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The Pricing of Forecast-Based Earnings Uncertainty in Equity Markets
Get PDFThis paper constructs a firm-level measure of earnings forecast uncertainty by adapting the macroeconomic methodology of Jurado et al. (2015) to micro-level financial statement data from Compustat and CRSP. Using a two-stage estimation procedure, I first forecast the scaled year-over-year changes in earnings, defined as the change in income before extraordinary items normalized by firm sales,based on lagged firm fundamentals. I then model the squared forecast errors to extract the unpredictable component of earnings variation, generating a forward-looking, firm-specific measure of ex-ante uncertainty. Empirically, I examine whether this forecast uncertainty measure is priced in equity markets by regressing future stock returns on lagged firm characteristics and uncertainty. Across multiple empirical approaches, I find that firms with higher earnings forecast uncertainty tend to earn lower subsequent stock returns. This negative relationship is statistically significant in pooled OLS and fixed-effects regressions but becomes weaker and statistically insignificant in Fama-MacBeth regressions and portfolio sorts. A long-short strategy that buys low-uncertainty firms and shorts high-uncertainty firms yields negative returns. The results suggest that the pricing of earnings forecast uncertainty is fragile and sensitive to specifics in empirical methodology. These findings contribute to the broader understanding of how informational risk is priced in equity markets and the challenges of forecasting earnings uncertainty using accounting-based measures, especially in settings relying on financial statement transparency
The Impacts of Dietary and Educational Intervention in Addressing Adult Obesity in the Mexican Population
Get PDFMexico’s obesity epidemic has been an ongoing issue for the past few decades, with multiple studies attributing this to the disparities in accessing healthy food and health education. Designing a solution to Mexico’s adult obesity crisis will focus on studying the effects of an intervention plan that addresses these obesogenic factors. This proposed study will assess how a token system and health education sessions may impact the risk of obesity in the adult Mexican population. This study also will consider any limitations that arise when only one of the two intervention methods are used. As these interventions are implemented over the course of a year, data collection will involve multiple surveys and measurements for obesity-associated health metrics, dietary changes, and individual quality of life. The expected results predict two different models based on how impactful either of two the measures may be, though in both scenarios, implementing both the token system and education sessions will likely result in the most changes across all measures. The conclusions drawn from this study highlight the importance of utilizing various intervention methods specifically tailored to an obesogenic environment when promoting sustainable, healthier lifestyles and reducing the risk of obesity
Change Your Mind… Or Mind Your Change? Mental Imagery as an Individual Factor in the Emotional Regulation of Loss Aversion
No full textLoss aversion, the tendency to avoid risky mixed gain-loss gambles, is thought to reflect increased emotional arousal at the prospect of losses. Although emotional regulation strategies can reduce loss aversion, these effects vary substantially across individuals. One potential factor in this process is mental imagery, the experience of internal perceptual representation in the absence of external sensory input. Given that mental imagery has been proposed to amplify emotional responses, we examined whether individual differences in mental imagery strength contribute to variability in emotional regulation of loss aversion. Participants (n = 65) completed a gambling task both while responding naturally and while using a reappraisal prompt in which they were instructed to imagine themselves as professional traders. Mental imagery ability was assessed using self-report measures. We hypothesized that greater mental imagery ability would predict greater baseline loss aversion, reflecting amplification of negative emotional responses to loss, and greater reductions in loss aversion during reappraisal, due to an enhanced ability to mentally simulate being a professional trader. Consistent with previous findings, participants significantly reduced their loss aversion during reappraisal. However, contrary to our other hypotheses, greater visual imagery ability was linked to lower baseline levels of loss aversion and smaller reductions in loss aversion during reappraisal. These results suggest that mental imagery does not inherently amplify negative emotional responses to risky gambles with the prospect of loss, as originally thought. Instead, mental imagery may play an adaptive role in decision-making, enabling more balanced evaluations of potential outcomes, even without explicit regulation prompts
Equity in Education: How High School Attributes determine an Admission into Elite Colleges
Get PDFThis thesis seeks to answer the question “Does the type of high school and location affect one’s admission to the three elite colleges: Claremont McKenna College (CMC), Pomona College (Pomona), and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)?” I used a dataset of high schools from five counties in Southern California, San Diego, Imperial, San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange, and Los Angeles, to create a regression model that determines whether students from charter, magnet, private, or public schools, and where one’s high school is located neighborhood’s income levels have different rates of admission.
