Casino Stocks and Katrina: An Example of Market Over-Reaction?

How efficient was the market in anticipating the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf coast casino industry? This study uses the event study methodology to investigate the stock market’s reaction affecting equity prices of small casino companies with operations on the Gulf Coast centered on Biloxi, Mississippi. Cumulative Abnormal Returns (CARs) for 1 day, 3 day, and 6 day event windows are examined.. As such the impact of Katrina on stock prices of casino firms in the Gulf Coast is better understood

The Impact of Exchange Rates On Hotel Occupancy

In many hospitality and tourism programs students are usually required to take only the most basic finance course. This can leave them drastically under prepared for real world situations. Hospitality and tourism is the world’s single largest industry and probably one of the industries most affected by foreign exchange movements. This exposure to foreign exchange movements is magnified by the discretionary nature of hospitality and tourism spending, making the profitability of hospitality providers very sensitive to changes in the exchange rate. This paper explores the effect, if any, of a change in the dollar value of the following five currencies – UK Pound, Euro, Canadian Dollar, Japanese Yen and Mexican Peso, on the hotel occupancy in 7 major U.S. tourist destinations – Orlando, Los Angeles, Washington DC, New York, Orlando, San Francisco, Miami and Las Vegas. We utilized exchange rate data from Oanda Foreign Exchange website http://www.oanda.com/convert/fxhistory , and Hotel Occupancy data for all destinations other than Las Vegas provided by Smith Travel Research. http://www.smithtravelresearch.com/smithtravelresearch/ Occupancy data for Las Vegas was collected from Las Vegas Visitor Profile site prepared for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority by GLS Research

Finance as a Driver of Corporate Social Responsibility

Finance is grease to the economy. Therefore, we assume that it may affect corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the sustainability of economic development too. This paper discusses the transmission mechanisms between finance and sustainability. We find that there is no simple one-to-one relationship between financial development and sustainable development but there are various – often indirect – linkages. It appears that most of the literature concentrates on the role of public shareholders when it comes to changing corporate policy and performance in a more sustainable direction. However, this focus neglects the potential impact of the credit channel and private equity on a firm’s non-financial policies and performance. These very powerful mechanisms can govern business policies and practices. Therefore, there appears to be much more scope for finance to promote socially and environmentally desirable activities and to discourage detrimental activities than has been acknowledged in the academic literature so far. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006banks, corporate social responsibility, development, ethics, financial markets, socially responsible investments, sustainable development, G200, G300, L210, M140, Z130,