Three Essays on the Financial Capital Markets

This thesis is comprised of three integrated studies highlighting the financial capital markets and corporate finance decisions in response to market conditions. The first study (Chapter 2) looks at the stock-like/bond-like behavior of Canadian income trusts, in particular how the sensitivities of income trusts’ returns to stock and bond market factors change over time, around different events, and depending on corporate strategy and firm characteristics. We find that income trusts are priced more like bonds compared to matched corporations before a surprise announcement that removes the tax advantage of income trusts (the Tax Fairness Plan announcement), while they become more stock-like and have risk profiles similar to matched corporations after this event. Income trusts with characteristics related to the stronger ability to maintain cash distribution, more suitability to the trust structure, and higher tax shield prospect still behave more like bonds even after the Tax Fairness Plan announcement. This chapter shows how organizational structure choice and firm characteristics are related to an asset’s risk profile, in particular, the pricing behavior as bond-like or stock-like. The second study (Chapter 3) discusses a potential valuation premium for Canadian income trusts through looking at the valuation throughout the life cycle of the income trust structure. We find there is a valuation premium for the trust structure, as shown by the increase in valuation around the conversions into income trusts. The higher valuation of income trusts can be largely attributed to tax motives, as evidenced by the positive (negative) abnormal returns after positive (negative) tax-related events. However, we find a higher valuation premium enjoyed by income trusts early in the life cycle, which exists even after we account for tax and trust characteristics. Characteristics pertaining to the suitability of firms to the income trust structure also seem to deteriorate over time. The evidence suggests that other factors, including behavioral factors from both investors’ and managers’ sides, can influence income trusts pricing besides the tax rationale. The third study (Chapter 4) investigates whether firms are able to diversify the maturity structure of their bond profiles given the availability of the offshore bond markets. I look at average maturity, maturity structure, and the inverse of the Herfindahl index to explore the maturity diversification effect. This chapter finds that while the average maturity of offshore bonds is different from that of domestic bonds at the aggregate level, over the years, a firm issues new offshore bonds and new domestic bonds into similar maturity ranges. The degree of maturity diversification as measured by the inverse of the Herfindahl index is also lower in the years a firm issues new offshore bonds. By looking at how firms manage the yearly maturity structures of new and pre-existing offshore and domestic bonds, the study finds that new offshore bonds may diversify the maturity structure of pre-existing domestic bonds, but this happens only in the middle maturity ranges. Taken together, the study challenges the maturity diversification motivation and suggests that other motivations such as asset matching and foreign currency hedging also matter in bond maturity management with the presence of offshore bond markets. Overall, the thesis shows an interrelationship between financial capital market conditions and firms’ financing and strategical choices

Efficient implementation of interval matrix multiplication

International audienceThe straightforward implementation of interval matrix product suf- fers from poor efficiency, far from the performances of highly optimized floating-point implementations. In this paper, we show how to reduce the interval matrix multiplication to 9 floating-point matrix products - for performance issues - without sacrificing the quality of the result. We show that, compared to the straightforward implementation, the overes- timation factor is at most 1.18

Authority of Students' Art Works Copyright in Online Classes during Covid Pandemic at Vietnamese Universities of Applied Arts

Purpose: This study aims to point out the factors affecting the copyright for applied art works of Vietnamese universities of applied arts during the period of online learning due to Covid-19. Framework: Intellectual property is considered as a set of rules by which societies have developed to regulate access to cultural and intellectual knowledge dependent on social and technological developments. Method: The study used quantitative research methods with the voluntary participation of 460 students from a public university in Hanoi. We used purposeful sampling technique in this study. Participants are selected for various purposes, such as access to data on their learning outcomes, their creative process, their works and the program they are studying at the university. Findings: The obtained results show that there are the following factors that directly affect students' copyright when they make online presentations about their applied art works, which are: (1) Internal regulations and technological measures to monitor copyright infringement; (2) Students' awareness of copyright issues; (3) Activities to remind lecturers about copyright issues; (4) Control of copyright infringement for applied art works. From the research results, we try to come up with solutions to solve the effects of factors affecting copyright on students' applied art works so that they can feel more secure when participating in online learning classes. Originality values: Digital transformation in education at universities in Vietnam is an inevitable trend, in line with the development of science and technology in the world

