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Iliev, Peter. "Essays in economics and finance." View abstract/electronic edition; access limited to Brown University users, 2008. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3318330.
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Jiang, Chuanliang. "Three Essays In Finance Economics." Thesis, Boston College, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/3178.
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Thesis advisor: Zhijie XiaoThis dissertation contains three essays. It provides an application of quantile regression in Financial Economics. The first essay investigates whether tail dependence makes a difference in the estimation of systemic risk. This chapter develops a common framework based on a copula model to estimate several popular return-based systemic risk measures: Delta Conditional Value at Risk (ΔCoVaR) and its modification; and Marginal Expected Shortfall (MES) and its extension, systemic risk measure (SRISK). By eliminating the discrepancy of the marginal distribution, copula models provide the flexibility to concentrate only on the effects of dependence structure on the systemic risk measure. We estimate the systemic risk contributions of four financial industries consisting of a large number of institutions for the sample period from January 2000 to December 2010. First, we found that the linear quantile regression estimation of ΔCoVaR, proposed by Adrian and Brunnermeier (AB hereafter) (2011), is inadequate to completely capture the non-linear contagion tail effect, which tends to underestimate systemic risk in the presence of lower tail dependence. Second, ΔCoVaR originally proposed by AB (2011) is in conflict with dependence measures. By comparison, the modified version of ΔCoVaR put forward by Girardi et al. (2011) and MES, proposed by Acharya et al. (2010), are more consistent with dependence measures, which conforms with the widely held notion that stronger dependence strength results in higher systemic risk. Third, the modified ΔCoVaR is observed to have a strong correlation with tail dependence. In contrast, MES is found to have a strong empirical relationship with firms' conditional CAPM beta. SRISK, however, provides further connection with firms' level characteristics by accounting for information on market capitalization and liability. This stylized fact seems to imply that ΔCoVaR is more in line with the ``too interconnected to fail" paradigm, while SRISK is more related to the ``too big to fail" paradigm. In contrast, MES offers a compromise between these two paradigms. The second essay proposes a quantile regression approach to stock return prediction. I show that incorporating distributional information together with combining model information can produce a superior forecast for the conditional mean as well as the entire distribution of future equity premium, which significantly outperforms the forecast that utilizes either source of information alone. Meanwhile, the order of combination strategies appears to make a difference in the efficiency of pooling both distributional information and model information. It turns out that aggregating distributional information in the first step, followed by combining model information in the second step is more advantageous in return forecast than the alternative combination strategies which reverse the order of combination strategy. Furthermore, the forecast based on LASSO model selection can be significantly improved as well if the distributional information is further incorporated. In other word, aggregating distributional information via combining multiple quantiles estimators contributes to the improvement of forecasts obtained either from model combination or model selection. This paper not only investigates the forecast of conditional mean, but also studies the forecast of the whole distribution of future stock returns. The approaches of quantile combination together with either model combination or model selection turn out to deliver statistically and economically significant out-of-sample forecasts relative to a historical average benchmark. The third essay proposes a quantile-based approach to efficiently estimate the conditional beta coefficient without assuming a parametric structure on the distribution of data generating process. Multiple quantiles estimates are combined in a weighting scheme to utilize distributional information across different quantile of the distribution. Monte Carlo simulation demonstrated that combining multiple quantile estimates can substantially improve the estimation efficiency for beta risk estimates in the absence of Gaussian distribution. The robustness of quantile-based beta estimates are pronounced during financial crisis when the distribution of stock returns deviates most from normality. I also explored the performance of different beta estimators in an application of portfolio management analysis and found that beta estimates from the proposed quantile combination approaches are superior to the OLS estimates in constructing Global Minimum Variance Portfolio, which generates lower variance of portfolio but does not come at the expense of persistent lower returns
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013
Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: Economics
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Park, Andreas. "Essays in economics and finance." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.615762.
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Cerny, Ales. "Arbitrage in monetary economics and finance." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.322441.
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Ductor, Gómez Lorenzo. "Essays on network economics and finance." Doctoral thesis, Universidad de Alicante, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10045/24822.
