Recently, investors have asserted that firms' loss contingency disclosures are not adequate to allow them to assess the likelihood of material losses due to litigation (i.e., litigation risk), and a debate has developed over whether the threshold for disclosure should be lowered to provide investors with more information relating to litigation. Using an experiment, I investigate two unintended consequences of lowering a disclosure threshold, as the FASB has recently proposed. First, I find that adding low probability lawsuits to the disclosure of reasonably possible lawsuits lowers prospective investors' perceptions of litigation risk relating to the disclosure, even though more lawsuits are disclosed. Second, lowering the threshold allows firms to portray the entire disclosure opportunistically, diverting attention from higher probability to lower probability lawsuits. I find evidence that firms can use such an opportunistic presentation under a lower threshold to their advantage. Specifically, prospective investors' and even short investors' perceptions were just as favorable to the firm as long investors' when the disclosure threshold was lower and firms adopted an opportunistic disclosure strategy. Thus, my findings suggest that the FASB's proposal to require disclosure of lower probability loss contingencies may have unintended consequences for investors' perceptions of firms' loss exposure.

Industrialization has held great attention in developing countries. Taiwan has demonstrated rapid industrial development. The problem of this study is to find out, what incentives the government in Taiwan has provided to foreign investors, what contributions foreign investment has made to capital formation and government revenue, and what been its impact on foreign trade and the balance of payments. The results of our study conclude that DFI and technology transfer can have a significant positive impact on a developing host country's industrialization.

There has been an increased attention to sustainability in the society which has affected bothconsumers’ and investors’ behaviour. Consequently, companies are pressured to include CSR intheir businesses. Further, the media is quick to report when companies are acting sociallyirresponsible. For this reason it is of interest to investigate whether these news reports affectinvestors. One way to examine this is to study the stock price during such events. In addition, ithas been shown that women tend to value sustainability higher than men when consuming goodsand services. Hence, it is relevant to study if this trend is shown in their investment attitudes aswell. The method in this study consists of an event study which has been used to investigate theimpact of CSR events on stock prices of Swedish listed companies. In addition, a survey wasconducted to examine the attitudes towards CSR among Swedish private investors.The average two-day CAR for negative events was -0.18 percent, which suggests an existingeffect of negative CSR events on stock prices of listed Swedish companies belonging to OMX30.The findings in the survey showed that there is a great interest in CSR among Swedish investors.Further, a larger proportion include CSR in their investment decision compared to those who donot. Our findings showed that there exist differences in attitudes towards CSR within differentcategories of investors such as gender, age and trading habits. A larger proportion of femalerespondents have a greater interest in CSR and include CSR aspects in their investmentdecisions compared to males. A greater amount of female participants believe that a company'sCSR performance is at least as important as its financial one compared to males. Further, asignificant smaller proportion of investors between 18-24 years include CSR aspects when theymake investment decisions compared to those between 55-64 years. Our results suggest that themain underlying reason for respondents to include CSR was risk mitigation for the ones who trademore often and moral concerns for those who trade less often. Lastly, a larger proportion of thosewho trade less frequently believe that a company's CSR performance is at least as important asits financial one, compared to those who trade more frequently.

Firms use former government officials (FGOs) on the board of directors to create external linkage with the government. I examine investors’ perception of FGOs on the board of directors and how institutional environments affect it. Using a large sample of 23,444 hand-collected observations from 31 non-U.S. countries, I show that political directors (PDs) are associated with improved investors’ perception. Drawing from political science literature, I theorize and show that former senior bureaucrats (SBDs), but not former ministers (MDs) or government advisors (ADs), drive the improved investors’ perception. Furthermore, I show that stronger institutional environments, measured by economic freedom, lead to less improved investors’ perception of PDs. Here too SBDs drives my results associated with and economic freedom, but not MDs or ADs, lending support to my initial findings.

In this thesis, I investigate the amount of underpricing in FinTech companies compared to non-FinTech companies. Both data sets contain thirty companies spanning from 1993 to 2018. Each FinTech company is matched to a non-FinTech company by year and comparatively similar revenue. Prior research explores underpricing on different industries, but it hasn’t yet explored underpricing in the FinTech segment. The variables considered in this paper are offer price, close price, shares offered, number of banks involved, fees per share, and money left on the table. I find some evidence that the average amount of underpricing in both dollars and by percent is higher with non-FinTech companies than FinTech companies. However, difference in means tests show statistically significant differences only for the number of shares offered. It cannot be reliably said whether investors perceive a higher risk in FinTech companies or non-FinTech companies.

