Business

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 40
  • (2021) Ho, Tin Long
    Thesis
    Housing wealth is typically the largest component of retirees’ portfolios. Although economic theory predicts that retirees would benefit from using housing wealth as a source of retirement funding, the take-up of enabling products and approaches is low. This thesis addresses three key areas in the utilization of housing wealth in retirement: (i) identification of the preferred home equity release approach for different types of households; (ii) exploration of means to address behavioral impediments to the utilization of housing wealth through equity release products; (iii) investigation of potential demand for long-term care insurance (LTCI) financed through home equity release. Chapter 3 investigates the preferred home equity release approach for retirement, given available options (i.e., downsizing, reverse mortgages, the government-offered Pension Loans Scheme, and home reversion–type schemes) and reflects the current tax, superannuation, and age pension rules in Australia. We use state-of-the-art economic and actuarial modeling to identify the preferred approach for the use of housing wealth by Australian retirees with different marital status, wealth portfolios, and preferences. Chapter 4 uses an online experimental survey administered to a representative sample of Australian (pre-)retiree homeowners to explore whether information framing to address mental accounting and narrow choice bracketing can enhance the demand for reverse mortgages. The information framing to address mental accounting significantly increases the stated demand for reverse mortgages. Chapter 5 presents the results of an online experimental survey administered to a representative sample of Chinese (pre-)retiree homeowners to investigate the demand for LTCI financed through home equity release. We find that access to home equity release products significantly increases the stated demand for LTCI and that the preferred approach is to use a reverse mortgage. Overall, the findings in this thesis confirm that retirees would benefit from using housing wealth to finance retirement. The results also identify approaches to reduce the gap between theoretical and actual demand for home equity release products. The findings provide evidence that government and private providers can use to address barriers to increasing interest in and take-up of home equity release products and to develop new products to enhance the utilization of housing wealth in retirement.

  • (2021) Hastings, Bradley
    Thesis
    Decades of research on organizational change and its leadership has explored the influence of leaders on change outcomes. Yet, despite this accumulated effort, the likelihood of success remains stubbornly low. This dissertation explores: how do leaders improve the likelihood of change success? Prior scholarship has examined this question from two perspectives. Change practice discussion describes change processes, the activities that enable change, with allied suggestions for leader engagement – how to lead change processes. Change leadership discussion studies leader attributes, aiming to identify and generalize those allied with success and, in doing so, provide guidance for leadership development. Addressing the leader-success challenge, scholars have identified two problems: (1) these two discussions lack integration – while it is difficult to talk about change leadership without inherently referring to a change process, the former discussion overlooks the available choices between change processes, and (2) the study of attributes has yielded desired leader behaviors, yet evidence shows that these behaviors do not always manifest in practice. Addressing the first challenge, I commence with a process study of 79 cases of change. This research finds that a dynamic choice between two perspectives of change processes – illustrated as diagnostic and dialogic – significantly improves the likelihood of change success. It also extends an understanding of a leadership practice that facilitates this choice. Integrating these findings, I develop a model that explains how choice connects change leadership to change process knowledge, at the same time as providing a roadmap for leaders to navigate between diagnostic and dialogic processes in practice. Addressing the second challenge, psychologists explain a key limitation of behavioral study is that a large component of people’s behavior is a product of situational cues. To explain this phenomenon, these scholars have explored mindsets, describing how behavioral dispositions result from mental frameworks that stand ‘ready to fire’ based on situational cues. My second study establishes psychology-derived mindsets as relevant for leadership engagement of change processes. It does so by developing a typology of mindset constructs, then conducting an integrative review of mindset knowledge between change leadership and psychology settings. This study matches the fixed and growth mindsets with leadership engagement of diagnostic and dialogic change processes. My third study empirically examines how the fixed and growth mindsets manifest within leaders when change is targeted. It finds that leaders with a growth mindset are likely to choose to oscillate between change processes and achieve change success. Further, I identify that diagnostic change processes can provide situational cues that foster a fixed mindset within leaders, with detrimental effects on outcomes. Integrating these findings from all three studies, this dissertation puts forward a new means for leadership development – mindset activation theory – explaining a means for leaders to take control of their situation-mindset interaction and guide their behaviors in practice. It demonstrates how leaders can increase awareness of and operationalize the situational cues that guide their mindset, facilitating choices between change processes that improve their likelihood of change success.