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Esta Tesis Doctoral está compuesta de dos partes bien diferenciadas. La primera parte consta de dos capítulos que contribuyen a la literatura empírica de las redes sociales, una rama emergente en la economía moderna. Las interacciones sociales -representadas en redes o grafos- están presentes prácticamente en toda actividad económica. Consecuentemente, la evaluación de determinadas políticas económicas debería realizarse teniendo en cuenta el impacto de estas interacciones tanto en las acciones de los individuos como en el resultado económico. El estudio de las redes sociales en economía ha ido adquiriendo una gran importancia desde el ensayo de Granovetter (1985). Desde entonces se ha aplicado la teoría de redes sociales para analizar numerosos temas económicos como, por ejemlo: el desempleo y la desigualdad salarial (Calvo-Armengol y Jackson, 2004), la difusión del conocimiento y la innovación (Bala y Goyal, 1998) o la provisión de bienes públicos locales (Bramoullé y Kranton, 2007), entre muchos otros. Véase Goyal (2011) para un resumen de la literatura teórica y empírica de las redes sociales en la economía y Jackson (2008) para una síntesis de los modelos y técnicas empleadas para analizar las redes sociales. La primera parte de la presente Tesis se centra en las posibles externalidades inherentes en las redes de coautores académicos. La comprensión de estas potenciales externalidades presentes en la colaboración científica es de vital importancia para la evaluación de las políticas económicas cuyo objetivo son promover a colaboración intelectual. Dichas políticas se han implementado presuponiendo una relación positiva entre la colaboración científica y la productividad. El primer capítulo contrasta rigurosamente el impacto de la coautoría en la productividad de los autores académicos, utilizando como medida de productividad la calidad de la revista donde se ha publicado el artículo, su longitud y el número de artículos publicados en un determinado periodo. La relación causal entre la coautoría y la productividad académica es identificada explotando información de la red de coautores del autor en el pasado. En el segundo capítulo, en colaboración con Marcel Fachamps, Sanjeev Goyal y Marco van der Leij, se evalúa el poder informativo de la red de coautores de un autor para predecir el rendimiento del individuo. Los resultados sugieren que los reclutadores se beneficiarían de obtener información sobre la red de coautores, siendo el factor más informativo la productividad de los coautores de un autor. La segunda parte de la Tesis se centra en el estudio de los potenciales factores causantes de las crisis financieras. En particular, el tercer capítulo coautorado con Daryna Grechyna analiza el impacto del exceso del desarrollo financiero, definido como el diferencial entre la tasa de crecimiento del sector financiero e industrial, en el crecimiento económico. La existencia del exceso financiero es justificada bajo la teoría del "rebasamiento de la información" (informational overshooting). Demostramos que para un crecimiento económico sostenible, el crecimiento equilibriado en ambos sectores, financiero y productivo, es requerido. Cuando el desarrollo financiero excede al desarrollo industrial en un 4.5% (medidos en términos de tasas de crecimiento); los recursos invertidos en la producción sobrepasarán la capacidad productiva de la economía, dando lugar a una "crisis financiera".
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Ramalho, Rita Maria 1975. "Essays in development economics and finance." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/17630.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2003.Includes bibliographical references.
This thesis is a collection of three essays on development economics and finance. The first chapter studies the 1992 presidential impeachment in Brazil to evaluate the impact of an anti-corruption drive on politically connected companies. I identify two types of firms: companies owned by friends and relatives of the impeached president ('family-connected') and firms proven to be connected to him in a parliamentary investigation ('other-connected'). Using an event study procedure, I establish that family-connected firms have on average negative daily abnormal returns of 2 to 9 percentage points when damaging information about the president is released. However, the 'other-connected' companies do not experience a decline in their stock market valuation during the impeachment. Furthermore, the stock market decline experienced by 'family connected' companies was reversed entirely within a year. The impeachment had limited success in reducing corruption. The second chapter evaluates the effects on multinational firms of the OECD "Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions". I compare the balance sheet performance of foreign companies in 24 developing host countries whose source countries have implemented the convention with the performance of firms whose source countries have not yet implemented it. I find that the OECD convention had a negative impact on profit and sales growth of multinational companies. This effect is amplified in countries with less efficient bureaucracies. In economies where bribery is more valuable to firms, the OECD convention has a larger negative impact on multinational firms. The third chapter studies in detail the distribution of one type of financial market participant: mutual funds. The essay documents that their size follows a regularity observed in several other area of economics, Zipf's law: the number of funds with size greater than x is proportional to 1/x. This chapter extends previous theories of random growth to explain why this is the case: Zipf's law arises when mutual funds grow at the highest speed allowed by constraints in the system, something we call a "maximum growth principle." We investigate empirically the key features of the theory, and show that they are validated by the data.
