Browsing by Subject "Carlson School of Management"
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Item Applying IT investment decision theory to payment card upgrades(2015) Gulbransen, Mitchell;The new Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) Chip-and-PIN payment cards are slowly replacing traditional magnetic stripe cards worldwide. Although it makes little economic sense for the individual firm to take on the significant cost required to upgrade hardware and software to convert to the new standard, wide-scale adoption results in positive externalities such as a reduction in payment card fraud that benefit all interested parties. This study investigates the investment decision at the country level and examines the variability of when countries choose to adopt the new standard as a unique application of existing theoretical economic models of IT investments. It finds evidence supporting a relationship between high payment system switching costs and delayed EMV conversion as shown through several separate regression models, where switching cost is represented by the level of payment card utilization.Item Are you in or are you out?: How the relevance of an organization’s social initiatives to its day-to-day operations impacts financial performance(2017) Shapiro, Whitney;For-profit firms in society today are becoming increasingly expected to “give back” to the community through some sort of social initiative. In the past, it was hotly debated whether these societal expectations resulted in any sort of fiscal benefit. Now it is commonly agreed that there is financial benefit to conducting social initiatives, but there is no clarity around how the relationship of an organization’s social initiatives to its day-to-day operations impacts financial performance. This study examines the effect of social initiatives that are core to an organization’s everyday functions, and those that are peripheral to everyday functions, on financial performance. Additionally, this study examines the relationship between concerning core and peripheral social behavior on financial performance. Through two-sample t-tests and panel regression analysis, I determined that within a firm, peripheral social initiatives have a negative relationship with financial performance, while core initiatives and both types of concerning social behavior have no relationship. Between firms, core initiatives have a positive relationship with financial performance while concerning peripheral behavior has a negative correlation. This indicates that it may be fiscally beneficial to partake in social initiatives core to the everyday functioning of an organization and focus on reducing concerning peripheral behavior.Item Behavioral Finance: FIFA World Cup Expectations and Stock Market Success(2015) Janousek, Jeffrey;Behavioral finance, defined as the combination of behavioral and cognitive psychology theory with economics and finance to explain financial decisions, has grown in popularity over the last several years. Behavioral finance has also expanded into sports as researchers seek to find and explain anomalies that exist in the stock market. Existing research about sports is mixed, but prior studies have found that FIFA World Cup soccer matches have a statistically significant correlation with stock prices. This study further examines underlying factors that could influence this correlation. Specifically, it introduces an expectations framework and differentiates game outcomes based on whether the team exceeds, meets, or fails to meet expectations. Using regression analysis, the study finds some evidence for this relationship and that failing to meet expectations is correlated with a stock market decline during the World Cup.Item Blocked! The psychology behind the usage of ad-blocking software(2015) Rafian, Jahan;The use of internet ad-blocking software as a form of online ad avoidance is increasing rapidly, and websites/online advertisers are seeing their revenues decline as a result. Ad-blocking software is free to download, easy to use, and available across a variety of platforms. Approximately 10% of internet users are now blocking ads, and year-over-year growth is close to 40%. Websites and online advertisers have pushed users to whitelist—the term used when users disable their ad-block for a specific site—but have had limited success. This paper evaluates how ad characteristics, demographics, and exposure affect internet ad-blocking usage. Through a survey and statistical analysis, it was determined that demographics and exposure are significant drivers: younger internet users are more likely to use ad-blocking software, and a major inhibitor of ad-blocking growth appears to be lack of mainstream exposure. However, ad characteristics do not have an effect on ad-blocking usage or whitelisting likelihood. The results suggest that ad-blocking software is poised for long-term growth, and websites/online advertisers will need to adapt.Item Busted: Executive Misconduct and Its Implications for a Firm's Tax Avoidance(2023) Manna, Jackson;The title of ‘CEO’ confers upon an individual considerable influence over his or her organization, from corporate culture to financial reporting. Prior research has documented that the individual acting as CEO has a significant impact on a firm’s tax planning activities – the degree to which tax is avoided and the aggressiveness of tax positions taken. With such power comes substantial responsibility – particularly in recent years, corporate CEOs have faced heightened scrutiny and accusations regarding personal behaviors outside of work. This thesis analyzes whether an accusation of personal misconduct against a CEO has a significant impact on the tax planning activities of his or her firm. Tax avoidance is an appropriate means through which to measure the impact that personal misconduct allegations against the CEO have on the business-related aspects of a company. In the context of ethical misconduct and the allegations that follow, tax avoidance is unique from other financial metrics in that it has strong ethical considerations. It may follow, therefore, that decisions made by a firm in light of alleged ethical violations by the CEO will be reflected in the firm’s tax planning. I hypothesize that perceived scrutiny against a CEO for