This study found that attending public high school negatively impacts admission to CMC and Pomona, yet positively affects admission to UCLA. When looking geographically, location is a stronger predictor of admission across all three institutions. Although both CMC and Pomona use holistic admissions processes, Pomona places a greater emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. These results emphasized the socioeconomic inequalities that take place in college admissions. I suggested that colleges should implement more targeted outreach programs and high schools implement structural reform that provides access for students in underserved communities. By implementing more outreach programs, colleges would be a more equitable, diverse space. Low income students should feel that they have a viable chance to be admitted to an elite university
Transnational Legal Violence: Undocumented Women v. U.S. Immigration Law
Get PDFThis thesis examines how undocumented women, particularly Latinas, experience transnational legal violence within the U.S. immigration system. Transnational legal violence extends the framework of legal violence by identifying how immigration policies weaponize absence and distance across national boundaries, forcing women to choose between physical safety and legal recognition. The thesis is guided by a central question: What immigration system are migrant women, specifically Latinas, responding to?
The analysis rooted in the intersections of gender and citizenship reveals how immigration law remains rooted in coverture traditions that historically rendered immigrant women dependent on male U.S. citizens. For these women, deportation presents unique extensions of legal violence: forced return to a country with inadequate gender-based protection, (re)traumatization by the same immigration system offering sanctuary, and continued possibilities for the abuser to continue their violence through transnational social networks.
The transnational legal violence experienced by migrant women highlights how they exist in a state of perpetual liminality—neither fully protected by the law of their origin country nor fully recognized by the law of their desired destination. Their bodies become sites where colonial and patriarchal control merge, creating a cycle of silence, negligence, and gender-based violence. This thesis argues that immigration reform demands the recognition of how the abuser of the Latina body becomes the U.S. nation\u27s power to define, categorize, and exclude the woman\u27s narrative and her need to enter the state for sanctuary
Assessing Indonesia’s Potential Comparative Advantage in Downstream Petrochemical Industry Development: A Cost and Profitability Analysis
Get PDFAs the Indonesian economy and population grow, domestic consumption of petrochemicals for the manufacture of downstream products, such as the plastics found in everyday life, has been increasing. However, despite robust demand for downstream chemicals such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polypropylene (PP), and polyethylene (PE), Indonesia consistently operates as a net importer of many upstream and downstream chemicals. It remains dependent on the Middle East, as well as on China, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, and other countries. Although Indonesia utilizes more modern and recently built plants compared to its trading partners, the facilities are smaller in scale. Even for the intermediate chemicals it does produce, output is insufficient and importing is necessary. Recognizing this, the Indonesian government has initiated the construction of new petrochemical facilities. Many are in partnership with foreign investors and foreign chemical companies, to reduce reliance on chemical imports. This report analyzes the feasibility, in terms of cost per metric ton in USD, of producing downstream chemical products domestically in Indonesia compared to benchmarks in Japan and South Korea
A Story of the Russo-Japanese War: Distilling the Meiji Period
No full textTwo literature reviews on primary and secondary material concerning the Meiji period and Russo-Japanese War, followed by a piece of historical fiction, and finally an explanatory essay which explains how the fiction advances the piece\u27s thesis
Empirical Analysis of Political Districting Splitability via Uniform Spanning Trees in Polynomial Time
Get PDFThis work expands a recently proven conjecture that a polynomial fraction of all uniform spanning trees (USTs) are splittable into k balanced partitions on grid graphs to real-world political districting plans. We investigate whether similar structural properties hold for the planar dual graphs of U.S. counties (cnty) and tracts (t), using Wilson’s algorithm to generate uniform random spanning trees and Breadth- First Search (BFS) to check for splitability into balanced partitions. Our empirical findings suggest that real-world districting plans can be split into 2-balanced, connected partitions in a fraction of polynomial time. This result highlights the potential for scalable redistricting algorithms that preserve connectivity and balance while improving computational efficiency. By bridging the gap between theoretical guarantees and practical applications, this work contributes to the broader computational redistricting community, providing empirically driven results that advance efficient, unbiased partitioning techniques for electoral districting
In Gradation
No full textThis paper provides theory and personal reflection on my final capstone project, In Gradation. Through the framework of critical media theory from Marshall McLuhan, Ethan Tussey, and Shoshana Zuboff, and inspiration museum exhibitions, this paper explores the impact of digitization and the recent rise of generative Artificial Intelligence on human input in the creative process. Beyond critical media theory, it also includes an artist statement for my capstone project and recounts the successes and frustrations I encountered throughout the process
Find My Friends: Location-Sharing Ideologies and Peer Surveillance Practices
Get PDFThis thesis investigates the use of Find My Friends in the context of the Claremont Colleges. Students choose to location-share under initial rhetorical justifications of social reciprocity, and community-orientedness, and peer-safety. Drawing from ethnographic interviews conducted with users at the colleges, I argue that the infrastructure of Find My Friends in conjunction with the social and physical proximities of the Claremont environment creates a distinctive condition where users are subject to what I term as a “virtual, neoliberal, and participatory panopticon.” Here, users are seemingly empowered through the application’s neutralizing collapse of reciprocity and hierarchy that are seen in conventional surveillance structures. Instead, I suggest that Find My Friends disempowers its users as it reproduces the logics of surveillance on an interpersonal scale and invades the ways in which we move and interact within the social sphere