by Rita Maria Ramalho.
Ph.D.
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Rappoport, Veronica E. (Veronica Eva). "Essays on international finance and economics." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/33829.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (p. 119-123).
The first essay explains why credit contracts in developing countries are often denominated in foreign currencies, even after many of these economies succeeded in controlling inflation. I propose a new interpretation based on the demand for insurance against real aggregate shocks. The fact that devaluations occur more frequently in adverse states of the world provides a motive for holding dollar assets when the risk of recession is the main source of volatility in consumption. The model predicts persistence in the degree of "dollarization" in economies with low inflationary risk. The second essay looks at how the government's lack of commitment technology affects the capacity of resident agents to optimally diversify risk. I find that government's moral hazard introduces a trade-off between pooling idiosyncratic risk and diversifying aggregate country uncertainty. As a result, local agents face excessive consumption risk. This paper also explores how institutions can be designed as to overcome this moral hazard problem. The third essay proposes an explanation for the variation across countries in the quality of the institutions governing the financial. The explanation based on the proportion of local investors participating in the domestic financial sector.
(cont.) I find that the participation of local investors in the financial market and, correspondingly, the resulting institutions vary according to wealth distribution and the size of capital inflows.
by Veronica E. Rappoport.
Ph.D.
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Wuthisatian, Phuvadon. "Two Essays in Economics and Finance." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2018. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2501.
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This dissertation contains two essays. The first essay investigates the measure of FX liquidity and determinants of the change in FX liquidity. Using 20 cross currency exchange rates over spanning period of 1999 to 2016, funding constraints and global risks are responsible for the main drivers of changing in FX liquidity. The magnitudes of both G7 and emerging volatility index are offsetting each other in all the regression models indicating that FX investors take diversification trading strategies to diversify their portfolios. The financial crisis provides an evidence that the more financial constraint issues contribute to the change in FX market illiquidity more than non-financial crisis period. Extending to liquidity predictability, I find, however, that the lag of market FX liquidity is responsible for the change in FX liquidity than any other explanatory variables
My second essay investigates the momentum returns of U.S. equities by presenting comprehensive approaches. Traditionally, momentum portfolios are constructed by ranking based on excess returns. Using this sorting technique, I confirm that there is a presence of momentum returns in U.S. equities for all of the 48 industries. The results also indicate that the portfolios that are sorted by idiosyncratic volatility as well as by diversification strategy cannot achieve the highest returns as for sorting based on excess returns. Further, I examine the momentum portfolio predictability using the inverse conditional volatility proposed by Moreira and Muir (2017), and show that the momentum returns are affected by the size of liquidity and the risk factors rather than by the economic variables.
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Howell, Sabrina T. "Essays in Energy Economics and Entrepreneurial Finance." Thesis, Harvard University, 2015. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:17467337.
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When does government intervention successfully correct perceived market failures? What effects do such interventions have on firm decisions? These questions are especially vital to the energy sector, which features large negative externalities, volatile commodity prices, and intensive regulation. My dissertation examines energy policies in three otherwise disparate contexts: a U.S. national research and development (R&D) subsidy intended to expedite clean energy technology deployment; a U.S. state-level oil price risk management policy targeting highway paving firms; and a Chinese fuel economy standard aimed at reducing oil consumption and hastening technology adoption among Chinese automakers. Each analysis evaluates the public policy and uses it to glean insight into firm financial constraints and innovation investment. Together, the three chapters contribute to the literatures on entrepreneurial finance, corporate risk management, innovation, and industrial policy.