personal misconduct will motivate the firm to perform less aggressive tax avoidance in the years that follow. I examine this hypothesis through a multi-year event study which compares the change in tax avoidance for firms that experienced a CEO “violation event” against firms that did not. Through correlation and regression analyses, my results do not show significant evidence that personal misconduct allegations against a CEO influence a firm’s level of tax avoidance. However, there still exists strong motivation for further research.Item The buzz or the brand? How consumer perceptions of brand authenticity is influenced by buzzword labels(2015) Grev, Olivia;In an industry where big brands used to be better, small companies have contributed two-thirds of food industry growth in 2014. Consumer preferences have shifted, especially among millennials, and trending health-related buzzwords such as gluten free, ancient grains, and 100% natural have contributed to this change. However, among large packaged goods companies the alignment of these labels with the brand’s purpose differs from that of small, niche companies. Through an experimental design and ANOVA analyses, this study aims to determine the difference between millennial and non-millennial consumers in regards to their perceptions of brand authenticity and how it is affected by the presence of buzzword labels and brand type (with either a large multi-national or niche brand story). In addition, this thesis aims to connect consumers’ perceptions of these brand and label conditions to their knowledge of buzzwords and their lifestyle habits.Item Can Firms Import Innovation?The Impact of H-1B Visa Sponsorship on Company Innovation & Performance(2018) Viswanath, Bhavesh;Immigration policy has always been a controversial topic in the United States of America. There have been studies published on the economic implications of the H-1B visa program but there is a gap in research on the innovation and financial implications for companies that hire H-1B workers. This thesis will focus on measuring the impact of H-1B workers on company performance by creating dynamic panel dataset using data from the Department of Labor and Wharton Research Data Services. This thesis uses simple linear regressions, fixed effects regressions and general methods of moments to measure H-1B employees impact on innovation and company performance. The analysis shows that H-1B employees on average have a positive impact on the research and development spending as well as the operating margin of their employer. This result was consistent with human capital theory assumptions, that more educationally adept workers contribute positively to firms and society. For the US to continue to stay at the forefront of innovation, high skilled labor is required for American companies. As reforms to the H-1B program are being proposed, this thesis aims to begin a conversation on immigration and innovation using empirical evidence.Item Can We Determine Our Own Happiness? Core Self-Evaluation as Related to Job and Relationship Satisfaction(2016) Fendos, Jennifer;College is a double-edged sword in that it is often seen as a time of newfound freedom and fun, but also described as a core source of stress. Considerable research suggests that one’s tolerance to stress is directly related to personality factors that determine general life satisfaction. However, evidence suggests core self-evaluation, a personality factor consisting of self-esteem, self-efficacy, locus of control, and emotional stability, is linked to not just general life satisfaction, but specific types of life satisfaction, such as one’s job. This study utilizes a survey to examine the relationship between core self-evaluation and college satisfaction, relationship satisfaction, and coping skills among 161 college students. I find statistical significance in between all three relationships - core self-evaluation being positively related to job and relationship satisfaction and coping skills – and discuss the possible reasons behind why. These findings not only help to shed light on a new personality variable that can determine satisfaction, but also offer insight into how internal factors can manifest in one’s everyday life.Item Chasing the Magic Bullet: What Strategies do States Use to Bring in Revenue(2013-08-12) Rieddle, Matthew;In light of the spate of recent budget shortfalls caused by a litany of ballooning expenses, state governments can no longer afford to maintain their tax systems at the status quo and hope that enough revenue will come in to avoid collapse. This study seeks to identify not only which states have been most successful at raising revenue, but what methods they have used to do it, in order that other states might gain from that knowledge. Beginning with the position that a sales tax is the best tool available for states, the study evaluates quantitative regression analyses of the taxes levied by each of the fifty states from 1961 to 2010 and the resulting revenue those taxes brought in. By making the historical data the subject of the study, instead of merely an input, this paper fills a gap in the current scholarly literature on the topic of state revenue that has sought too often to project questionable assumptions into the future instead of learning from the past. The results of such an analysis will highlight the most successful ways states have been able to keep their coffers full. The study aims to provide a resource for state policymakers who, in many parts of the United States, face a ticking time bomb of future expenditures.Item Congressional Insider Trading: Returns of US Representative During the Covid-19 Pandemic(2022) Bauer, Thomas;Abnormal returns from insider trading among members of Congress disappeared in 2012 with the passage of the STOCK Act. Prior to these regulations, existing literature showed that members of Congress earned significant abnormal returns. However, there have recently been concerns that certain members of Congress exploited their information advantages related to the Covid-19 pandemic and partook in insider trading. Given this development, it is important to reassess if insider trading occurs in congress. This thesis finds little evidence of widespread insider trading in the US House of Representatives during