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Item Spatial and temporal epidemiology of FMD in Bhutan (2011–2019)(BioMed Central Ltd, 2025-08-19) Letho S; Compton CBackground: Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) is an important disease in livestock in Bhutan due to its significant social and economic impacts to the farmers as well as to the government. FMD outbreaks continue to occur every year with greater frequency in some parts of the country despite the implementation of control measures. It is imperative to understand the current patterns of the disease for planning effective control programs. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the spatial and temporal patterns of FMD in Bhutan since the most recent national survey. Methodology: Nine year’s (2011–2019) of national FMD outbreak data was used for this study. An investigation of global spatial autocorrelation was undertaken using the K difference function statistic and local spatial clusters of FMD outbreaks using Kulldorff’s spatial scan statistic. Retrospective spatio-temporal analysis was conducted using a Bernoulli probability model with monthly aggregation of data. A non-stationary cosinor model was used to examine seasonality and trend of outbreaks. Results: The K function statistic detected significant global spatial autocorrelation of FMD outbreaks (p < 0.02) and Kulldorff’s spatial scan statistic identified two outbreak clusters in west Bhutan- the first primary cluster (p < 0.002) with relative risk (RR) of 5.22 and radius of 19.77 km in Paro and Thimphu districts and the second primary cluster (p < 0.006, RR = 8.44 radius: 8.98 km) in Punakha and Wangdue Phodrang districts. The spatio-temporal scan test detected a single significant (P < 0.001) space–time cluster of 22 FMD outbreaks centred in south-west Bhutan with a radius of 60 km over an 8-month period in 2018—2019. The temporal analysis indicated that, on an average there were 0.5 (95% CI: 0.2—0.8) additional outbreaks per month in the seasonal winter peaks at 1.9 months (95% CI: 12.55 -3.64) compared with the overall monthly average. Conclusion: The western and southern regions of Bhutan have experienced the greatest overall incidence and significant spatial and spatio-temporal clusters of outbreaks of FMD during the period 2011—2019, These findings in districts in the western medium FMD risk surveillance zone threaten progress to control of FMD in Bhutan.Item How should we manage fatigue in on-call workers? A review of guidance materials and a systematic review of the evidence-base(Elsevier Ltd, 2025-02) Bumpstead H; Kovac K; Ferguson SA; Vincent GE; Bachmann A; Signal L; Aisbett B; Thomas MJW; Sprajcer M; Vitiello MOn-call work is known to contribute to disrupted sleep, fatigue, and an increased risk of incidentor injury. This review aimed to a) identify current on-call management strategies that are suggested or required by regulatory bodies, and b) determine if there is empirical evidence to support these strategies in managing the fatigue of on-call workers. A grey literature search produced 65 relevant guidance materials. A systematic inductive thematic process identified consistent strategies included in these materials: 1) regularity/predictability of shifts, 2) fatigue management policy, 3) prescriptive rule sets, 4) fitness for work assessment, 5) on-the-day control measures, 6) risk assessment, 7) training and education, and 8) call management. Subsequently, a systematic review identified 17 original studies on the effectiveness of fatigue management strategies in on-call workers. Very little research has been done on fatigue management strategies for on-call workers outside of some prescriptive hours of work limitations. These limitations generally reduced fatigue, but often had the unintended consequence of increasing workload, which may inadvertently increase overall risk. Training, education, and call management (e.g., protected naps during on-call periods) also had some supporting evidence. The current gap in evidence emphasises the critical need for research on tailored on-call fatigue management strategies.Item Risk Analysis of Pension Fund Investment Choices(John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2023-09-01) Bissoondoyal‐Bheenick E; Brooks R; Do XWe provide a comprehensive and more consistent approach to analyse and compare the risk-return relationships of Australian superannuation investment options for the period January 1990 to December 2016. In estimating the risk profiles of the investment options, we allow for the movement of the asset classes over time by employing a varying coefficient panel estimation technique. We find that while risk increases across different investment options from moderate to aggressive options, using different percentages of identifying a balanced fund does not impact the long-term risk measurement. We equally find that the risk-return relationships of investment options are not sensitive to the modelling framework, except for the crisis analysis, in which the Fama-French five-factor model provides greater sensitivity.Item Essays on stock price crashes : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Finance, School of Economics and Finance, Massey University(Massey University, 2024-03-29) Roy, SuvraThis thesis comprises three essays that contribute to the literature on the consequences of stock price crashes. Essay One explores the post-crash responses of managers, the motives behind those responses, and the effects of those management responses on shareholders. The essay finds that managers of the crashed firms change their course of action to regain the trust of investors and improve firm value. Managers shift their attention towards enhancing transparency, optimizing investments, resolving internal conflicts, and investing in social capital and employee well-being. These initiatives contribute to enhancing the firm's value. Furthermore, this research proposes that management engages in these measures with consideration for their job security. Essay Two investigates the extent to which firm systematic risk changes following stock price crashes. It shows that stock price crashes result in increased systematic