Motivating the first paper is the observation that governments regularly subsidize new ventures to spur innovation, often in the form of R&D grants. I examine the effects of such grants in the first large-sample, quasi-experimental evaluation of R&D subsidies. I implement a regression discontinuity design using data on ranked applicants to the Small Business Innovation Research grant program at the U.S. Department of Energy. An award approximately doubles the probability that a firm receives subsequent venture capital and has large, positive impacts on patenting and the likelihood of achieving revenue. The effects are stronger for more financially constrained firms. In the second part of the paper, I use a signal extraction model to identify why grants lead to future funding. The evidence is inconsistent with a certification effect, where the award contains information about firm quality. Instead, the grant money itself is valuable, possibly because it funds proof-of-concept work that reduces investor uncertainty about the technology.
The second chapter examines how firms manage oil price risk when oil is an important input cost. Despite a rich theoretical literature, there is little empirical evidence about risk management heterogeneity across firm types. I evaluate a policy that shifts oil price risk in highway procurement
from the private sector to the government, reducing the cost of hedging to zero. In a triple-differences design using data from Kansas and Iowa, I show that firms value hedging oil price risk between the auction and commencement of work. Consistent with the prediction that hedging is more valuable for financially constrained firms, I find higher risk premiums in private vis-à-vis public firms and in smaller vis-à-vis larger firms. I also find that family ownership and a lack of diversification are associated with higher risk premiums. Competition is highly imperfect in this industry. Monopoly power in product markets, together with market frictions in derivative hedging, may limit the pass- through of risk to financial markets, and thus prevent efficient allocation of risk.
I turn to China - a very different economic setting - in the third chapter. Technology absorption is critical to emerging market growth. To study this process I exploit fuel economy standards, which compel automakers to either acquire fuel efficiency technology or reduce vehicle quality. With novel, unique data on the Chinese auto market between 1999 and 2012, I evaluate the effect of China’s 2009 fuel economy standards on firms’ vehicle characteristic choices. Through differences-in-differences and triple differences designs, I show that Chinese firms responded to the new policy by manufacturing less powerful, cheaper, and lighter vehicles. Foreign firms manufacturing for the Chinese market, conversely, continued on their prior path. For example, domestic firms reduced model torque and price by 12% and 13% of their respective means relative to foreign firms. Private Chinese firms outperformed state-owned firms and were less affected by the standards, but Chinese firms in joint ventures with foreign firms suffered the largest negative effect regardless of ownership. My evidence suggests that fuel economy standards and joint venture mandates - both intended to increase technology transfer - have instead retarded Chinese firms’ advancement up the automotive manufacturing quality ladder.Political Economy and Government
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Naritomi, Joana. "Essays in Public Finance and Development Economics." Thesis, Harvard University, 2014. http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:11504.
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This dissertation comprises three chapters. The first chapter investigates whether consumers can help governments improve firm compliance with the Value Added Tax. It exploits quasi-experimental variation from a government program from Sao Paulo, Brazil that created monetary rewards for consumers to ask for receipts. To assess how incentives to consumers can be effective despite potential collusion opportunities, I construct datasets for 1 million firms, 40 million consumers, and 2.7 billion receipts. I estimate that revenue reported in retail increased by at least 22% over four years. The estimated compliance effect is stronger for sectors with a high volume of transactions and small receipt values, consistent with a model in which there are fixed costs to negotiate collusive deals to avoid issuing receipts. Furthermore, the effect has an inverted-U shape with respect to firm size. This result is consistent with a model of higher baseline compliance among larger firms, and in which shifts in audit probability from consumer monitoring increase in firm size. I find no effects on exit rates or formal employment decisions.
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Zabel, Michael. "Essays in monetary economics and international finance." Diss., Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, 2014. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:19-169977.
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Liang, Che-Yuan. "Essays in political economics and public finance /." Uppsala : Department of Economics, Uppsala University, 2008. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-9340.
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Ananat, Elizabeth Oltmans. "Essays in public finance and labor economics." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/34508.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2006.Includes bibliographical references.
