Date of Award

Summer 8-2014

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Program

Financial Economics

Department

Economics and Finance

Major Professor

M. Kabir Hassan

Second Advisor

Neal Maroney

Third Advisor

Tarun Mukherjee

Fourth Advisor

James R. Davis

Fifth Advisor

Incheol Kim

Abstract

In chapter 1, I provide evidence against the claim in the conventional literature on corporate diversification discount that the diversification effect is homogeneous across the industries. I argue that the responsiveness of consumer demand to the changing economic conditions or the product demand sensitivity is an important characteristic of the industries that should be considered to have a more complete understanding of the issue of underperformance of diversified firms compared to single-segment firms. Differentiating industries based on the measure of product demand sensitivity, I show that the diversification effects are not to be homogeneous across the industries. Much of the value destroying effect from the diversification gets reduced when industry experiences any shock or increase in the sensitivity of demand. It implies a better shock observing capacity of diversified firms and a source of premium that conglomerates can enjoy due to their diversified operations during the periods of the increase of sensitivity of product demand. Our result is robust to difference specification and difference measure of sensitivity.

In chapter 2, I include organizational forms as industrial and global diversification, and geographic dispersion in the empirical framework to find out which types of diversification do matter for the cost of bank loans. I find that firms which are only globally diversified, neither industrially diversified nor geographically dispersed, experience higher cost of bank loans. The other types of firms incurring higher cost of bank debt are the firms which are only geographically dispersed, and the firms which are diversified in all three ways with the combination of geographic, global, and industrial diversification. Examining the effects of organizational forms on the non-price loan terms, I observe that covenant restrictions are generally higher for the combination of diversified firms which are either both geographically dispersed and industrially diversified, or geographically dispersed and globally diversified.

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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