  • (2021) Hickey, Nicole-Anne
    Thesis
    For decades scholars have detailed the benefits of having embedded workers in the workplace. Increasing embeddedness reduces the costs workplaces incur from workers’ withdrawal behaviours. In comparison, less is known regarding the costs of high embeddedness. Drawing on conservation of resource theory, this thesis examines the negative effects of embeddedness in conjunction with work role overload on burnout and withdrawal. It further considers the impact of workers’ physical and psychological maintenance of barriers between work and life (i.e., work-life boundary control flexstyles) on the aforementioned effects. The results of two waves of survey data from 243 aged care workers, analysed using a moderated mediation framework, showed work role overload and flexstyle moderate the mediated relationship between job embeddedness, burnout, and withdrawal behaviours (lateness, absenteeism, and turnover). These results underscore the importance of workers’ experience of work overload and their work-life control flexstyles when considering the impact of embeddedness on retaining, expanding, and sustaining the aged care workforce. These findings have important implications for employees, managers, and organisations in the aged care industry.

  • (2021) Wan, Cheng
    Thesis
    This thesis studies several important issues for ageing populations in developing countries facing basic public provisions of health services and pensions and high levels of air pollution. In particular, I investigate the demand for longevity, critical illness insurance (CII), and long-term care insurance (LTCI) in developing countries from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. I also study how PM2.5 (particles less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter) affects multimorbidity, cognition, and disability in activities of daily living (ADL) that are important health indicators for the old. The results provide insights into the design and risk management of retirement insurance products and government policies. First, we conduct an online experimental survey to elicit and analyse preferences for retirement portfolio including longevity, CII, and LTCI products after the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in urban China. We observe a high variation of insurance demand by individual factors and COVID-19 experience, and their effects can be opposite by health-contingent insurance and life annuity. On average, the most preferred retirement portfolio contains health-contingent insurance that covers half of the expected out-of-pocket (OOP) costs for critical illness and long-term care expenditures, a monthly annuity of 20% of the disposable income. The portfolio that covers half of the OOP cost for long-term care, critical illness, or both, is most effective in increasing annuitisation. Next, we derive the optimal portfolio for retirees in China facing uncertain lifespan, catastrophic medical expenditures, and long-term care costs. An optimal portfolio highly depends on a retiree’s economic background. For a retiree with an average pension, we find that at least 30% of retirement wealth is allocated to CII, while at least 40% is allocated to a life annuity for those with a low pension. The demand for LTCI is less than 15% of retirement savings. State-dependent utility and bundled insurance products can both increase annuity demand for some retirees. Finally, we investigate the long-term impact of exposure to PM2.5 on multimorbidity, cognition, and ADL disability for the middle- and old-aged adults in China. We find different non-linear associations between PM2.5 exposure and the three health outcomes, and we also observe different impacts of past and current exposure to PM2.5 on them. We interpret the risk of PM2.5 exposure by comparing it to the effects of ageing.

  • (2021) Tian, Wei
    Thesis
    In Chapter 1, we provide conditions for the synthetic control estimator to be asymptotically unbiased when the outcome is nonlinear, and propose a flexible and data-driven method to choose the synthetic control weights. In the empirical application, we illustrate the method by estimating the impact of the 2019 anti-extradition law amendments bill protests on Hong Kong's economy, and find that the year-long protests reduced real GDP per capita in Hong Kong by 11.27% in the first quarter of 2020, which was larger in magnitude than the economic decline during the 1997 Asian financial crisis or the 2008 global financial crisis. In Chapter 2, we generalise the conventional synthetic control method to a multiple-outcome framework, where the time dimension is supplemented with the extra dimension of related outcomes. As a result, the synthetic control method can now be used even if only a small number of pretreatment periods are available or if we worry about structural breaks over a longer time span. We show that the bound on the bias of the multiple-outcome synthetic control estimator is of a smaller stochastic order than that of the single-outcome synthetic control estimator, provided that the unit of interest can be closely approximated by the synthetic control in terms of the observed predictors and the multiple related outcomes before the treatment. In the empirical application, we illustrate our method by estimating the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on various outcomes in Sweden in the first 3 quarters of 2020. Our results suggest that if Sweden had implemented stricter NPIs like the other European countries by March, then (1) there would have been about 70% fewer cumulative COVID-19 infection cases and deaths by July, and 20% fewer weekly deaths from all causes in early May; (2) temporary absence from work would increase by 76% and total hours worked would decrease by 12% among the employed in the second quarter, but the impact would vanish in the third quarter, and there would be no discernable effect on the employment rate throughout; (3) the volume of retail sales would shrink by 5%-13% from March to May, while the other economic outcomes including GDP, import, export, industrial production, and CPI would not be affected. In Chapter 3, we propose a method based on the interactive fixed effects model to estimate treatment effects at the individual level, which allows both the treatment assignment and the potential outcomes to be correlated with the unobserved individual characteristics. This method is suitable for panel datasets where multiple related outcomes are observed for a large number of individuals over a small number of time periods. To illustrate our method, we provide an example of estimating the effect of health insurance coverage on individual usage of hospital emergency departments using the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment data.