risk. This is evident across firms with both low and high betas. The higher systematic risk following a crash primarily stems from heightened default risk and results in equity financing becoming more expensive. Essay Three examines whether a firm price crash leads to the returns of the firm’s non-crash peer firms co-moving more with the returns of the market. The essay finds that this does occur. Investors focus more on firms that have experienced a crash while paying less attention to their non-crashed peer firms. This suggests that the investor trading behavior of these peer firms relies less on specific stock-related news and more on general market trends. The essay does not find any evidence to consider internal as well as external monitoring and information asymmetry as possible mechanisms of investor distraction. Overall, these essays provide contributions to the literature on stock price crash risk, financial markets, and corporate risk management. The thesis highlights how stock price crashes impact management responses, systematic risk, and the behavior of non-crashing peer firms, offering valuable insights for managers, investors, and market regulators to manage and respond to such events effectively. The thesis suggests that managers need to ensure their actions are taken post-crashes and potentially even before to prevent adverse events. Increased firm beta post-crash affects equity financing, portfolio management, risk assessment, and hedging decisions. Understanding firms’ systematic risk holds implications for managers, portfolio managers, and market regulators to manage firm systematic risk effectively. This thesis also documents a new source of return co-movement distinct from market-level shocks.Item Emerging aspects of shareholder activism : a dissertation presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctoral of Philosophy in Finance at Massey University, Manawatu (Turitea), New Zealand(Massey University, 2021) Hafeez, BilalThis thesis consists of one comprehensive literature review and two empirical essays on shareholder activism. The literature review on shareholder activism provides a brief discussion on shareholder activism’s evolution, highlighting the potential of retail investors’ participation in tipping the balance between the activist and the firm. Furthermore, it provides evidence on the activist institutional investors, including the traditional institutional investors such as pension funds and mutual funds, and hedge funds as the latest emerging activists. The literature review identifies some potential for research areas in light of the growing interest in shareholder activism. This thesis further includes two empirical studies on retail investors and activist hedge funds, respectively. The first essay examines retail investors’ attention and participation during shareholder activism with the proliferation of internet from 1990s. This study finds a significant increase in retail investors’ attention before the annual general meetings, leading to a subsequent increase in retail investors’ participation in the voting process, especially among proposals that resonate with retail investors’ preferences. This increase is more pronounced for less transparent firms than transparent firms. Empirical evidence also suggests that retail investors’ attention has a more pronounced increase for proposals with a more controversial tone. Overall, this study provides new insights into information technology’s role in mitigating retail investors’ apathy issues. The second essay focuses on hedge fund activism, and it is the first study to document the impact of hedge fund activism on firm risk-taking behaviors. This study provides evidence that firms targeted by activist hedge funds, which tend to maximize short-term profits, experience a significant reduction in risk-taking in the long-term. This reduction in risk-taking is more pronounced for myopic and opaque firms. This study also provides new evidence on the impact of target’s response on activism outcomes. Management’s hostile resistance would offset the initial effect of activism on target firms. Overall, this study provides important implications that activist hedge funds might not fulfil the role of monitoring as suggested in existing corporate governance literature. The results provide new insights to academics and regulators by adding to the debate on the costs and benefits of activism for the economy.Item Essays on financial accounting information, return predictability, and default risk : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Finance at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand(Massey University, 2021) Thakerngkiat, NarongdechThere is a growing realization of the importance of financial and accounting information on financial markets, and this is thus very much an area of focus for academics, practitioners, and regulators. This thesis consists of three essays on financial accounting information, return predictability, and default risk. The first essay considers the impact of inconsistent financial accounting information on the cross-section of stock returns. This essay uses earnings quality and firm characteristics to capture information signals about the firm value and measure information inconsistency as the variation across the information of the same company. The findings show that returns of information-consistent firms predict the returns of information-inconsistent firms in both equal- and value-weighted portfolios. However, such predictability varies over time due to liquidity funding and investor attention. This first essay thus contributes to the growing literature documenting the cross-section of stock return predictability as a result of the varying speed of information incorporation across stocks. The second essay examines whether the differences in accounting information between the pairs of stocks affect cross-asset return predictability. This essay uses a comprehensive set of accounting variables and market environments to capture the degree of information reflection. The results show that accounting variables such as abnormal accruals, earnings smoothness, book-to-market, firm age, leverage, abnormal capital