This thesis examines three questions of causality relevant to public finance and labor economics: the effect of racial segregation on city characteristics, the effect of divorce on women's economic outcomes, and the effect of abortion legalization on completed fertility. Chapter one examines the effect of segregation on cities. There is a strikingly negative city-level correlation between residential racial segregation and population outcomes -- particularly for black residents -- but it is widely recognized that this correlation may not be causal. This chapter provides a novel test of the causal relationship between segregation and population outcomes by exploiting the arrangements of railroad tracks in the 19th century to isolate plausibly exogenous variation in a city's susceptibility to segregation. I show that, conditional on miles of railroad track laid, the extent to which track configurations physically subdivided cities strongly predicts the level of segregation that ensued after the Great Migration of African-Americans to northern and western cities in the 20th century. Prior to the Great Migration, however, track configurations were uncorrelated with racial concentration, income, education and population, indicating that reverse causality is unlikely.
(cont.) Instrumental variables estimates find that segregation leads to negative characteristics for blacks and high-skilled whites, but positive characteristics for low-skilled whites. Segregation could generate these effects either by affecting human capital acquisition of residents of different races and skill groups ('production') or by inducing sorting of race and skill groups into different cities ('selection'). I develop a model to distinguish between production and selection effects. The findings are most consistent with the view that more segregated cities produce better outcomes for low-skilled whites and that more segregated cities are in less demand among both blacks and whites, implying that Americans on average value integration. Chapter two, coauthored with Guy Michaels, examines the effect of divorce on women's economic outcomes. Having a female firstborn child significantly increases the probability that a woman's first marriage breaks up. We exploit this exogenous variation to measure the effect of marital breakup on women's economic outcomes. We find evidence that divorce has little effect on a woman's average household income, but significantly increases the probability that her household will be in the lowest income quartile.
(cont.) While women partially offset the loss of spousal earnings with child support, welfare, combining households, and substantially increasing their labor supply, divorce significantly increases the odds of household poverty on net. Chapter three, coauthored with Jonathan Gruber and Phillip B. Levine, examines the effect of abortion legalization on completed fertility. Previous research has convincingly shown that abortion legalization in the early 1970s led to a significant drop in fertility at that time. But this decline may have either represented a delay in births from a point where they were "unintended" to a point where they were "intended," or they may have represented a permanent reduction in fertility. We combine data from the 1970 U.S. Census and microdata from 1968 to 1999 Vital Statistics records to calculate lifetime fertility of women in the 1930s through 1960s birth cohorts. We examine whether those women who were born in early legalizing states and who passed through the early 1970s in their peak childbearing years had differential lifetime fertility patterns compared to women born in other states and in different birth cohorts.
(cont.) We consider the impact of abortion legalization on both the number of children ever born as well as the distribution of number of children ever born. Our results indicate that much of the reduction in fertility at the time abortion was legalized was permanent in that women did not have more subsequent births as a result. We also find that this result is largely attributable to an increase in the number of women who remained childless throughout their fertile years.
by Elizabeth Oltmans Anant.
Ph.D.
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Mousavi, Mohammad. "Behavioral economics and its applications in finance." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2014. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/365331/.
