In 1996, Sloan identified the accruals anomaly, in which the negative relationship between the accruals component of current earnings and subsequent stock returns can be exploited to generate excess returns. One would expect the accruals anomaly to dissipate and ultimately disappear as investors take advantage of the now-public information. However, nearly two decades later, it persists as one of the most prominent and contentious anomalies; its magnitude of current and future excess returns still remain controversial. The main reason for its persistence is that extreme accrual firms possess characteristics that are unappealing to most investors. These characteristics, which include insufficient analyst coverage, high idiosyncratic volatility and the presence of institutional constraints, are generally more pronounced in firms with weak internal controls. This paper finds that the accruals anomaly persists at a higher magnitude in firms with weak internal controls. This higher magnitude of excess returns survives the Fama-French five-factor (2015), the Stambaugh-Yuan four-factor (2017) and the Hou, Xue, and Zhang (2015) q-factor models.

In chapter 1, we examine the nature and scale of the relationship between returns on sector Equity Traded Funds (ETFs) and their volatility. We discuss the source and direction of the effect between returns and risk and whether behavioral biases are prominent among sector ETFs. The study has implications for financial sector practitioners and investors, as it provides more information about the risk in sector ETF and whether that risk differs from that of other investment instruments. To this end, we test three hypotheses based on the relevant literature on volatility and returns: the leverage effect hypothesis, feedback hypothesis, and behavioral biases in assets pricing. We employ two measures of volatility in this chapter; specifically, we use the GARCH (1, 1) model and the Range-based autoregressive model. Chapter 2 presents an examination of the factors that affect payout policy in a frontier market. MSCI classifies the Saudi stock exchange as a large frontier market and proposes to be reclassified as an emerging market by next year. The Saudi market is characterized by the high governmental influence and dominance of individual traders on daily transactions. By studying the 12-year panel data, we assess the effect government, board characteristics, social norms and major shareholder on Saudi firms’ decision to distribute dividends. The government presence and investor taste, especially for Islamic-compliant firms, are discussed. This chapter provides valuable information for investors and practitioners by identifying the factors that should be considered when making finance and investment decisions in frontier markets.

In recent years, the IRI has managed to increase its influence in the Middle East. The strategic use of proxy warfare has played a central role as surrounding countries have become destabilised. However, following the positivist logic of structural IR theories, the materially inferior IRI should not be a stronger player in the region’s conflicts than the US and its Arab allies. The Iranian success in proxy warfare, therefore, provides a paradox for the explanatory framework of reductionist IR theories which rely on rational and positivist epistemologies. I argue that this is because these perspectives do not endorse an adequate comprehension of the mutual embedded relations which have served the IRI a strategic advantage in proxy warfare. In a challenge to the parsimonious reductionism of structural IR and security studies, I adopt Feklyunina’s constructivist framework for analysing soft power as a relational identity. Thereby, I switch the focus from a top-down analysis of the IRI to a focus including Iraqi insurgencies’ acceptance or rejection of the IRI’s national identity and foreign policy goals. I argue that identity matter in proxy relations. Hence, I estimate the IRI’s strength in proxy warfare based on potential Iraqi insurgencies’ compatible identities. I employ a longitudinal historical research design tracing the development of collective identities within Iraq. The study finds that the Iraqi Shi’ites share important common facets of their identity with the IRI and have subsequently been willing to fight as proxies against American and Sunni forces in Iraq. However, identity and legitimacy structures in the Middle East are complex, multifaceted, constantly changing, and dependent on context. Iraqi Shi’ites still preserve some reservations and antipathy towards the Iranian regime due to a nationalist sense of community.

The thesis describes a design and implementation of Nemea system module purposed on generation of records about simulated network attacks. This thesis also contains brief description of Nemea system and several network attacks. Finally, part of this work is description of simulated attacks and methods of simulations.

The goal of this thesis is to work out an introduction to the chip packaging and decapsulation. Further can be found a description of a method leading to dacapsulate concrete chips. Final part is devoted to getting chip pictures using microscope and analysis of the pictures afterwards.

There are more and more parents that are considering to purchase smart watches for their kids. The children’s smart watches on the market are usually equipped with many practical functions like the GPS positioning, the camera and the messaging. Among all the smart watches for children, the ones that can be connected via a mobile application called SeTracker are popular for the acceptable prices. These smart watches may have different brands although they come from the same manufacturer company and share the common service and database. The security of the mobile application is essential to the security of the products. But are they designed in a secure way? There were reports about vulnerabilities of the products previously. Unfortunately, the security requirements do not stop upon solving those vulnerabilities. In this project, it was found that the parents can track the kids and communicate with them through the mobile application, but their accounts might be logged on the attacker’s phone at the same time. And it is surprisingly easy to get the password of the users because it is stored in a local file using simple substitution cipher. There are other examples of insecure design in the products. Among them are the unlimited attempts to send and enter verification codes used for changing the password. It seems that the server does not have a complete logging and monitoring mechanism to prevent abnormal behaviors. The security analysis and penetration testing of this project would provide an example of the mobile hacking, and it will also raise a warning on the security of smart devices. / Det finns fler och fler föräldrar som funderar på att köpa smarta klockor till sina barn. De smarta barnklockorna på marknaden är vanligtvis utrustade med många praktiska funktioner som GPS, kamera och meddelanden. Bland alla smarta klockor för barn är de som kan kopplas upp via en mobilapplikation som heter SeTracker populära för de acceptabla priserna. Dessa smarta klockor kan ha olika märken även om de kommer från samma tillverkarföretag och delar den gemensamma tjänsten och databasen. Säkerheten för den mobila applikationen är väsentlig för produkternas säkerhet. Men är de designade på ett säkert sätt? Det fanns rapporter om sårbarheter i produkterna tidigare. Tyvärr slutar inte säkerhetskraven när man löser dessa sårbarheter. I det här projektet fann man att föräldrarna kan spåra barnen och kommunicera med dem via mobilapplikationen, men deras konton kan vara inloggade på angriparens telefon samtidigt. Och det är förvånansvärt lätt att få användarnas lösenord eftersom det lagras i en lokal fil med hjälp av enkla ersättnings-chiffer. Det finns andra exempel på osäker design i produkterna. Bland dem är de obegränsade försöken att skicka och ange verifieringskoder som används för att ändra lösenordet. Det verkar som om servern inte har en fullständig loggnings- och övervakningsmekanism för att förhindra onormalt beteende. Säkerhetsanalysen och penetrationstesten av detta projekt skulle ge ett exempel på mobilhackning, och det kommer också att väcka en varning om säkerheten för smarta enheter.

