Assignment Task

Instructions

You are required to carry out a firm-level analysis explaining firm-level outcomes based on secondary data available from the Orbis database, which can be accessed via the University’s online Library Service.

The aim is to investigate how various firm characteristics such as size, age and ownership (the independent variables) affect firm performance such as turnover, profitability and market capitalisation (the dependent variables).

You need to design an empirical (i.e. an evidence-based) methodology by extracting, preparing, presenting, describing, analysing and interpreting the data.

You should then provide a written report of the findings, including a discussion about how qualitative methods could be used to support or expand the research study.

• A one-page ‘executive summary’. In the summary, you can introduce the research topic, provide the main objectives, highlight the main findings, and preview the potential contributions to knowledge of your report
• A methodology section that includes the empirical model and a justification (possibly based on previous studies) for the choice of variables
• A description of the data and associated summary statistics. Summary statistics tables, graphs and correlation/regression analyses should all be created, reproduced in the report and explained
• A discussion about the results from the statistical analyses, e.g. which firm characteristics are significantly associated with firm performance, are there any new finding when you compare two groups of firms, are the results consistent when you use different variables?
• A discussion about how qualitative methods could be used to support or expand this research agenda, which methods would you apply, how would you go about the arrangements, why would you choose these methods, and what exactly would you hope to learn from them that you cannot find out from your quantitative data analysis?

The data should be analyzed using a variety of statistical techniques such as

• Graphs/figures (such as pie chart, histogram, scatterplot, etc.)
• Summary/descriptive statistics
• Preliminary data analysis
• Correlation and regression analysis

You need to provide a justification for the choice of firm dependent and independent variable and any other key constructs included in your analysis:

• A number of firm characteristics might influence the outcome variable, and you will need to provide a justification for the choice of variables included in your analysis.
• You need to include the analysis based on the whole firm sample plus any sub-sample analyses that you think might be useful.
• If you decide to compare two groups of firms, you need to show your workings and provide some justifications as to why you chose them. For example, if you want to compare foreign firms with domestic firms, you can describe the differences in firm characteristics between these two firm groups and discuss the existing literature about the differences between the two groups of firms.
• There is no guarantee that all or any of your statistical tests will reveal significant effects, but please note that marks are not awarded for obtaining significant results, only for carrying out the analyses properly and interpreting the results correctly.