2D Proactive Uplink Resource Allocation Algorithm for Event Based MTC Applications

We propose a two dimension (2D) proactive uplink resource allocation (2D-PURA) algorithm that aims to reduce the delay/latency in event-based machine-type communications (MTC) applications. Specifically, when an event of interest occurs at a device, it tends to spread to the neighboring devices. Consequently, when a device has data to send to the base station (BS), its neighbors later are highly likely to transmit. Thus, we propose to cluster devices in the neighborhood around the event, also referred to as the disturbance region, into rings based on the distance from the original event. To reduce the uplink latency, we then proactively allocate resources for these rings. To evaluate the proposed algorithm, we analytically derive the mean uplink delay, the proportion of resource conservation due to successful allocations, and the proportion of uplink resource wastage due to unsuccessful allocations for 2D-PURA algorithm. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed method can save over 16.5 and 27 percent of mean uplink delay, compared with the 1D algorithm and the standard method, respectively.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, Published in 2018 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC

Quantum Gauss Jordan Elimination

In this paper we construct the Quantum Gau\ss Jordan Elimination (QGJE) Algorithm and estimate the complexity time of computation of Reduced Row Echelon Form (RREF) of an $N\times N$ matrix using QGJE procedure. The main theorem asserts that QGJE has computation time of order $2^{N/2}$

Methadone Maintenance Treatment Decentralization in Vietnam

BackgroundTo respond to the dual HIV and injecting drug use epidemic, Vietnam has implemented methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) nationwide since 2010 and decentralized it to primary care (i.e. commune health centers) since 2015. The study aims to explore the challenges that Vietnamese community health workers (CHW) at commune health centers encounter in providing MMT and the factors associated to these challenges.MethodsThis study had a mixed method design. We used two types of data in this study. For the sub-study 1, we used the secondary data from a quantitative survey conducted in Vinh Phuc and Phu Tho provinces among 300 CHWs who did not provide MMT at the time of the study. For the sub-studies 2 and 3, we collected quantitative and qualitative primary data from Dien Bien province. We conducted a quantitative survey among 276 CHWs including both MMT providers and non-MMT providers. From this sample, we selected 26 MMT providers with various characteristics for in-depth interviews.ResultsIn the sub-study 1, the mean score of CHWs’ interaction with PWUD 36.4 (SD 8.8) on a scale of 60. The interaction between CHW not providing MMT and people who use drugs (PWUD) was negatively associated with their stigmatizing attitude towards PWUD (β = -0.84, 95% CL: -1.05; -0.63) after adjusting for their background (gender, education level, job position and years of working experience) and job-related characteristics (perceived risk and challenges when working with PWUD, job satisfaction and empathy towards PWUD). In the sub-study 2, 114 (41.3%) CHW had ever provided MMT services. Better MMT knowledge was associated with higher levels of confidence in providing MMT services among CHW who had no experience with MMT program (β=0.90, 95%CL: 0.29; 1.51), not among those who had experiences. On the other hand, technical support in working with PWUD was associated with a higher level of confidence in providing MMT services for both groups (β=0.71, 95%CL: 0.35; 1.08 and β=0.58, 95%CL: 0.19; 0.96 among CHWs who had ever and who had never worked in MMT, respectively). In sub-study 3, the perceived challenges for MMT provision included lack of confidence and motivation to provide MMT, inadequate human resource, lack of institutional support, insufficient technical support, lack of referral resources and additional support for patients, lack of policies to support the MMT program at CHCs and to protect service providers.ConclusionCHWs in Vietnam faced several challenges in working with PWUD and providing MMT services at primary care settings. Supportive policies and tailored interventions should be developed at different levels to ensure the quality and effectiveness of the MMT decentralization program

Generalized diffusion theory of micromorphicly deformable particle-fluid continuum and bubble-liquid two-phase flows

In the paper [1] the basic concepts and equations were derived for the micromorphicly deformable particle-fluid two-phase flows, the constitutive equations have been constructed. The flow us fluid with deformable spherical particles, when the particle only expands radially, rotates and translates, is considered in this paper. For this case one can obtain the full motion's equations system. These equation together with the constitutive equations are sufficient to determine all of unknowns, and they can be used to study the bubble- liquid two-phase flow. The problems of kinematic wave and acoustic wave propagation in the bubble-liquid two-phase flow is studied