the Covid-19 pandemic.Item Crowdfunding to Cannes: Evaluating the Wisdom of Crowdfunding Crowds in the Movie Market(2016) Stephan, Hannah;Crowdfunding has emerged over the last few years as a means for small business owners to raise money on the Internet by tapping the easily accessible crowd of potential funders. Campaigns have been very successful, in some cases raising millions of dollars. These extremely successful campaigns raise an important question: does crowdfunding support bringing high quality products to the market, and does it help them remain successful once they do reach the market? Research on crowdfunding has increased greatly in the past couple of years, but this is a gap that has not yet been filled. This research seeks to assess whether crowds on these platforms are making wise funding decisions by analyzing the funding of movies on crowdfunding platforms in terms of whether or not they won any awards. This measure of market performance will give us an indication of whether certain aspects of a crowdfunding campaign have an impact on an offering once it reaches the market.Item Depletion and Satiation(2009-04-08) Huang, ChenyanSatiation is a significant part of people’s life. Among all the factors that would likely affect the satiation, we have chosen self-control which has been shown to be critical. Given that lapses in self-control causes people to consume more while satiation causes people consume less, the interaction of these two factors could be quite interesting. This research tried to understand the relationship between self-control and satiation.Item Designing Discipline: How does the market react to accounting restatements in industries with significant intangible value?(2018) Haworth, Aleah;Mandatory financial reporting for public companies is intended to increase transparency for shareholders. If a business can raise capital from the public, it was decided that the public had a right to information about the operations of the business they were investing in. However, the creation of mandatory financial reporting was not an absolute solution. Since then, there have been multiple instances of accounting mistakes and fraud that require an accounting restatement. Such market events yield a market response measured by stock price changes. Market responses are commonly researched, but they have not been considered among different industries. This study intends to address a current gap in research by examining the financial market reaction to significant market events among firms with notable intangible value. I accomplish this with an event study following accounting restatement dates. This thesis examines the hypothesis that the financial market is significantly less reactive to restatements in industries with significant intangible value. I use statistical analysis tools including a two-sample t-test, a regression model, a correlation analysis, and a quintile analysis. The research results do not yield a significant difference to support the hypothesis, but compelling motivation for future research was uncovered. Key Words: Creative industry, intangible assets, accounting restatements, market eventsItem Do low repatriations of foreign earnings impact cash flow? An analysis of the effect of Tax Code §965 on multinational corporations(2016) Longley, Amanda;The tax holiday on repatriations of foreign earnings instituted by the AJCA did not have the effect of increased U.S. investment its writers intended, but it was taken advantage of by many companies for different reasons. Congress has in recent years considered instituting another such holiday, but little research has been done on the effect of the holiday on companies’ financial health. After the holiday ended, many companies repatriated fewer earnings yearly than they had before the holiday, which may have affected companies’ cash flow. This study investigated the effect of the holiday on cash flow, with reference to several factors that may have added to the effect, using sample of thirty large multinational corporations. The factors examined include the extent to which a company’s operations were overseas, the use of tax havens, and the proportion repatriated of allowed unrepatriated foreign earnings were considered. Regression analysis indicated that the holiday had no statistically significant effect on cash flow, except in that a more extensive use of tax havens was correlated with decreased cash flow.Item Do Parental Leave Policies Affect Employee Engagement at Firms in the US?(2016) Solheid, Madison;The concept of employee engagement is relatively new and has become an important theme in business management as research has shown that employee engagement drives productivity and bottom-line results. Much of the employee engagement concept remains unexplored due to its recent appearance and rapid growth in current research. Additionally, many employee engagement surveys used by consulting firms are proprietary and are therefore difficult to compare. As employee engagement is increasingly measured and used in firms, it is critical to understand its drivers and its application across countries. Existing research has linked work-hour flexibility to increased retention and work-life balance, and thus decreased work-family conflict. However, there is a lack of evidence to link parental leave, an aspect of work-family balance, to employee engagement. This study investigates the relationship between the length or pay of parental leave and employee engagement for employees at firms in the United States using a combination of secondary research and survey data. The implications of a connection between parental leave and employee engagement could provide motivation for firms in the United States to extend their parental leave offerings.Item Do We Believe What We Read? Effects of User-Generated Social Media Content on Consumers' Brand Liking(2015) Kohlmann, Emily;Social media is a relatively new form of marketing for companies, and its use continues to increase among consumers and companies. Past research has found that businesses use social media marketing primarily to increase brand awareness and communicate their brand online (Structuring a social media team, 2012). However, this existing research does not acknowledge the content on social media posted by users