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Traditional theories in economics state that people make their decisions in order to maximize their utility function and all the relevant constraints and preferences are included and weighted appropriately. In other words, in standard models, it is usually assumed that decision makers are fully rational. However, some studies in behavioral economics and finance suggest that individuals deviate from standard models. Behavioral economic models try to make standard models more realistic by modifying these assumptions. This thesis focuses on some applications of behavioral economics in three chapters. Chapter 1 focuses on individuals’ deviations from standard preferences. Based on standard models, individuals have the same preferences about future plans at different points in time and the discounting factor between any two time periods is independent of when utility is evaluated. However, robust laboratory experiments show choice reversal behavior in humans and animals. The aim of chapter 1 is to find an approach for measuring the decision makers’ awareness of choice reversal by analyzing demand for commitment. We use the data from an experimental study by Casari (2009) to measure the awareness of the selfcontrol problem. Also, the welfare implications of introducing a commitment device are studied in this chapter. The results show that decision makers are partially aware of their self-control problems. Moreover, introducing a costless commitment device can increase the total welfare of the studied population. This increase depends on individuals’ awareness of future choice reversal. The aim of chapter 2 is to analyze stock price movements as a result of fundamental or technical shocks under a heterogeneous agents model (HAM). In this study, it is assumed that the market involves heterogeneous agents that have different rules for trading and that prices are endogenously determined through interactions between these agents. I use the numerical simulation method to examine changes in the prices as the result of fundamental shocks. The result of this chapter indicates that increasing heterogeneity in technical trading strategies could lead to more price oscillations, which is consistent with the excess volatility in stock prices. The aim of chapter 3 is to predict stock price movements under a new HAM. I use the HAM framework proposed in the previous chapter. The value added by this chapter is estimating stock prices in a heterogeneous agent environment where chartists use different moving average trading strategies. I use monthly data from S&P 500 from 1990 until 2012 and discuss the forecasting ability of the model. The results of this chapter show that the presented model has a better one-step ahead, out-of-sample forecasting power compared with Boswijk et al. (2007) and Chiarella et al. (2012).
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Goujard, Antoine. "Essays on labor economics and public finance." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2012. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/459/.
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Public policies are an important determinant of the welfare of individuals and the society at large. Careful evaluation of the impact of public policies on welfare is therefore imperative for our understanding of the positive and normative implications for these institutions. The three chapters of this thesis examine the welfare consequences of specific economic and political institutions. Chapters 1 and 2 study two distinct channels through which social housing, a common feature of developed countries, may impact the neighborhoods in which they are built and the labor market outcomes of their low income tenants. Chapter 1 is concerned with the effect of the provision of social housing on neighboring private ats. It assesses the spillovers of low-income tenants and the change in the composition of the housing stock that are to be expected from the provision of new social housing units. In particular, it uses the direct conversion of private rental flats into social units without any accompanying rehabilitation to identify the impact of the inflow into the neighborhood of low income tenants, separately from the effects of social housing on the quality of the existing housing stock. Chapter 2 shows that social housing influences the location of low income tenants, and that the neighborhood of social housing units may improve the labor market outcomes of the poorest tenants. I observe the relocation of welfare recipients through the selection process of social housing applicants in the city of Paris from 2001 to 2007. The institutional process acts as a conditional randomization device across residential areas in Paris. The empirical estimates outline that neighborhoods have weak short- and medium-run effects on the economic self-sufficiency of poor households. Chapter 3, by contrast, focuses on how regional migrations of unemployed workers may affect their job search prospect in Europe. Using a longitudinal sample of French unemployment spells, the empirical estimates outline positive migration effects on transitions from unemployment to employment that depends on the previous duration of the unemployment spells.
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Manson, Steven James. "Essays in real estate finance and urban economics /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/7455.
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Sierra, Manuel Fernandez. "Essays in empirical labor economics and alternative finance." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:82a51730-8d5b-4c0a-a59f-cfb33fb5c242.
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This thesis consists of three independent chapters. The first two chapters are motivated by an empirical fact: most countries in Latin America experienced sharp changes in the wage structure since the mid-1990s, characterised by a substantial reduction of earnings inequality. At the same time that inequality was falling, the economies in the region experienced a rapid transformation of the age, education, and gender composition of their workforces. To what extent are these two phenomena interconnected? Did the wage structure changed as a consequence of the recomposition of labor supply? To answer these questions I propose two stylized models of the labor market, and estimate their main parameters using household survey data ranging more than two decades from Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico. I provide evidence that supply side trends are the major driver of the observed patterns in relative earnings. While relative demands favoured high-skilled workers during the 1990s, they shifted in favour of low-skilled workers during the 2000s. In the third chapter the subject matter changes altogether. Here I will focus on the workings of newly developed financial technologies used by entrepreneurs to raise capital for their businesses. In particular, the rapidly growing equity crowdfunding market is analysed. The chapter is motivated by the concerns of analysts and regulators that crowdfunding markets are vulnerable to investment herding, so that prior investors' decisions induce future investors to make similar choices. We develop a stylised model to answer the following question: how should herding be characterised in an equity crowdfunding setting where much of the inter-temporal information about a project is based on the amounts previously invested? The model generates predictions that we test using a unique investment-level dataset from one of the leading UK equity crowdfunding platforms. We provide evidence of a considerable level of immediate inter-temporal herding on an equity crowdfunding platform that, nevertheless, quickly dissipates.