  • (2021) Jiang, Yuchao
    Thesis
    Support from peers and experts, such as feedback on research artefacts, is an important component of developing research skills. The support is especially helpful for early-stage researchers (ESRs), typically PhD students at the critical stage of learning research skills. Currently, such support mainly comes from a small circle of advisors and colleagues. Gaining access to quality and diverse support outside a research group is challenging for most ESRs. This thesis presents several studies to advance the fundamental and practical understanding of designing systems to scale support for research skills development for ESRs. First, we conduct a systematic literature review on crowdsourcing for education that summarizes existing efforts in the research and application domain. This study also highlights the need for studies on crowdsourcing support for research skills development. Then, based on findings from the first study, we conducted another systematic literature review study on crowdsourcing support for project-based learning and research skills development. The third study explores the qualitative empirical understanding of how ESRs leverage current socio-technical affordances for distributed support in their research activities. This study reveals opportunities afforded by socio-technical systems and challenges faced by ESRs when seeking and adopting support from online research communities. The fourth study explores quantitative empirical understandings of the most desired types of feedback from external researchers that need to be prioritized to offer, and the challenges that need to be prioritized to solve. Building on the findings from the four studies above, we proposed a theoretical framework -- Researchersourcing -- that guides the understanding and designing of socio-technical systems that scale the support for research skills development. Accordingly, in the fifth study, we design and evaluate a crowdsourcing pipeline and a system to scale feedback on research drafts and ease the burdens of reviewing research drafts.

  • (2021) Ge, Irene
    Thesis
    The ratification of the Paris Agreement has led to a rapid transition towards a mandatory reporting landscape for carbon emissions on a global scale. Demand has increased the need for performance and impact disclosures of carbon emissions at both the country and company levels. Extant research literature currently lags the regulatory momentum and development of carbon disclosures in examining the benefits of regulatory reporting schemes, as well as credibility enhancement mechanisms such as carbon assurance. My thesis examines the impact of carbon reporting schemes and credibility enhancement mechanisms, carbon policy risk, and the cost of debt financing on carbon emissions growth. Study One examines the impact of variations of current carbon-related reporting schemes across countries. It uses a panel of 123 countries (1,600 country-year observations) covering the period 1990-2016. Study Two differentiates between home and host countries’ reporting schemes for multinational companies and collects 6,664 observations from 45 countries covering the period 2011- 2017. My results reveal that the strength of carbon reporting schemes and credibility enhancement mechanisms contribute to curbing carbon emissions growth at the country and the company level. The effects of credibility enhancement mechanisms are both robust and enduring. There is also evidence of a trade-off between the strength of reporting schemes and credibility enhancement mechanisms. My results demonstrate that the credibility of reported carbon emissions is a critical first step in working towards climate change mitigation. Study Three employs data sets from the first two studies and measures the impact of carbon policy risk. It finds that carbon policy risk, and the cost of debt financing, have a negative association with carbon emissions growth. This provides evidence of the role of financial institutions in facilitating a client company’s carbon emissions reduction. My thesis results constitute empirical evidence that informs both companies regarding the benefits of undertaking carbon assurance and emissions reduction programs in the face of diverse regulatory reporting schemes, and global and national regulators regarding the role of accounting and credibility enhancement mechanisms in holding countries and companies accountable for carbon emissions growth. Strengthening reporting schemes and emphasizing credibility enhancement mechanisms could aid in slowing down carbon emissions growth.