about their experiences with the brand. Companies need to understand how this user-generated content about their brand influences consumers’ attitudes towards the brand. The present research examines the effect of consumers viewing negative social media content on consumer brand liking, and it addresses how social media usage frequency influences consumers’ brand liking after viewing user-generated content. This study uses a survey scenario to present social media content and collects information about brand liking and social media usage. The regression analysis supported that viewing negative user-generated social media content decreases consumer liking for the brand, but it did not support that the degree of influence of the content varied by the participant’s extent of social media usage.Item Does New Technology Impact Product Recalls? An Empirical Examination in the Automotive Indutry(2017) Slaats, Konner;As technology increases in prevalence in people’s daily lives, the number of advanced applications are increasing in our vehicles. Technology has inherent risks and failures that are deemed unavoidable. Luxury vehicles typically incorporate more technology than non-luxury vehicles, but consumers believe that luxury brands are of higher quality than nonluxury brands. There appears to be a fundamental disconnect between the perceived quality of luxury vehicles and the failures associated with technologies incorporated in them. This study seeks to examine the effect of technology penetration on vehicle recalls and assess whether luxury status moderates this effect. To address the question, I use secondary data from Ward’s Automotive on US-produced sedans from 2003-2011 and run panel regressions to test the hypotheses. My results show that technology options appear to have no impact on vehicle recalls, and that luxury status appears to moderate the relationship between recalls and technology options.Item Does Pinning Lead to Purchasing?: An Evaluation of the Impact Social Media Connectedness has on Online Purchase Behavior(2015) Grange, Ryan;Internet retailing has become extremely competitive in recent years, and this trend will likely continue. While the online retailing universe develops, social media will play an increasing role in how consumers gain information and interact online. As such, it will become pertinent for marketers to understand how their online customers utilize social media and online interactions to shop. Currently, research in this area focuses primarily on brand liking based off of social sources, but what marketers really care about is how that translates into increased sales. There is a lack of research around how social media interaction and usage leads to purchase intent for online consumers. This study utilizes survey data to measure social media usage, and then examines how usage level affects purchase decision making and intent based on hypothetical scenarios with varying influences. The study finds evidence that online interactions have a higher impact for those that are more heavily engaged online, but that this effect does not transcend all product categories. These findings will help marketers target both heavy and light social media users and cater to their online shopping habits in the future.Item Does the public still trust public health? Analyzing the effects of misinformation inoculations by public health institutions on vaccine hesitancy(2022) Wallin, Deanna;This thesis aims to study how public health institutions’ debunking of COVID misinformation using inoculation theory affects vaccine hesitancy and misinformation belief in vaccine-hesitant populations. Participants were asked about how they perceive public health institutions (such as the CDC and WHO) in terms of trustworthiness and credibility. Participants were exposed to either misinformation and debunking using inoculation theory, misinformation alone, or a control task. Inoculation and misinformation experimental conditions were then asked to assess believability of vaccine-critical news headlines. After the survey, intention to get the COVID vaccine was measured. Inoculation messaging was found to have a significant positive effect on vaccine acceptance. Misinformation belief was found to have a slight mediating effect, but public health trust was not found to be a significant moderator. This study supports prior findings that inoculation is effective at increasing vaccine acceptance but prompts further research on misinformation’s role and long-term effects of inoculation messaging.Item The Effect of Feminization Across Occupations on Anticipated Work-Family Conflict(2018) Velenchenko, Natalia;Work-family conflict (WFC) arises when an individual’s work and family demands become incompatible, making participation in both difficult, and it has been linked to a variety of negative consequences such as increased job stress and decreased organizational commitment and job performance. The amount of WFC individuals expect before entering the workforce, called anticipated work-family conflict (AWFC), is important because it may influence their career and life choices. While researchers have found conflicting results regarding the effect of gender on anticipated work-family conflict, little to no research has been done to study the effect that feminization across occupations – the extent to which each occupation is typically dominated by female employees – has on anticipated work-family conflict levels. This study investigates the effect of feminization across occupations on AWFC levels for students at the University of Minnesota Medical School. Although I did not find that the level of feminization of occupation had a significant effect on AWFC, I did find that self-efficacy was a strong predictor of both time-based and strain-based AWFC. In addition, not having a father present during late childhood and adolescence was also a predictor of strain-based AWFC. Having a better understanding of what students’ expectations for work-family conflict are when they first begin their career path could help managers develop more effective policies that allow employees to have the best work-life balance possible within their careers. Key words: anticipated work-family conflict, AWFC, gender, feminization, masculinization, self-efficacy, family background