Essays on Motivating Investment

<p>Essay 1</p> <p>This research examines the relationship between Real Estate Investment Trusts‘ uses of the audit process to increase financial transparency, and their ability to attract and/or maintain reasonable access to capital investment. I find that capital investment is positively and significantly associated with three commonly used audit-related attributes: auditor quality (captured by higher audit fees), auditor specialization (captured by industry-audit specialization), and auditor reputation (captured by the audit firm being a Big 4 auditor). Moreover, I find the positive relationship between capital issuance and auditor fees remains after controlling for the financial crisis of 2007-2008. This positive association between the use of audit fees as a means of signaling transparency and capital investment after the crisis offers a possible strategy for firms seeking capital investment during periods of high capital market illiquidity resulting from a severe external shock to the financial markets. </p> <p>Essay 2</p> <p>Challenging real estate market conditions present highly motivated sellers with a difficult trade-off between lowering list price, and offering sales incentives to attract buyers. Research suggests that under-pricing may not prove effective, while empirical investigations of seller-paid sales incentives have yielded mixed results. This study extends the literature by investigating seller-paid incentives offered to buyers, buyers‘ agents, and/or both. I find a positive association between: (1) the likelihood of sellers offering buyer sales incentives and higher real estate asset bid-ask spread; (2) the likelihood of sellers offering agent sales incentives and highly motivated sellers; (3) offering sales incentives and sales price; and (4) offering sales incentives and market duration.</p> <p><br /></p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Accountancy

Year dc:date.available

2014

Author dc:creator

• Cummings, J. Reid

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dr. Gabriel G. Ramírez
• Dr. Divesh S. Sharma
• Dr. Xiao Huang

• real estate investment trusts
• financial transparency
• reit transparency
• audit process
• capital investment
• Accounting
• Business
• Business Administration, Management, and Operations
• Finance and Financial Management

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/etd/628

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu:etd-1636