  • (2021) Balogh, Attila
    Thesis
    This dissertation consists of three essays on shareholder activism and corporate governance. The first essay develops and validates a method to identify shareholder activism campaigns using a data-driven approach based on investor characteristics. The proposed identification can replace or complement the current method used in finance research that identifies shareholder activism campaigns based on a subjective evaluation of regulatory filings. It overcomes the ambiguity associated with the current approach and allows for a more accurate and consistent examination of activism that is also replicable. I show that professional investment manager status, investment portfolio size, and track record of proxy solicitations are important determinants of board turnover, which is the most common channel for influencing control by activist investors. The second essay provides evidence that activist investors improve the operation of the director labor market and profit from its imperfections through their superior ability to match directors to firms based on the director's specific expertise. I show that long-term returns are higher when a director is appointed to the target, especially when their prior experience makes them a good fit. Understanding that complex turnaround campaigns are only launched when a matched director is available provides insights into the collective action problem of disengaged investors, which is inherent in the regular director nomination process. I also highlight that takeovers are a similar reallocation of human capital because the firm is matched to new managers and directors. This is an overlooked point in activism research that frames takeovers as an efficient reallocation of financial capital only. The third essay examines insider trading activity by blockholders and compares their performance to executives and directors. Blockholders are expected to be important monitors, yet the findings reveal that they are less informed because their trades earn significantly lower abnormal returns compared to other insiders that purchase their company's stock. Using insider trading data extracted directly from regulatory disclosure allows for a classification of investor types and the examination of heterogeneity in trading patterns for different blockholder groups. I show that active blockholder trades are significantly more informative compared to other financial blockholders, indicating that they are considered active monitors by the market.

  • (2021) Lee, Barton
    Thesis
    This thesis consists of three essays in political economics. In the first essay “Feigning Politicians,’’ I explore a model of politics where politicians have limited ability to influence policy. In this environment, I show that politicians face limited accountability and have an incentive to feign support for policies that voters demand: proposing policies that voters demand but then exerting little effort toward enacting such policies. A key implication of this feigning behavior is that, in some instances, less effective politicians will be reelected with a higher probability than more effective politicians. I provide empirical support for this key implication in U.S. House elections. In the second essay “Gridlock, Leverage, and Policy Bundling,” I explore a dynamic model of legislative bargaining where alternatives to the status-quo arrive stochastically during the bargaining process and the proposer can bundle multiple alternatives into a single proposal. Contrary to the prevailing wisdom that policy bundling reduces legislative gridlock, I show that policy bundling can increase gridlock via a leverage incentive; I call gridlock of this form leverage-based gridlock. Leverage-based gridlock is more likely to occur during periods of economic or political stability and, when it occurs, causes traditional measures of legislator ideology to overstate the true level of polarization between legislators. In the final essay “Political Capital,” we explore a two-period model of organizational decision making where the leader of the organization has a stock of political capital that she can choose to spend to influence decisions. The leader’s stock of political capital evolves dynamically and may increase or decrease depending on the leader’s decision to spend her capital and if her decision to spend was correct ex-post. This presents the leader with an intertemporal choice problem: spending political capital today will improve today’s decision (in expectation) but may result in less political capital—and hence less influence over organization decisions—in the future. We characterize the optimal use of political capital by the leader, the evolution of political capital over time, and identify different leadership styles that can emerge. We also explore the implications of our results for organizational design.

  • (2021) Zeng, Shipei
    Thesis
    The productivity slowdown across industrialised countries since 2004 is a persistent puzzle. This thesis proposes new productivity decompositions, using both industry and firm-level administrative data sets, with a focus on innovative techniques to advance understanding of the drivers of firm, industry, and country productivity performance. Particular attention is paid to micro-theoretic foundations of the proposed techniques, and to the rigorous application of appropriate econometric and data science techniques. At the industry level, drivers of productivity change are identified from a micro-theoretic framework implemented using an index number approach. Drawing on a non-parametric model, Chapter 2 decomposes productivity growth into explanatory factors for 12 selected industries and 16 market sector industries in Australia. Technical progress is found to support increasing productivity, though its contribution is partly offset by production inefficiency. Production inefficiency is interpreted as lagged output, inactive operation or possible measurement errors on a case-by-case basis. The overall performance of productivity growth and its explanatory factors is affected by the market shares based on a weighted average industry aggregation. In addition to the industry-level productivity decomposition in Chapter 2, a firm-level productivity decomposition is developed in Chapter 3 for a market that consists of incumbents, entrants and exiters. This new method enables decompositions of productivity into components to be merged with firm dynamics. The framework is applied to Australian firm-level data and reveals the dominant contribution of incumbent firms to industry productivity and industry efficiency. A difference-in-differences approach is proposed that validates the firm dynamics from the counterfactual perspective. Price imputation is essential when detailed price information is unavailable to support productivity decompositions. Chapter 4 introduces tree-based machine learning models for estimating missing prices in cases where there is product entry and exit, or product “churn”. Model performance metrics from (electronic-point-of-sale) scanner data confirm the prediction accuracy of tree-based models. An economic explanation is proposed to link the decision tree structure and consumer preferences. Tree-based models are recommended for price imputation due to their prediction accuracy and compatibility with consumer utility types.