Graduation Year

2026

Date of Submission

12-2025

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Economics

Reader 1

Darren Filson

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2025 Anson L Bouchard

Abstract

To investigate the impact of data on business performance, I use a stock-market event study to analyze the impact of strategic data initiatives. During 1990-2024, 402 events are collected using a keyword search on Nexis Uni and classified into 3 different datasets. Dataset 1 is used to investigate the hypothesis of whether increased data-usage initiatives benefit stock performance. Dataset 2 is used to investigate the hypothesis of whether increased data privacy initiatives benefit stock performance. Dataset 3 combines both the first two and is used to investigate whether data-related announcements have any effect on stock performance. For all three hypotheses, the results are not statistically significant. All of the cumulative average abnormal returns at both the event and firm-level have a slight negative coefficient. The event-level results are the following. Hypothesis 1: -0.003 (p-value = 0.306); Hypothesis 2. -0.0019 (p-value = 0.703); Hypothesis 3: -0.0027 (p-value = 0.289). The firm-level results are the following. Hypothesis 1: -0.0036 (p-value = 0.359); Hypothesis 2: -0.00042 (p-value = 0.95); Hypothesis 3: -0.0033 (p-value = 0.389). Despite the overall insignificance, some individual events and firms are statistically significant, with there being both slight positive and negative coefficients. Individual event and firm-level analysis does not suggest clear insights into what differentiates events in significance and direction. Overall, I do not find evidence that data-related initiatives impact firm value.

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