Corporate financing decisions: the role of managerial overconfidence

This thesis examines the effects of managerial overconfidence on corporate financing decisions. Overconfident managers tend to overestimate the mean of future cash flow and underestimate the volatility of future cash flow. We propose a novel time-varying measure of overconfidence, which is based on computational linguistic analysis of what the managers said (i.e. Chairman s Statement). The overconfidence of CEO and CFO is also constructed based on what the managers did (i.e. how they trade their own firms shares). We conduct three empirical studies that offer new insights into the roles of managerial overconfidence in the leverage decision (i.e. debt level), pecking order behaviour (i.e. the preference for debt over equity financing) and debt maturity decision (i.e. short-term debt vs. long-term debt). Study 1 documents a negative overconfidence-leverage relationship. This new finding suggests that debt conservatism associated with managerial overconfidence might be a potential explanation for the low leverage puzzle: some firms maintain low leverage, without taking tax benefits of debt, because overconfident managers believe that firm securities are undervalued by investors and thus are too costly (Malmendier, Tate and Yan, 2011). Study 2 finds managerial overconfidence leads to reverse pecking order preference especially in small firms, which sheds light on the pecking order puzzle that smaller firms with higher information costs surprisingly exhibit weaker pecking order preference. This new evidence is consistent with Hackbarth s (2008) theory that overconfident managers who underestimate the riskiness of earnings tend to prefer equity to debt financing. Study 3 finds managerial overconfidence leads to higher debt maturity. This evidence supports our proposition that overconfidence can mitigate the underinvestment problem (which is often the major concern of long-term debt investors) (Hackbarth, 2009), which in turn allows overconfident managers to use more and cheaper long-term debt. This evidence also implies that overconfidence may mitigate the agency cost of debt. Overall, our empirical analysis suggests that managerial overconfidence has significant incremental explanatory power for corporate financing decisions

Dynamic Staffing and Rescheduling in Software Project Management: A Hybrid Approach

<div><p>Resource allocation could be influenced by various dynamic elements, such as the skills of engineers and the growth of skills, which requires managers to find an effective and efficient tool to support their staffing decision-making processes. Rescheduling happens commonly and frequently during the project execution. Control options have to be made when new resources are added or tasks are changed. In this paper we propose a software project staffing model considering dynamic elements of staff productivity with a Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Hill Climbing (HC) based optimizer. Since a newly generated reschedule dramatically different from the initial schedule could cause an obvious shifting cost increase, our rescheduling strategies consider both efficiency and stability. The results of real world case studies and extensive simulation experiments show that our proposed method is effective and could achieve comparable performance to other heuristic algorithms in most cases.</p></div

Generated Schedule versus Initial Schedule.

<p>Generated Schedule versus Initial Schedule.</p

Part A of Genome S Generated from Possible-Assignment Matrix and 2D Task-Employee Assignment Array.

<p>Part A of Genome S Generated from Possible-Assignment Matrix and 2D Task-Employee Assignment Array.</p

Copper Nitrate Mediated Regio- and Stereoselective Difunctionalization of Alkynes: A Direct Approach to α‑Chloro-β-nitroolefins

An efficient copper nitrate mediated chloronitration reaction was developed for the direct synthesis of α-chloro-β-nitroolefins with high regio- and stereoselectivity from simple alkynes and low toxic stannous chloride. This protocol provides a direct access to polysubstituted alkenes with operational simplicity, good functional group tolerance, and a wide substrate scope. Various applications of given products allowed the straightforward assembly of molecular complexity and indicated them as promising and valuable building blocks in organic synthesis

Fitness Function Calculation.

<p>Fitness Function Calculation.</p

GA-HC Performance in a Relative Large Problem (21 Tasks, 10 Employees) and Small Problem (4 Tasks, 3 Employees).

<p>GA-HC Performance in a Relative Large Problem (21 Tasks, 10 Employees) and Small Problem (4 Tasks, 3 Employees).</p

Copper Nitrate Mediated Regio- and Stereoselective Difunctionalization of Alkynes: A Direct Approach to α‑Chloro-β-nitroolefins

An efficient copper nitrate mediated chloronitration reaction was developed for the direct synthesis of α-chloro-β-nitroolefins with high regio- and stereoselectivity from simple alkynes and low toxic stannous chloride. This protocol provides a direct access to polysubstituted alkenes with operational simplicity, good functional group tolerance, and a wide substrate scope. Various applications of given products allowed the straightforward assembly of molecular complexity and indicated them as promising and valuable building blocks in organic synthesis

Part A of Genome S Generated from Possible-Assignment Matrix and 2D Task-Employee Assignment Array.

<p>Part A of Genome S Generated from Possible-Assignment Matrix and 2D Task-Employee Assignment Array.</p

Generated Best Schedule from Our Algorithm.

<p>Generated Best Schedule from Our Algorithm.</p