investment, and investment growth, among others, explain the variation in predictability across pairing stocks. The cross-asset predictability varies over time and is associated with liquidity funding and market sentiment. A simple trading strategy based on our findings yields a higher mean return, lower standard deviation, and higher Sharpe ratio compared to the buy-and-hold strategy. The final essay investigates the impact of risk aversion on default risk. While a large body of research documents various firm characteristics and market conditions that drive corporate default, whether risk aversion matters for default risk remains under-investigated. This could be attributed to endogeneity concerns, such as that the investor risk aversion is not an exogenous variable or the presence of omitted variables that drive the default risk and the simultaneity bias between the default risk and the risk aversion. To address the endogeneity challenge, we use the largest mega-terrorist event, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as an exogenous shock to investor’s risk aversion; the empirical evidence shows a significant increase in default risks at both market and firm levels following the 9/11 attacks. Terrorism causes an increase in market-wide default risk for firms located in the attacked states, as well as for those located in the non-affected states. The findings are consistent with the strand of literature suggesting that, following terrorist attacks, investors become more risk-averse and demand a higher premium for their investment, leading to increased default risk.Item The role of land-use planning in reducing the vulnerability of the Bay of Plenty region to natural hazards : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Resource and Environmental Planning at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand(Massey University, 2013) Morris, Stephen KayeThis thesis analyses policies and plans used by local authorities in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty region to determine how well they address vulnerability to natural hazards. Interviews were conducted with planners, decision-makers and community leaders to find improvements necessary to reduce vulnerability. The Bay of Plenty was chosen as a case study due to the wide range and close proximity of natural hazards the region is exposed to. Following a literature review, policies, plans and interview data was coded, arranged into themes and findings written up. This research found that New Zealand has robust legislation that provide planners, decision-makers and individuals with the foundation and tools to avoid or mitigate hazard risk. However, the lack of use of the term vulnerability needs to be addressed. The ‘existing use’ rights conundrum presented by the Resource Management Act (1991) presents a challenge to meaningful locational decisions to reduce exposure. The absence of specifically addressing vulnerability in legislation filters down to Bay of Plenty policies and plans; it is difficult to plan for vulnerability reduction if there is no focus on it. The interviews found that access to financial resources and strong social ties are key determinants of vulnerability. However there were also a number of seemingly contradictory sources of vulnerability such as a greater vulnerability of wealthy and urban communities relative to poor or rural communities. This underlines how difficult it is to plan for complex social problems. The obvious implication of this research is that vulnerability is a complex and diverse problem that is not mitigated by placing people into broad categories divorced from the sum of their circumstances. Key words Land-use planning, vulnerability, resilience, risk, advocacy planning, Bay of Plenty, New ZealandItem China and international housing price growth(2018-08) Chang, YY; Anderson, H; Shi, SItem Occupation and risk of upper aerodigestive tract cancer: The ARCAGE study(Wiley Online, 15/05/2012) Richiardi L; Corbin M; Marron M; Ahrens W; Pohlabeln H; Lagiou P; Minaki P; Agudo A; Castellsague X; Slamova A; Schejbalova M; Kjaerheim K; Barzan L; Talamini R; MacFarlane GJ; MacFarlane TV; Canova C; Simonato L; Conway DI; McKinney PA; Sneddon L; Thomson P; Znaor A; Healy CM; McCartan BE; Benhamou S; Bouchardy C; Hashibe M; Brennan P; Merletti FWe investigated the association between occupational history and upper aerodigestive tract (UADT) cancer risk in the ARCAGE European case-control study. The study included 1,851 patients with incident cancer of the oral cavity, oropharynx, hypopharynx, larynx or esophagus and 1,949 controls. We estimated odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for ever employment in 283 occupations and 172 industries, adjusting for smoking and alcohol. Men (1,457 cases) and women (394 cases) were analyzed separately and we incorporated a semi-Bayes adjustment approach for multiple comparisons. Among men, we found increased risks for occupational categories previously reported to be associated with at least one type of UADT cancer, including painters (OR = 1.74, 95% CI: 1.01-3.00), bricklayers (1.58, 1.05-2.37), workers employed in the erection of roofs and frames (2.62, 1.08-6.36), reinforced concreters (3.46, 1.11-10.8), dockers (2.91, 1.05-8.05) and workers employed in the construction of roads (3.03, 1.23-7.46), general construction of buildings (1.44, 1.12-1.85) and cargo handling (2.60, 1.17-5.75). With the exception of the first three categories, risks both increased when restricting to long duration of employment and remained elevated after semi-Bayes adjustment. Increased risks were also found for loggers (3.56, 1.20-10.5) and cattle and dairy farming (3.60, 1.15-11.2). Among women, there was no clear evidence of increased risks of UADT cancer in association with occupations or industrial activities. This study provides evidence of an association between some occupational categories and UADT cancer risk among men. The most consistent findings, also supported by previous studies, were obtained for specific workers employed in the construction industry. © 2011 UICC.Item Moods and Aversions: Regret, loss, risk, and ambiguity in investment choicesMacRae M; Phung TMT; Nguyen HT; Nguyen VH
