Essays in Accounting and Finance

This dissertation studies real effects of disclosure regulation and topics at the intersection of accounting and banking. It consists of three papers. The notion that mandating disclosure stimulates desirable and discourages undesirable behavior by the disclosing party is an important motivation for financial reporting and transparency regulation. However, there is relatively little evidence on the real effects of mandatory disclosure that directly speaks to this motivation. In "Disclosure Regulation, Corruption, and Investment: Evidence from Natural Resource Extraction", I investigate the real effects of mandatory extraction payment disclosures, which require European oil, gas, and mining firms to publicly disclose their payments to foreign host governments in a granular report on their corporate website. Extraction payment disclosures are substantially more disaggregated compared to previous payment records, allowing activist groups to identify payment discrepancies and exert societal pressure on extractive firms. I exploit plausibly-exogenous variation in the adoption of extraction payment reports across European countries and firms' fiscal-year ends to disentangle the disclosure effects from concurrent but unrelated macroeconomic and regulatory changes. Using manually-collected host country data on firms' extractive activities abroad, I document that disclosing companies increase their payments to foreign host governments but decrease investments relative to tightly-matched, non-disclosing competitors from around the world. The effects are particularly strong for large firms and for firms that sell their products directly to end consumers. Moreover, I find that extraction payment reports are associated with investment reallocations within disclosing firms and across disclosing and non-disclosing companies. I contribute to the prior literature by showing that social responsibility disclosures can have sizeable real effects at the micro level, especially if the threat of public shaming by specialized activist groups disciplines companies not to engage in illicit practices. However, I do not find that extraction payment disclosures are associated with improved measures of corruption at the aggregate host country level, which questions recent unilateral efforts by Western countries to address foreign policy objectives by imposing disclosure regulation on only a subset of companies in the global marketplace. The financial crisis of 2007-2009 triggered a vigorous debate about the role of fair value accounting and revived discussions about procyclicality in banking. While there is evidence that fair value accounting did not play a major role during the crisis, there is still the concern that fair value accounting contributes to instability by inflating credit bubbles via procyclical leverage. In "Procyclicality of U.S. Bank Leverage" (Journal of Accounting Research (2017), Christian Laux and I investigate the determinants of procyclical book leverage for U.S. commercial and savings banks in light of the current debate about the link between accounting and financial stability. Our evidence is not consistent with the notion that fair value accounting contributes to procyclical leverage or that historical cost accounting reduces procyclicality. Overall, we conclude that the business model of banks is more important for procyclical leverage than accounting or bank regulation. A large literature examines the economic benefits of private information production by banks within lending relationships. However, lending relationships are also valuable to banks outside of specific firm-creditor ties. In practice, lenders frequently advertise their participation in syndicated loan transactions through "tombstone announcements" in financial magazines to raise their public profile and use existing lending relationships as a marketing tool to attract new borrowers. Despite anecdotal evidence that banks value the public recognition from high profile transactions, there is little evidence on how lending relationships with prestigious firms shape debt contracting. In "Fishing with Pearls: The Value of Lending Relationships with Prestigious Firms", Alexander Mürmann, Christoph Scheuch, and I provide novel evidence of banks establishing lending relationships with prestigious firms to signal their quality and attract future business. Using unique survey data on firm-level prestige, we show that lenders compete more intensely for prestigious borrowers and offer lower upfront fees to initiate lending relationships with prestigious firms. We also find that banks expand their lending after winning prestigious clients. Prestigious firms benefit from these relations as they face lower costs of borrowing even though prestige has no predictive power for credit risk. Our results are robust to matched sample analyses and a regression discontinuity design

Validation of Non-Restrictive Inertial Gait Analysis of Individuals with Incomplete Spinal Cord Injury in Clinical Settings

Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) have gained popularity in gait analysis and human motion tracking, and they provide certain advantages over stationary line-of-sight-dependent Optical Motion Capture (OMC) systems. IMUs appear as an appropriate alternative solution to reduce dependency on bulky, room-based hardware and facilitate the analysis of walking patterns in clinical settings and daily life activities. However, most inertial gait analysis methods are unpractical in clinical settings due to the necessity of precise sensor placement, the need for well-performed calibration movements and poses, and due to distorted magnetometer data in indoor environments as well as nearby ferromagnetic material and electronic devices. To address these limitations, recent literature has proposed methods for self-calibrating magnetometer-free inertial motion tracking, and acceptable performance has been achieved in mechanical joints and in individuals without neurological disorders. However, the performance of such methods has not been validated in clinical settings for individuals with neurological disorders, specifically individuals with incomplete Spinal Cord Injury (iSCI). In the present study, we used recently proposed inertial motion-tracking methods, which avoid magnetometer data and leverage kinematic constraints for anatomical calibration. We used these methods to determine the range of motion of the Flexion/Extension (F/E) hip and Abduction/Adduction (A/A) angles, the F/E knee angles, and the Dorsi/Plantar (D/P) flexion ankle joint angles during walking. Data (IMU and OMC) of five individuals with no neurological disorders (control group) and five participants with iSCI walking for two minutes on a treadmill in a self-paced mode were analyzed. For validation purposes, the OMC system was considered as a reference. The mean absolute difference (MAD) between calculated range of motion of joint angles was 5.00°, 5.02°, 5.26°, and 3.72° for hip F/E, hip A/A, knee F/E, and ankle D/P flexion angles, respectively. In addition, relative stance, swing, double support phases, and cadence were calculated and validated. The MAD for the relative gait phases (stance, swing, and double support) was 1.7%, and the average cadence error was 0.09 steps/min. The MAD values for RoM and relative gait phases can be considered as clinically acceptable. Therefore, we conclude that the proposed methodology is promising, enabling non-restrictive inertial gait analysis in clinical settings

Capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry characterisation of secondary metabolites from the antihyperglycaemic plant Genista tenera

Genista tenera is endemic to the Portuguese island of Madeira, where an infusion of the aerial parts of the plant is used in folk medicine as an antidiabetic agent. Consequently the medicinal properties of the secondary metabolites of this plant have been the subject of an ongoing study. A recently reported LC-MS method using a 100 min separation allowed identification of five flavonoid components in an extract of the aerial parts of this plant. In order to obtain additional information on the range and complexity of the plant’s secondary metabolite components a CE-MS method has been developed and applied for the analysis of an extract of G. tenera. Twenty-six different components are distinguished in an analysis time of only 10 min. Results demonstrate that CE-MS/MS rapidly generates data complementary to those obtainable by LC-MS/MS and is particularly suited to the analysis of plant metabolites where concentration is not limiting.BBSRC, University of York, Treaty of Windsor Anglo-Portuguese joint research programme, Thermo Electron, Analytical Chemistry Trust Fund, Royal Society of Chemistry Analytical Division, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Experimental determination of Lamb wave dispersion diagrams over large frequency ranges in fiber metal laminates

Fiber metal laminates (FML) are of high interest for lightweight structures as they combine the advantageous material properties of metals and fiber-reinforced polymers. However, low-velocity impacts can lead to complex internal damage. Therefore, structural health monitoring with guided ultrasonic waves (GUW) is a methodology to identify such damage. Numerical simulations form the basis for corresponding investigations, but experimental validation of dispersion diagrams over a wide frequency range is hardly found in the literature. In this work the dispersive relation of GUWs is experimentally determined for an FML made of carbon fiber-reinforced polymer and steel. For this purpose, multi-frequency excitation signals are used to generate GUWs and the resulting wave field is measured via laser scanning vibrometry. The data are processed by means of a non-uniform discrete 2d Fourier transform and analyzed in the frequency-wavenumber domain. The experimental data are in excellent agreement with data from a numerical solution of the analytical framework. In conclusion, this work presents a highly automatable method to experimentally determine dispersion diagrams of GUWs in FML over large frequency ranges with high accuracy

De novo Assembly of the Burying Beetle Nicrophorus orbicollis (Coleoptera: Silphidae) Transcriptome Across Developmental Stages with Identification of Key Immune Transcripts

Burying beetles (Nicrophorus spp.) are among the relatively few insects that provide parental care while not belonging to the eusocial insects such as ants or bees. This behavior incurs energy costs as evidenced by immune deficits and shorter life-spans in reproducing beetles. In the absence of an assembled transcriptome, relatively little is known concerning the molecular biology of these beetles. This work details the assembly and analysis of the Nicrophorus orbicollis transcriptome at multiple developmental stages. RNA-Seq reads were obtained by next-generation sequencing and the transcriptome was assembled using the Trinity assembler. Validation of the assembly was performed by functional characterization using Gene Ontology (GO), Eukaryotic Orthologous Groups (KOG), and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analyses. Differential expression analysis highlights developmental stage-specific expression patterns, and immunity-related transcripts are discussed. The data presented provides a valuable molecular resource to aid further investigation into immunocompetence throughout this organism’s sexual development