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Cao, Mengyi. "Labor, Trade and Finance : Essays in Applied Economics." Doctoral thesis, Stockholms universitet, Nationalekonomiska institutionen, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-148536.
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Essay I: Credit Constraint and College Attendance. This paper shows that housing wealth alleviate credit constraints for potential college attendees by enabling home owners to extract equity from their property and invest it in the education. Using a large US individual-level survey dataset over the 1996-2011 period, I find that one standard deviation increases of housing prices translate into approximately 72,000 more students enrolled in college each year. My results stay significant when I use proxies for aggregate housing demand shocks and for the topological elasticity of housing supply to generate variation in home equity that is assumed to be orthogonal to decision of going to college. Essay II: Income Inequality and Trade. Does trade with unskilled labor-abundant countries reduce the relative wages of U.S. unskilled labor and consequently cause increased income inequality across industries and regions? Empirical studies in the 1990s found only a modest effect. In this paper, I re-consider the question by using the income inequality measures constructed from Current Population Survey (CPS) data and analyzing the effect of rising Chinese import competition between 1993 and 2007 on US local labor markets. I find that areas which are more exposed to China imports competition have larger changes in income inequality. In my main specification, a $1,000 exogenous decadal rise in a MSA's import exposure per worker leads to a 1.5% increase in the logistic Gini. This re-distributive effect is more profound among non-college educated workers in manufacturing sectors. Essay III: Employee as Creditor: Evidence from Defined Pension Plans. In this paper, I show the role of pension plans in shaping the firms' labor market decision. By employing the loan covenants violation and consequently transferring of control rights to creditors, I examine the strategic use of pension underfunding by firms and the resultant wage cuts. I also find that the wage concession is less severe for firms from industry with bigger bargaining power. This study sheds light on how firms strategically renegotiate labor contracts to extract concessions from labor. The evidence suggests that credit contracts between debt-holders and shareholders have spillover effects on non-financial stakeholders.
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Almeida, Mafalda Oliveira Martins Bastos de. "The Lotka-Volterra equations in finance and economics." Master's thesis, Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/14240.
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Mestrado em Mathematical FinanceAs equações de Lotka-Volterra, também conhecidas por equações de predador-presa, são um conjunto de equações diferencias não-lineares construídas para descrever a relação dinâmica entre espécies na natureza. No entanto, desde a sua publicação vários autores têm vindo a provar que estes sistemas dinâmicos têm diversas aplicações fora da área da biologia. Este trabalho tem como objetivo aprofundar as possíveis aplicações destas equações ao sistema bancário e à economia. Considerando o sistema bancário, estudamos três possíveis sistemas dinâmicos que podem descrever a relação entre o volume de depósitos e empréstimos num banco. Também apontamos as semelhanças entre um sistema bancário de três níveis e uma cadeia alimentar e estudamos a sua estabilidade. Olhando para as aplicações à economia, começamos por estudar o famoso modelo de Goodwin para ciclos de desemprego e crescimento dos ordenados. Para terminar, apresentamos um par de equações predador-presa que descrevem a relação entre bens capitais e bens de consumo, e concluímos que os ciclos económicos são endógenos, auto-sustentáveis e não-lineares.
The Lotka-Volterra equations, frequently referred to as predator-prey equations, are a set of non-linear differential equations constructed to describe the interaction dynamics between different species in nature. Yet, since their publication many authors have proved that the applications of these equations go way beyond mathematical biology. The present work focuses on their application to the banking system and to economics. Regarding the banking system, we study three dynamical systems that may describe the relationship between deposit and loan growth in a bank's balance sheet. In addition, we look at the resemblance between a three level ecological food chain and a three level banking system, and study its stability. As for the applications to economics, we study the famous Goodwin's model for the cyclic behavior of wages and employment. To finish our work we present a pair of predator-prey equations that model the dynamical relationship between consumption and capital goods, finding that economic cycles are endogenous, self-sustained and non-linear.
