Date of Conferral

2022

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Management

Advisor

Jean Gordon

Abstract

In 1999, Stephen Colt studied the 12 regional corporations formed under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA). Colt reviewed the financial data from 1973 to 1993 and found the regional corporations lost approximately $380 million in business operations. However, the regional corporations increased their revenue from $714 million in 1993 to $8.575 billion in 2014. No further study of those subsequent 20 years has been conducted, so a data set to see if Colt’s conclusions hold was created. This multivariate correlational study tested two theories on the regional corporations: the theory of the economic efficiency of lump-sum payments in promoting economic growth and the theory of interest. The research questions explored relationships between the non-windfall return on equity and the absolute and differential returns from the various sectors the corporations invested in and compared the value of the corporations from the discounted free cash flow to firm model to the value of investing the initial ANCSA cash in U.S. treasuries. This study utilized a feasible generalized least squares model and a one-sample t test on secondary data (the annual reports of the 12 corporations from 1994 to 2014). Using this approach, the business operations earned $3.4 billion, or approximately $3.8 billion more than during Colt’s 1999 study. The corporations’ value was placed at $6.9 billion, $3.8 billion more than the value derived from the ANCSA cash invested in U.S. treasuries. This study promotes positive social change by creating new knowledge and gives data for policymakers considering land claims legislation of the current outcomes of ANCSA.

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