This thesis investigates the effects football games in major international tournaments have on stock market returns. The major international football tournaments are limited to the FIFA World Cup and the UEFA European Championship, and the games studied are only the finals of these tournaments. The thesis deploys a method of difference in difference with synthetic control groups to capture any effects winning or losing of these games may have on the stock market returns in the following days. The last 22 years of finals in the FIFA World Cup and UEFA European Championship are studied in 11 games and thus 22 treatments. In general, a good fit of the synthetic counterfactuals prior to the event taking place is achieved. The positive and negative events are looked at separately rather than game by game since the distinction between negative and positive events is made by previous literature. All games are treated as equally important since they are all the final of a tournament. The estimated gaps are insignificant for a majority of the games, and no causal relationship between the outcome of finals in international football tournaments and returns on broad stock market indices can be established, possible reasons for this are, among other things, that the indices used in this study is mainly all share indices and large cap indices, which are generally stable.

Detta arbete syftar till att empiriskt undersöka om institutionella investerare tar hänsyn till sociala medier vid värdering av finansiella tillgångar samt hur dessa investerare generellt värderar företag. Vi har valt att undersöka det här eftersom värdering är en komplicerad process som kan leda till markant skilda värderingar av samma företag. Processen innehåller en rad parametrar att analysera och värdesätta och vi önskar att se hur branschen ser till en relativt ny parameter som är en stor del av generationen födda på 90-talet och framåts vardag, sociala medier.   För att göra detta har vi valt att genomföra semistrukturerade intervjuer med personer som är erfarna inom området värdering i syftet att se hur de personer som dagligen arbetar med värdering ser på frågan. Vi valde att genomföra arbetet med en kvalitativ metod eftersom vi anser de person som är bäst förberedda att svara på frågan är de som är aktiva inom branschen idag. Genom intervjuerna kom vi fram till sociala medier idag inte har någon påverkan på värdering av finansiella tillgångar men att det har en påverkan på priset. Dock enbart på kortsiktigt perspektiv och på grund av det långsiktiga investeringsperspektivet som de institutionella investerarna vi har intervjuat använder får sociala medier ingen chans att påverka. Vi har med det här arbetet skapat en bild av hur institutionella investerare ser på sociala medier i relation finansmarknaden samt gett en klar av hur de värderar företag generellt. Vi hoppas att med det här arbetet inspirera framtida studenter till att fortsätta forska inom detta spännande ämnet. / This thesis aims to empirically investigate whether institutional investors take social media into account when valuing financial assets and how these investors generally value companies. We have chosen to investigate this because valuation is a complicated process that can lead to noticeably different valuations of the same company. The process contains a number of parameters to analyze and evaluate and we want to see how the industry views a relatively new parameter, social media, that is a large part of everyday life for the generation born in the 90s and onwards. To do this, we have chosen to conduct semi-structured interviews with people who are experienced in the field of valuation in order to see how the people who work with valuation on a daily basis view the issue. We chose to carry out the thesis using a qualitative method because we believe the people who are best prepared to answer the questions that we are asking are the people who are active in the industry today. Through the interview we came to the conclusion that social media today has no effect on the valuation of financial assets but that it has an effect on the price. However, social media only impacts the stock price in the short-term and due to the long-term perspective that the institutional investors that we have interviewed use, social media has no chance to influence the price in a way that would matter to them. With this thesis we have created a picture of how institutional investors view social media in relation to the financial market and provide a clear understanding of how they value companies in general. We hope that this thesis will inspire future students to continue research on this exciting subject.

Bakgrund: Gränsdragningen kring vad som ska klassas som en underhåll- en investeringsåtgärdavseende fastigheter har ändrats under åren. Införandet av IFRS ändrade regelverket från att baseraspå regler till att baseras på principer. Principbaserade regelverk har ett naturligt tolkningsutrymme.Ideella organisationer rekommenderar ytterligare information för att komplettera den regelverketkravställer. En branschförening har tagit fram Best Practise Recommendations som ettkompletterande tillvägagångssätt för fastighetsbolagen att öka sin transparens mot investeraren.Specifikt rörande investeringar i det befintliga beståndet. Syfte: Detta examensarbete syftar till att undersöka hur ett antal noterade fastighetsbolag definieraroch presenterar sina underhålls- och investeringskostnader i sina årsredovisningar. Undersökningengörs för att kunna jämföras med definitioner av begreppen underhåll och investeringar, IFRSbestämmelser och rekommendationer givna av branschorganisationer. Metod: Empirin inhämtades genom att undersöka urvalets årsredovisningar. Årsredovisningarnagranskades i sin helhet men undersökningen omfattade främst den finansiella informationen som finnsatt tillgå i resultaträkningen, balansräkningen och de tillhörande noterna. I övrigt har relevantbakgrundsfakta och teorier samlats in från adekvata studier och artiklar och sammanställts somreferensram. Slutsatser: Trots att företagen bedriver liknande verksamheter i samma bransch och följer sammaregelverk skiljer sig definitionen av underhållskostnader och hur de redovisas. Alla fastighetsbolagenhar följt IFRS regelverk men ej tillämpat de presenterade rekommendationer vad gällertilläggsupplysningar om investeringar. / Background: What is to be classified as a maintenance or investment measure regarding real estatehas changed over the years. Due to the implementation of IFRS the regulations shifted to be basedupon principles and therefore it has a natural scope for interpretation. One association has developedBest Practice Recommendations as a complementary approach for real estate companies to increasetheir transparency towards the investor. Specifically concerning investments in the existing stock. Objective: This paper aims to investigate how a few listed real estate companies define and presenttheir maintenance and investment costs in their annual reports. The study is conducted to be able tocompare with the definitions, the IFRS provision and recommendations. Method: The information was obtained by examining the samples annual reports. The annual reportswere examined in their entirety, but the examination mainly included the financial informationavailable in the income statement, balance sheet and the accompanying notes. In other respects,relevant background facts and theories have been collected from adequate studies and articles andcompiled as a frame of reference. As the purpose of this study was to examine and review theinformation that is available to all investors, we exclusively used the real estate companies' annualreports. The information in these financial reports is the same as that provided by an investor based onthe demarcation of the study. Conclusions: This essay shows that of the studied real estate companies, the additional informationabout maintenance costs was variable or non-existent. Even though companies conduct similaractivities in the same industry and follow the same regulations, the definition of maintenance costsand how they are reported differs. All real estate companies have complied with IFRS regulations buthave not applied the presented recommendations regarding additional information on investments.

