Previous empirical analyses have concluded that political events can have significant linkages with stock returns. Using Brown & Warner’s (1984) OLS market model, I examine the effect of political disruptions in the 2010-2011 Arab uprisings on major stock indices of Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Dubai and London. My analysis finds mostly negative abnormal returns, highly statistically significant relative to the S&P 500, associated with many key events between December 1st, 2010 and December 1st, 2011. My findings suggest that the loss of investor wealth can be attributed to dramatic regime changes and large scale protests during that time period.

The primary objective of this dissertation is to investigate whether Canadian whole farm programs with both income-supporting and income-stabilizing attributes, which are considered as decoupled based on the WTO criterion, are actually decoupled from production. The dissertation began with the review of the existing theoretical and empirical literature on the impact of programs designed to be decoupled payments on acreage response including studies related to the wealth and insurance effects. The review revealed that previous studies lack a detailed theoretical model of how acreage decisions will be affected by stabilizing the farm profit (insurance effect) as well as the higher expected profit (wealth effect). Given the nature of Canadian whole farm programs which attempt to smooth income, to examine the whole farm programs, a model is needed to capture the insurance effect arising from these programs as well as the wealth effect.<p> To address this gap, the theoretical framework developed by Chavas and Holt (1990) was extended, in this dissertation, to incorporate the insurance effect into the farmers' acreage decisions under uncertainty. In particular, by developing theoretical restrictions, which consider the relationship between income stabilization compensated and uncompensated acreage decision functions, the insurance effect emphasized in the literature was explicitly derived within the theoretical model. The acreage allocated to each crop was derived as a function of expected crop profits, elements of the variance-covariance matrix of crop profits, expected total wealth (initial wealth plus market profit), and variance of total wealth. The government payments were incorporated into the model through truncation of the probability distribution of profits. Specifically, the whole-farm programs truncated the total (farm) profit distribution which affected the expected total wealth and variance of total wealth.<p> The theoretical model was then used to develop an empirical model. The econometric model was applied to acreage data in the Canadian Prairies from 1970 to 2006 in order to statistically test if the whole farm programs were really decoupled. The results revealed that coefficients of expected total wealth (wealth effect) and variance of total wealth (insurance effect) were statistically significant in the whole system, which implied the whole-farm programs were production and therefore trade distorting and were not actually decoupled, even if they satisfied the WTO criteria. The statistically significant coefficients for expected total wealth and variance of total wealth variables were then used to simulate the impact of recent whole-farm programsthe Western Grain Stabilization Act (WGSA), the Net Income Stabilization Account (NISA) and the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization (CAIS)on crop choices.<p> The results suggested that the WGSA, NISA and CAIS programs have increased the acreage allocated to spring wheat and peas (through both wealth and insurance effects, although the insurance effect appears to dominate) while they have decreased the acreage for barley (through the wealth effect), canola and hay (through the insurance effect) in the prairie provinces. In general, the size of the wealth effect was quite small, while the insurance effect was always significant. Specifically, the acreage allocated to wheat increased by 7.79 percent on average across Prairies while canola acreage decreased by 8.86 percent under the CAIS. Thus, the empirical results revealed that for Canadian whole-farm programs the impact of the effects related to risk is important. Particularly, the results showed the inherent difficulty in divorcing the stabilization effect received by Canadian whole-farm programs from farmers' production decisions.

With change of the overall economic environment, it substantially makes more and more people highly interested in other financial products and look forward to planning their wealth by multi-financial commodities. Responding these demand, the banking industry starts to be involved in the field of wealth management and invests considerable time and cost of training professional financial advisors. C Bank is not only well-known for high brand image and reputation, but also recognized by the financial industry as a wealth management consultants¡¦ training center. It is supposed to be the company of choice for people who are interested in this field, but actually found C Bank with high turnover rate in wealth management consultants. In this study, we are going to analyze the main factors causing the high mobility of wealth management consultants by interviewing with financial consultants in C Bank who are still serving and who had resigned. The result mainly could provide the reference to C Bank to get a triple beneficial situation by means of having stabilized consultants to increase customers¡¦ confidence and reduce the cost of repeatedly training new staff. It is also available for me to refer and being vigilance on the management field in the future. The result of this study points out the main factors why financial consultants working at C Bank resign: 1. leadership style, 2. personal reasons (family and health), rather than company culture and system. The health problem is also highly related to leadership style causing large psychological pressure and cannot be resolved. In order to pursue a long-term and stable growth for the company, it is rather significant for supervisors develop a leadership style can unite team members¡¦ coherence, establish a work environment with a sense of belonging and participation, satisfy their physiological and psychological needs and let all members with high identity and loyalty to the company they are willing to work for under the premise of reaching company culture (performance-oriented).

