funds, there was a gap in the understanding of the impact it might have on the investor’s alpha. This was likely due to the quasi-absence of data about leverage and to the fact that literature was lacking a proper tool to implicitly estimate this leverage. <p>We fill this gap by proposing a theoretical model of fund of hedge fund leverage and alpha where the cost of borrowing is increasing with leverage. In the literature, this is the first model which integrates the rising cost of borrowing in the leverage decision of FoHFs. We use this model to determine the conditions under which the leverage has a negative or a positive impact on investor’s alpha and show that the manager has an incentive to take a leverage that hurts the investor’s alpha. Next, using estimates of the leverages of a sample of FoHFs obtained through the time-varying style analysis, we show that leverage has indeed a negative impact on alphas and appraisal ratios. We argue that this effect may be an explanation for the disappointing alphas delivered by funds of hedge funds and can be interpreted as a potential explanation for the “capacity constraints ” effect. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to report and explain this negative relationship between alpha and leverage in the industry. <p>Thirdly, we show the interest of the time-varying coefficient model in hedge fund performance assessment and selection. Since the literature underlines that manager skills are varying with macro-economic conditions, the alpha should be dynamic. Unfortunately, using ordinary least-squares regressions forces the estimate of the alpha to be constant over the estimation period. The alpha of an OLS regression is thus static whereas the alpha generation process is by nature varying. On the other hand, we argue that the time-varying alpha captures this dynamic behaviour. <p>As the literature shows that abnormal-return persistence is essentially short-term, we claim that using the quasi-instantaneous detection ability of the time-varying model to determine the abnormal-return should lead to outperforming portfolios. Using a persistence analysis, we check this conjecture and show that contrary to top performers in terms of OLS alpha, the top performers in terms of past time-varying alpha generate superior and significant ex-post performance. Additionally, we contribute to the literature on the topic by showing that persistence exists and can be as long as 3 years. Finally, we use the time-varying analysis to obtain estimates of the expected returns of hedge funds and show that using those estimates in a mean-variance framework leads to better ex-post performance. Therefore, we conclude that in terms of hedge fund performance detection, the time-varying model is superior to the OLS analysis.<p>Lastly, we investigate the funds that have chosen to adopt the “Alternative UCITS” framework. Contrary to the previous frameworks that were designed for mutual fund managers, this new set of European Union directives can be suited to hedge fund-like strategies. We show that for Ucits funds there is some evidence, although weak, of the added value of offshore experience. On the other hand, we find no evidence of added value in the case of non-offshore experienced managers. Motivated to further refine our results, we separate Ucits with offshore experienced managers into two groups: those with equivalent offshore hedge funds (replicas) and those without (new funds). This time, Ucits with no offshore equivalents show low volatility and a strongly positive alpha. Ucits with offshore equivalents on the other hand bring no added value and, not surprisingly, bear no substantial differences in their risk profile with their paired funds offshore. Therefore, we conclude that offshore experience plays a significant role in creating positive alpha, as long as it translates into real innovations. If the fund is a pure replica, the additional costs brought by the Ucits structure represent a handicap that is hardly compensated. As “Alternative Ucits” have only been scarcely investigated, this paper represents a contribution to the better understanding of those funds.<p>In summary, this thesis improves the knowledge of the distribution, detection and determinants of the performance in the industry of hedge funds. It also shows that a specific field such as the hedge fund industry can still tell us more about the sources of its performance as long as we can use methodologies in adequacy with their behaviour, uses, constraints and habits. We believe that both our results and the methods we use pave the way for future research questions in this field, and are of the greatest interest for professionals of the industry as well.<p> / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

SMEs are slow adopters of new technologies and understandably so because they are entangled in a vicious cycle of poverty. It is even more so for SMEs located in developing markets such as the sub-Saharan Africa. SMEs in these areas are faced with several difficult institutional and cultural bottlenecks which often impede their access to and use of new technologies. In Nigeria, the recently introduced cashless policy is one of many strategies intended to enhance SMEs' chances in the global e-commerce market as much as the general Nigerian economy. Studies reveal that Nigerian SMEs are slow to adopt and use this new technological innovation called the e-payment system (EPS) even when it can improve their chances to participate successfully in e-commerce. However, there is little in the literature to understand why and what is needed to be done to encourage and facilitate their participation in adopting and using this technology. This area of study has not been sufficiently explored. Thus, this thesis fills the void and explores the factors influencing EPS adoption and extent of use by SMEs in Nigeria. The study develops an integrated model drawing from the Technology-Organisation- Environment (TOE) framework and Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) model. We employed the mixed methods. 239 respondents were served the questionnaire. Also, 4 SMEs and two stakeholders were interviewed as a follow-up to the statistical analysis. We employed the Logistic regression analysis in addition to the personal interviews analysis. The results revealed that technological, environmental and owner/manager's factors majorly influenced the adoption of EPS among SMEs in Nigeria. The study finds that perceived benefit is the single major factor positively influencing the decision to adopt and use EPS in Nigeria. Others are owner/manager's educational level and knowledge in IT. The study also finds that perceived complexity, perceived insecurity and lack of government policy are major barriers to the adoption of EPS. Age, perceived benefits, and perceived trust facilitated frequent EPS usage while age, perceived complexity and competitive pressure positively influenced the number and type of EPS channels used by SMEs in Nigeria.

Le législateur cherche à favoriser l'indemnisation des victimes de certains types de dommages comme le démontre la mise en place de plus en plus régulière des fonds d'indemnisation. Cette multiplication n'est pourtant pas le gage d'un respect des droits des victimes, qui a priori favorisées, doivent parfois faire des sacrifices discutables. S'il nous faut admettre que les victimes sont aujourd'hui mieux indemnisées, les liens entre les fonds d'indemnisation et les droits des victimes apparaissent ambigus. Des questions demeurent. Les victimes sont-elles égales face aux fonds d'indemnisation? Le système instauré hors des prétoires ne vient-il pas porter atteinte à des droits jugés essentiels? Il s'agit alors de confronter aux mécanismes établis le respect des droits des victimes. Si, effectivement, les fonds d'indemnisation permettent aux victimes un accès à l'indemnisation rendu difficile par les règles du droit commun, il apparaît que l'indemnisation des victimes se révèle perfectible. À tous les stades de la procédure, de profondes inégalités sont mises en lumière entre les victimes relevant d'un fonds, entre ces dernières et les victimes du droit commun, mais également entre les fonds d'indemnisation et les victimes demanderesses. Ainsi, un fonds d'indemnisation unique, garantie d'un système plus égalitaire et plus cohérent, doit être proposé afin de faire des fonds d'indemnisation une véritable alternative pour les victimes. / Lawmakers tend to favor the victims of certain kind of damages as evidenced by the growing establishment of compensation funds. However, this multiplication doesn't guarantee respect for victims' rights. Although they seem to be favored at first sight, sometimes the victims have to make questionable sacrifices. Admittedly, victims are compensated better nowadays; however, the links between the compensation fund and the rights of victims appear equivocal. Some questions remain.Are victims treated equally before compensation funds? Does this system impair essential rights?An analysis of respect for the victims' rights by the compensation funds is required. Even though compensation funds offer to the victims an easier access to compensation, the mechanism turns outto be improvable. Deep inequalities are highlighted between victims of a same funds between those and the victims of the ordinary law, but also between the compensation funds and the plaintiff victims. Thus, a more egalitarian and more coherent system should be offered to make compensation funds a real alternative for the victims.