1,720,957 research outputs found
Essays in State and Local Government Debt Management: Networks, Strategic Refinancing, and Regulatory Disclosure
Get PDFThis three-essay dissertation attempts to fill research gaps in three streams of literature on municipal debt management. The first essay examines whether stability of debt management networks lowers issuers’ borrowing costs in primary markets for municipal bonds. The analytical design combines social network theory and cross-sectional modeling and centers on state debt management networks in California. Findings show that beyond a critical threshold of stability, municipal borrowing costs tend to decrease as networks become more stable. The second essay analyzes strategic refinancing decisions in primary markets for municipal bonds. It focuses on school district debt refinancing transactions in Texas and uses Monte Carlo simulation and financial option-pricing techniques to quantify the opportunity costs, or option value loss, associated with the timing of transactions. Findings show that school district refinancing transactions resulted in option value loss equivalent to millions of dollars. In the third essay, I investigate the extent to which regulatory interventions in municipal bond secondary markets reduce inefficiencies in securities pricing. I analyze trade price impacts of the 2008 implementation of new disclosure interventions. Results from time series estimations of California data show that the interventions reduced pricing inefficiencies in secondary markets as a whole; however, institutional investors continue to have a marginal price advantage over retail investors. The three essays shed more light on the efficient level of interdependence in debt management networks, present an empirical framework for evaluating the timing of refinancing transactions, and offer insights that should guide regulatory policy discussions on fair pricing of securities
Determining access to financial services among the young and poor in American communities
Get PDFThis paper investigates access to financial services in American communities. It analyzes the access gap that the young and poor face relative to more economically advantaged and older groups in society. The paper uses data from the World Bank’s Global Financial Inclusion survey to create a multi-dimensional index of financial access and estimates a menu of quantitative models to gauge financial inclusion. Results show that young and poor people face substantial gaps in access to financial services when compared with older people, higher income individuals, more educated people, and individuals who are less vulnerable to future economic shocks. These findings expand understanding of the challenges that young and poor people face in U.S. financial markets and provide insights that can inform financial and social policies for greater financial inclusion and more sustainable communities
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Public Sector Leadership During the COVID-19 Crisis in Ghana
Get PDFThis article examines public sector leadership during the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic in Ghana. It focuses on the Bank of Ghana–the nation’s central bank responsible for monetary policy and financial sector leadership–and examines the critical leadership attributes that the central bank demonstrated through its administrative and policy responses to the crisis. The findings from textual analysis of monetary policy committee press briefings show that the central bank demonstrated several criteria of effective public service leadership during the crisis, namely sensemaking, critical decision-making, communication, accountability, adaptability and, to an extent, learning. However, the textual evidence suggests that the Bank of Ghana needs to broaden its collaboration and coordination across a wider spectrum of stakeholders in economic crisis management, while not compromising its policy independence
Sustainability Practices of Multinational Enterprises in Developing Countries: A Comparative Analysis of Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo Inc.
Get PDFRecent scholarly discussions on corporate social responsibility have focused extensively on sustainability. Corporate strategies and practices are sustainable if they create long-term value in the economic, social, cultural, and physical environments within which corporations operate. Despite the growth in scholarly interest, studies on sustainability tend to focus exclusively on the intrinsic and extrinsic drivers of sustainability initiatives and on the measurement of sustainability performance. Few studies to date have examined the sustainability practices of competing global corporations within developing country contexts. This paper compares the sustainability practices of Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo Inc. in developing countries. It uses text analysis and examines the sustainability reports of the two global enterprises to identify common themes and priorities in corporate sustainability. The paper outlines a simple unified framework of best practice that could guide policy discussions on corporate sustainability across multiple industries in developing countries
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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