Date of Award

Summer 8-2013

Degree Type

Dissertation-Restricted

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Program

Financial Economics

Department

Economics and Finance

Major Professor

Atsuyuki Naka; Neal Maroney

Second Advisor

Sudha Krishnaswami

Third Advisor

Gerald withney

Fourth Advisor

Wei Wang

Abstract

The first part of this dissertation examines the impact of financial development on different countries holdings of U.S securities. The difference between the US weight in the global market capitalization and the US weight in developed and developing countries is tested through a panel data analysis. We find that most countries tend to overweight their US debt portfolio which is strongly related to their financial market development. When holdings of US debts and equity are low, financial market development is high; in developing countries, holding less US equity in their portfolio causes country to get better financial development. In developed countries there is no causation effect; a simple negative relation between financial development and countries holding of US securities is observed and countries tend to hold relatively less US securities through years.

The second part of this dissertation examines whether economic conditions, affect carve-outs frequency and returns. This paper investigates the effect of expansion and recession, and industry sectors on carve out issued in the US over 1982 to 2009. We find that the number of carve-outs is higher in expansion than recession. However, the cumulative abnormal returns are higher during recession which is explained by the higher adverse selection during this period. Further, we find that the difference of abnormal returns between expansion and recession is significant and we also observe that high-tech or non-high-tech industries that undertake carve-out have positive higher abnormal return during recession. Therefore, within a same industry sector, carve-out abnormal returns are impacted by the economy cycle. However difference of abnormal returns between industry sector, high-tech and non-high-tech industries, is not significant.

Rights

The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.

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