Entrepreneurship is often touted as a key avenue for upward mobility. However, it is also a context that highlights the profound impact of underlying privileges, such as family wealth and social capital associated with higher social class origins. This dissertation consists of three empirical essays studying the impact of social class origins on entrepreneurial entry and outcomes. Chapter 1 documents the magnitude of the social class advantage in being an entrepreneur and investigates mechanisms in terms of human, cultural, and entrepreneurial capital. Chapter 2 examines how investors’ interest in a startup varies by the social class origins of the founder and the investor themselves, using a lab-in-the-field experiment on angel and venture capital investors. Chapter 3 studies the venture capital funding gap between founders from privileged backgrounds and others, using large-scale observational data on startup founders "at risk" for venture funding.

Thesis advisor: Thomas J. Chemmanur / My dissertation consists of three chapters. In the first chapter, I study the impact of a place-based tax credit policy, the Opportunity Zone program created under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, on local private investments and entrepreneurship. Using a difference-in-differences approach and comparing census tracts designated as Opportunity Zones and other eligible but non-designated tracts, I find that the policy has drawn significantly more private investments to economically distressed areas. Surprisingly, however, these private investments have led to decreases in local new business registration. The decrease in entrepreneurship was mainly in the non-tradable sector, which is more sensitive to local conditions than the tradable or construction sector. Further robustness tests suggest that the above results are causal. I provide one explanation for the above findings that more private investments went to existing and older firms in Opportunity Zones, discouraging potential entrepreneurs from competing with the better-financed firms locally. In the second chapter, I examine how changes in investor protection regulations affect local entrepreneurial activity, relying on the heterogeneous impact of a 2011 SEC regulation change on the definition of accredited investors across U.S. cities. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I show that cities more affected by the regulation change experienced a significantly larger decrease in local angel financing, entrepreneurial activity, innovation output, employment, and sales. I find that small business loans and second-lien mortgages became entrepreneurs’ partial substitutes for angel investment. My cost-benefit analysis suggests that the costs of protecting angel investors through the 2011 regulation change outweigh its benefits. In the third chapter, which is co-authored with Thomas Chemmanur and Harshit Rajaiya, we address three important research questions by using a large sample of angel and venture capital (VC) financing data from the Crunchbase and VentureXpert databases and private firm data from the NETS database. First, we analyze the relative extent of value addition by angels versus VCs to startup firms. We show that startups financed by angels rather than VCs are associated with a lower likelihood of successful exit (IPO or acquisition), lower sales and employment growth, lower quantity and quality of innovation, and lower net inflow of high-quality inventors. We disentangle selection and monitoring effects using instrumental variable (IV) and switching regression analyses and show that our baseline results are causal. Second, we investigate the complementarity versus substitution relationship between angel and VC financing. We find that a firm that received a larger fraction of VC or angel financing in the first financing round is likely to receive a larger fraction of the same type of financing in a subsequent round; however, when we include other non-VC financing sources such as accelerators and government grants into the analysis, a firm that received angel (rather than other non-VC) financing in the first round is also more likely to receive VC financing in a subsequent round. Third, we analyze how the financing sequence (order of investments by angels and VCs across rounds) of startup firms is related to their successful exit probability. We find that firms that received primarily VC financing in the first round and continued to receive VC financing in subsequent rounds (VC-VC) or those that received primarily angel financing in the first round and received VC financing in subsequent rounds (Angel-VC) have a higher chance of successful exit compared to those with other financing sequences (VC-Angel or Angel-Angel). / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Finance.