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Student debt and its effects on economy
Student debt and its effects on economy
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- One example on how to define a good capstone project
First step: find the area of interest and then narrow down to a specific project topic.
Suppose Merger and Acquisition (M&A) is the area of interest you have for your project.
Now you have to think deeper and narrow down to a specific and small topic. Example:
Int’l M&A (not domestic, not vertical vs. horizontal MM, not reasons of M&A…) —Chinese corporates acquire oversea companies (not reverse, or other global M&A ) —Post MM performance (not bid price or process in acquiring foreign firms, financing
issues related to M&A, corporation culture integration or other subjects …).
Note at each point you can go many different directions to narrow down and be specific.
Now it looks like a good topic/title, The performance of Chinese company’s oversea
MM. First step done.
Second step: what story/hypothesis?
Following the topic above, some easy examples of story/hypothesis could be: short term
vs long term performance. Performance of state owned enterprise vs private company as
the acquirer, role of investment bankers in enhancing firm performance, reasons for the
enhancement or decline of performance after MM….
After this second step you can start a real project.
Third step: analyze.
Suppose you believe investment banker plays a crucial role and its active participation
signifies the future performance improvement, then you have to find theory to explain it,
to design a method to analyze, and to collect data to test and prove.
For example, examine whether institutional investors take an active role in the MM by
becoming a shareholder, providing loan or sitting in the board, based on agency theory.