Want to do a thesis for my MBA (finance) related to Investment .....Any topic suggested??

My background is insurance (and I don't have an MBA and no idea of what is acceptable for an MBA thesis), but my work crosses over with investment a fair bit so if it were me, maybe one of the following might kick off some ideas....

1. Why banks don't use more accurate pricing models than Black-Scholes?
(was a recent article in GARP magazine, but it seemed to just scratch the surface of this - there are better pricing models that take account of fat tails and so on when pricing, say, equity options, but the banks don't tend to use them)

2. Impact of Solvency 2 on insurance companies in Europe
(will lead to adoption of "prudent person" rules for insurers rather than quantitive limits in some countries like Germany. This may change portfolio investment across Europe for insurer's portfolios. Initial report arguing for this from the UK financial regulator, FSA)

3. Impact of Basle 2 - will the decision of regulators in the US to limit Basle 2 to the larger banks result in US banks being at a competitive disadvantage to European & Asian banks )from a European practitioner, hopefully yes - London increasing it's lead over New York even more would be great!)

4. Securitisations of insurance risk
(AXA, Swiss Re and so on have launched bonds with lower payments due if insurance risks materialise - not aware of any US institutions having launched any yet)

5. Hedging variable annuity portfolios
The US insurers are a bit ahead of European insurers and are delta hedging the embedded options in their variable annuity portfolios (Milliman's, a consultant in Chicago, does a lot of work in this area). If enough US insurers start delta hedging VA's, this might lead to some increase in systematic risk (that said, I practice in Europe so no idea whether this is even a plausible possibility!)

6. Whether Basle 2 / Solvency 2 with the emphasis on economic capital modelling will give a bigger advantage to larger financial institutions as they'll be able to demonstrate higher diversification benefits to regulators

How about the relationship between attraction and retention costs with human capital assets? There is some information at Vanderbilt/ The Work Institute/ Tom Mahan, Ph.D. that developed metrics for ROI in this specific area.

cost of money
future values
present value of money
future value of money

Islamic law forbids charging interest. Moslems eschew use of interest based valuations (discounts, present value, annuitization, etc.). However, some methods are used by them to lend money and benefit from it in a way that is acceptible under Sharia law. Mideast and Indonesian banks are now issuing bond like insturments. These are attracting international attention. Why not do your thesis on a financial comparison of these (non-interest) instruments and the interest bearing securities the West has been using? What return could an investor expect and how can that be compared to standard interest? I have an old MBA in finance.

Africa as an emerging market for international investors(case study of Nigeria telecommunication market growth 2000-2006)

discussion of NY and U.S. competitiveness in Capital Markets.

A comparison of hedge fund regulations worldwide.

FOr more suggestions, list your strenghts; i.e. are you very anaylitical and math savvy, or are you much more of a research/touchy feely type of person.

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