SYNERGISTIC ON AUXIN AND CYTOKININ 1 positively regulates growth and attenuates soil pathogen resistance

Plants as non-mobile organisms constantly integrate varying environmental signals to flexibly adapt their growth and development. Local fluctuations in water and nutrient availability, sudden changes in temperature or other abiotic and biotic stresses can trigger changes in the growth of plant organs. Multiple mutually interconnected hormonal signaling cascades act as essential endogenous translators of these exogenous signals in the adaptive responses of plants. Although the molecular backbones of hormone transduction pathways have been identified, the mechanisms underlying their interactions are largely unknown. Here, using genome wide transcriptome profiling we identify an auxin and cytokinin cross-talk component; SYNERGISTIC ON AUXIN AND CYTOKININ 1 (SYAC1), whose expression in roots is strictly dependent on both of these hormonal pathways. We show that SYAC1 is a regulator of secretory pathway, whose enhanced activity interferes with deposition of cell wall components and can fine-tune organ growth and sensitivity to soil pathogens. Cytokinin and auxin are two major hormonal regulators of plant growth. Here the authors identify SYAC1, a gene that is synergistically activated by the two hormones being applied together, and show that it is required for normal growth while negatively impacting pathogen resistance

Measurement of the inclusive and dijet cross-sections of b-jets in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The inclusive and dijet production cross-sections have been measured for jets containing b-hadrons (b-jets) in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of sqrt(s) = 7 TeV, using the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The measurements use data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 34 pb^-1. The b-jets are identified using either a lifetime-based method, where secondary decay vertices of b-hadrons in jets are reconstructed using information from the tracking detectors, or a muon-based method where the presence of a muon is used to identify semileptonic decays of b-hadrons inside jets. The inclusive b-jet cross-section is measured as a function of transverse momentum in the range 20 < pT < 400 GeV and rapidity in the range |y| < 2.1. The bbbar-dijet cross-section is measured as a function of the dijet invariant mass in the range 110 < m_jj < 760 GeV, the azimuthal angle difference between the two jets and the angular variable chi in two dijet mass regions. The results are compared with next-to-leading-order QCD predictions. Good agreement is observed between the measured cross-sections and the predictions obtained using POWHEG + Pythia. MC@NLO + Herwig shows good agreement with the measured bbbar-dijet cross-section. However, it does not reproduce the measured inclusive cross-section well, particularly for central b-jets with large transverse momenta.Comment: 10 pages plus author list (21 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version published in European Physical Journal

Jet energy measurement with the ATLAS detector in proton-proton collisions at root s=7 TeV

The jet energy scale and its systematic uncertainty are determined for jets measured with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 7TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 38 pb-1. Jets are reconstructed with the anti-kt algorithm with distance parameters R=0. 4 or R=0. 6. Jet energy and angle corrections are determined from Monte Carlo simulations to calibrate jets with transverse momenta pT≥20 GeV and pseudorapidities {pipe}η{pipe}<4. 5. The jet energy systematic uncertainty is estimated using the single isolated hadron response measured in situ and in test-beams, exploiting the transverse momentum balance between central and forward jets in events with dijet topologies and studying systematic variations in Monte Carlo simulations. The jet energy uncertainty is less than 2. 5 % in the central calorimeter region ({pipe}η{pipe}<0. 8) for jets with 60≤pT<800 GeV, and is maximally 14 % for pT<30 GeV in the most forward region 3. 2≤{pipe}η{pipe}<4. 5. The jet energy is validated for jet transverse momenta up to 1 TeV to the level of a few percent using several in situ techniques by comparing a well-known reference such as the recoiling photon pT, the sum of the transverse momenta of tracks associated to the jet, or a system of low-pT jets recoiling against a high-pT jet. More sophisticated jet calibration schemes are presented based on calorimeter cell energy density weighting or hadronic properties of jets, aiming for an improved jet energy resolution and a reduced flavour dependence of the jet response. The systematic uncertainty of the jet energy determined from a combination of in situ techniques is consistent with the one derived from single hadron response measurements over a wide kinematic range. The nominal corrections and uncertainties are derived for isolated jets in an inclusive sample of high-pT jets. Special cases such as event topologies with close-by jets, or selections of samples with an enhanced content of jets originating from light quarks, heavy quarks or gluons are also discussed and the corresponding uncertainties are determined. © 2013 CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS collaboration