Current research in corporate governance focuses primarily upon minimization of agency costs in the shareholder-management relationship. In this dissertation, I examine a complimentary perspective based upon stewardship theory. The model developed herein leverages past research on socioemotional wealth to identify CEO attributes associated with stewardship behavior. I examine whether these attributes lead to positive firm performance. Moreover, I examine how family ownership and board of director characteristics influences the CEO stewardship – firm performance relationship. A 3-year unbalanced panel dataset using 268 S&P 1500 firms is analyzed using generalized least squares regression. All covariates lag the dependent variable by 1-year; constructs are included to control for popular agency prescriptions used to monitor, control, and incentivize executives. I find no relationship between the hypothesized constructs related to CEO stewardship (board memberships, organizational identity, and board tenure) and firm performance (Tobin’s Q). However, results reveal family ownership positively moderates the relationship between the quantity of CEO board memberships and firm performance. Additionally, the presence of affiliated directors and community influential directors positively moderates the CEO board memberships-firm performance relationship. The presence of community influential directors also positively moderates the relationship between CEO organizational identity and firm performance. Results from this dissertation provide moderate support for stewardship theory as a compliment to agency theory in corporate governance literature. There is evidence that family ownership and board of director attributes strengthen the relationship between those CEO stewardship constructs and firm performance. However, lack of a direct relationship between the CEO stewardship constructs and firm performance suggest a need more fine-grained constructs that measure stewardship. A substantial amount of research exists in corporate governance using the principal-agent model. The research herein extends this research by using stewardship theory to compliment the dominant agency model. I hope this research encourages scholars to take an integrative approach by (1) taking a renewed look at alternate theories of corporate governance such as stewardship theory, and (2) continue work that focuses upon firm performance maximization through CEO stewardship as well as agency loss mitigation through monitoring and control of the CEO.

Customer is one of the most important profit resources for a firm. It is increasingly apparent that management will make a decision by customer value. This research focuses on the most critical aspect of a firm: customer lifetime value. It is used to valuing customer lifetime value by discount cash flow approach. This research uses the real option approach (ROA) and connects the concept of customer lifetime value in marketing to build a new valuation model. Real option approach is a new method for estimating the value. It resolves some disadvantage which traditional financial models such as discount cash flow approach can not value the managerial flexibility. In practice, management has many options. These options provide flexibility that adds to the value of customers. The customer investment (e.g., service and advertising) can be deferred at the design phase and under uncertainty, it can be expanded or extended if it does better than expected, or abandoned if it gets worse. There are various types of options that are related to valuing customers, such as deferral, abandonment, expansion, and contraction of investment. This research provides good solution to value customer lifetime value by using real option approach and uses bank wealth management programs as practice evidence. This research builds a fitness model to value managerial flexibility. This research finds out that the domestic banks original set up the VIP migration boundary according to American experience are unreasonable and should be adjusted. Besides, when domestic banks set up the VIP migration boundary, the most important factor they should consider is deposit growth rate instead American experience. Finally, the practice evidence of the influence the expected factors on VIP migration boundary confirms with this research¡¦s expectation.

With the increase of income and rapid wealth accumulation, people, especially those with high net worth, have increased needs for consolidating financial planning service. In order to succeed in this competitive market, all banks are establishing wealth management branches and providing varies, sometimes custom made, products and services to satisfy their clients¡¦ financial needs. The most important component of wealth management is financial consultants. Financial consultants directly service clients, and they form irreplaceable interpersonal relationships with their clients. They are a huge asset for their bank. But because of severe competition, the quality of financial consultant greatly varies. Many banks set high revenue targets for their financial consultants, which results in high turnover rate. Banks also compete intensely for the good financial consultants in the industry. Therefore, in order to retain and develop strong financial consultants, banks should establish effective, comprehensive training and career development programs. My study will focus, discuss and analysis the performance management of financial consultants in wealth management banks. For my study, I interviewed several top management officers of successful wealth management banks to gain deeper understanding of their policies on performance management. I then compared and contrasted the different banks¡¦ policies to investigate the meaning of performance management. From my study, I found every bank has its own policy in performance management that they closely abide by, and they routinely review and update their policies. Interestingly, these distinctive policies all serve the same purpose which is to motivate their financial consultants to increase sales and thus, to increase the bank¡¦s profitability. Furthermore, I learned some effective and ineffective ways to manage financial consultants. I also identified key elements to encourage high loyalty which helped to explain why it was previously difficult to recruit certain financial consultants to my bank. This dissertation is tremendously meaningful and helpful to me professionally, and I will use it to create effective policies, to motivate higher performance, and to promote high loyalty.

In the last decades, the globalisation process has reshaped the competition dynamics in two ways: Technology and innovation have become significant components of productivity and competition / and policies taking into consideration local resources and local production systems, gains ground. In that context, clusters appear as new organisations of production. This thesis aims at assessing the innovation performance of the firms and the factors affecting their performance by comparing agglomerated and non-agglomerated firms in the TR62 (Adana, Mersin) Region. Adana Organised Industrial Zone (AOSB) and Mersin-Tarsus Organised Industrial Zone (MTOSB) are selected as agglomeration examples in the region to study the effects of spatial proximity on innovativeness. It is found that local specific policies such as the establishment of an integrated system for cooperation and competition are needed to improve the innovation and competition capacity of the region.

Software cost estimation is essential for software companies to be more competitive and more profitable. The objective of this thesis is to study current software size estimation practices adopted by Turkish software companies, to identify best prac-tices, and to suggest appropriate methods that can help companies to reduce errors in their software size estimations.

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