We numerically investigate the effects that Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) scores have on portfolio optimization with Modern Portfolio Theory assumptions and how ESG scores correlate with the market returns of a rated company's stock. Additionally, we review and analyze a research paper published in the Journal of Financial Economics regarding ESG investing titled “Responsible investing: The ESG-efficient frontier” by Pedersen, Fitzgibbons, and Lukasz. Our overall goal is provide insight for socially responsible inclined investors, to help them understand what ESG scores tell us and how those scores may effect their overall investment returns."

Financial services institutions maintain large amounts of data that include both intellectual property and personally identifiable information for employees and customers. Due to the potential damage to individuals, government regulators hold institutions accountable for ensuring that personal data are protected and require reporting of data security breaches. No company wants a data breach, but finding a security incident or breach early in the attack cycle may decrease the damage or data loss a company experiences. In multiple high profile data breaches reported in major news stories over the past few years, there is a pattern of the adversary being inside the company’s network for months, and often law enforcement is the first to inform the company of the breach. The problem that was investigated in this case study was whether new information technology (IT) utilized by Fortune 500 financial services companies led to the changes in data security incidents and breaches. The goal of this dissertation is to gain a deeper understanding on how IT can increase awareness of a security incident or breach, and can also decrease security incidents and breaches. This dissertation also explores how threat information sharing increases awareness and decreases information security incidents and breaches. The objective of the study was to understand how changes in IT can influence an increase or decrease in data security breaches. This investigation was a case study of nine Fortune 500 financial services companies to understand what types of IT increase or decrease detection of security incidents and breaches. An increase in detecting and stopping a security incident or breach may have positive effects on the security of an enterprise. The longer a hacker has access to IT systems, the more entrenched they become and the more time the hacker has to locate data with high value. Time is of the essence to detect a compromise and react. The results of the case study showed that Fortune 500 companies utilized new IT that allowed them to improve their visibility of security incidents and breaches from months and years to hours and days.

This thesis evaluates the risk-return characteristics and diversification benefits of fine wine investment. It compares the historical performance of wine to that of equity, fixed income, real estate, and commodities. I calculate the correlation, volatility, and expected returns of these assets to examine whether adding wine to a portfolio increases its risk-adjusted return. I do this through the Markowitz portfolio optimization technique. The findings suggest that wine has a low correlation with traditional assets, providing diversification benefits. My results also show that adding wine to a portfolio increases its risk-adjusted return only when there is an allocation constraint of 0 to 25% per asset. This does not hold, however, when there are no asset allocation constraints.

The dissertation consists of two essays. The first essay investigates the ability of prior returns, relative to some aggregate market returns, to predict future returns on industry style portfolios. By pooling time series of returns across industries for the period between July 1969 and June 2012, we find that prior returns differential predicts one month ahead returns negatively, even in the presence of a set of popular state variables. The predictability remains significant and negative for up to 5 month ahead returns. The predictability is shown to be robust to alternative specifications, estimation methodology and industry classifications. A possible explanation of this finding is based on time–varying (dynamic) loss aversion among investors. More specifically, when combined with house money effects, prior performance has inverse relationship with degree of loss aversion leading to predictability in the next period returns. The second essay examines the nature of time variation in the risk exposure of country mutual funds to the US market movement and to the benchmark foreign market movement. It uses weekly data on 15 closed end funds and 19 exchange traded funds for the sample period between January, 2001 and December, 2012. Conditional factor models are employed to uncover the time variation in the estimated betas through short horizon regressions. The findings of the paper indicate considerable time variation in risk exposure of country mutual funds to the US market and foreign market risk factors. Additional investigation reveals the following observations. First, the US market betas suffer greater variation over the sample period than the target foreign market betas. Second, the overall fluctuation in betas for the closed end funds is found to be higher than that for the exchange traded funds. Third, emerging market funds experience more oscillation in the risk exposure than their developed market counterparts. It is found that a combination of the US macroeconomic state variables and investors’ sentiment can predict future betas significantly. The findings of the paper have important implication for US investors seeking diversification benefits from country mutual funds.