purcc 2012 - University of the Pacific

Oral Presentation Abstracts
Using the SDC Platinum database, this paper
uses regression analysis to check if the company
with positive (negative) returns during the
first acquisition is more likely to have positive
(negative) returns during the successive
acquisition around the announcement date. It
also investigates the M&A deal characteristics
that may affect the stock performance of
sequential acquisitions (e.g. the elapsed time
between acquisitions).
The preliminary results confirm that the
persistency in abnormal returns around both
announcement dates really exists. In this way,
obtained results are of great value to
shareholders, since successive M&As can be
used as a strategic tool for REITs to achieve
higher growth and maximize shareholder
wealth. This work gives readers a better
understanding of drivers of abnormal returns for
REIT’s sequential acquisitions as well as
introduces them to factors which help the wealth
effects of M&As persist.
Food Deserts: A Comparison of Rural
and Urban Census Tracts
Minhchau Dinh
Faculty mentor: Bill Herrin
Food insecurity, or the limited availability and
access to fresh food, leads to hunger and is a
growing problem in the United States. In 2010,
approximately one in seven US households (17.2
million households) were food insecure, the
highest number ever recorded in the United
States. This has devastating effects on child
nutrition, causing challenges to learning and
development. Households that lack food security
are generally located in low-income
neighborhoods and poor rural communities.
These communities have limited access to fresh
food (grocery stores, open food markets) because
these food outlets are not located near these poor
communities. Furthermore, these low-income
communities often do not have access to
convenient transportation to take them to these
fresh food sources that are further away.
The differences between poor urban and rural
communities have not been thoroughly
researched. According to Morton, Bitto,
Oakland, and Sand in “Accessing food resources:
Rural and urban patterns of giving and getting
food”, 58% of low income and rural individuals
have access to fresh food versus low income
individuals that live in urban areas. This work
analyzes the differences in food security between
rural and urban counties in the United States,
taking into account other factors such as income
and transportation, to determine if low-income
communities in urban neighborhoods are better
off in accessing fresh food, than their rural
counterparts.
Adopting the Turkish Model: The Postrevolution
Political Development of
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood
Jordan Schreiber
Faculty mentors: Dan O’Neill
My research project aims to discover the policy
path of the Egyptian sociopolitical organization,
the Muslim Brotherhood and more specifically
it’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party
in a post-revolution environment. I aim to
determine whether or not the Islamic political
party, the AKP, which has been in power in
Turkey for over a decade, would provide a viable
model for its new Egyptian counterpart. The
Muslim Brotherhood has played a major role in
Egyptian society since its founding in 1922, but
since the 1952 revolution that overthrew the
British instituted monarchy, the organization has
been banned under new regulations of secularism
in the government. This all came crashing down
in February of 2011 when, after eleven days of
protests in the streets of Cairo, President Hosni
Mubarak was ousted. The revolution gave way to
a new wave of political freedom and for the first
time the Muslim Brotherhood was permitted to
form a political party. Their subsequent success
in the country’s parliamentary elections
solidified their role in the political future of
Egypt. The question then becomes what kind of
political presence will they be? Will they
implement the radical Islamic agenda the west
has feared for so long or will they choose a more
centrist, pragmatic approach focusing on
economic growth and strong foreign policy. The
Turkish AKP party offers a strong model for just
that, a modern Islamist party and what I seek to
discover is whether or not the stage is set for the
Muslim Brotherhood to adopt that model and
move their country forward in a way deemed
appropriate by the western world.
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