Mestrado em Mathematical Finance
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Haven, Emmanuel. "The use of fuzzy set theory in economics : applications in micro-economics and finance." Thesis, McGill University, 1995. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=23335.
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This paper attempts to show how fuzzy set theory can be used to weaken some of the stringent, rationality assumptions used in classical micro-economics. The objective of the paper is to see whether by introducing fuzziness we arrive to new results or just only generalizations of classical micro-economic results. We discover that the axiom of completeness is not needed anymore. Using fuzziness will also allow us to better explain the existing gap between delimiting possible choices and making the actual choice. We also introduce the notions of a fuzzy indifference set with a measurable area. The fuzzy utility surface is also discussed. The demand curve is now 'thick'.In the producer area, the classical hypothesis that maximum profit entails maximum utility of profit is now substantially weakened when introducing fuzziness.
Finally, we consider revealed preference within a fuzzy context.
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Sober, Tamara L. "Wise Choices? The Economics Discourse of a High School Economics and Personal Finance Course." VCU Scholars Compass, 2017. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/5033.
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Today’s high school students will face a host of economic problems such as the demise of the social safety net, mounting college student debt, and costly health care plans, as stated in the rationale for financial literacy provided by the Council for Economic Education’s National Standards for Financial Literacy. These problems are compounded by growing income and wealth inequality and the widespread influence of neoliberal ideology. Although one of the major goals of economics education is to teach students to make reasoned economic choices in their public and private lives and provide the skills to solve personal and social economic problems, little empirical research has been conducted on how these goals are addressed. Secondary economics education research has primarily focused on measuring students’ grasp of neoclassical economics while a separate body of literature provides theoretical critiques of that approach. This study responds to the gap presented by these separate camps by capturing the economics discourse of a high school economics and personal finance course in relation to the role of economic decision-making in a democracy, and the space to hold values discussions. Using case study methodology that included analysis of student and teacher interviews, classroom observations, the standards and official curriculum, lesson plans, and student-produced documents, the study provides deep, context-dependent knowledge about how the official curriculum is manifest in the classroom.
Findings reveal that the role of economic decision-making and values discussions were given very little space. The discourse was heavily focused on the acceptance of the science and mastery of technical knowledge about personal finance for the dual purposes of preparing students to succeed on the W!SE Financial Literacy Certification Test and preparing students to navigate and succeed in a fixed economic reality firmly committed to neoclassical economics. The role of economic decision-making was diminished by the foregrounding of financial literacy over economics, which served as a mechanism of power to send the silent message that economic circumstances (such as wealth inequality) change through individual choices and that economic and social phenomena can be understood and addressed through the application of technical approaches.
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Sober, Tamara Leigh. "Wise Choices? The Economics Discourse of a High School Economics and Personal Finance Course." Thesis, Virginia Commonwealth University, 2017. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10620921.
Full textAbstract:
Today’s high school students will face a host of economic problems such as the demise of the social safety net, mounting college student debt, and costly health care plans, as stated in the rationale for financial literacy provided by the Council for Economic Education’s National Standards for Financial Literacy. These problems are compounded by growing income and wealth inequality and the widespread influence of neoliberal ideology. Although one of the major goals of economics education is to teach students to make reasoned economic choices in their public and private lives and provide the skills to solve personal and social economic problems, little empirical research has been conducted on how these goals are addressed. Secondary economics education research has primarily focused on measuring students’ grasp of neoclassical economics while a separate body of literature provides theoretical critiques of that approach. This study responds to the gap presented by these separate camps by capturing the economics discourse of a high school economics and personal finance course in relation to the role of economic decision-making in a democracy, and the space to hold values discussions. Using case study methodology that included analysis of student and teacher interviews, classroom observations, the standards and official curriculum, lesson plans, and student-produced documents, the study provides deep, context-dependent knowledge about how the official curriculum is manifest in the classroom.
Findings reveal that the role of economic decision-making and values discussions were given very little space. The discourse was heavily focused on the acceptance of the science and mastery of technical knowledge about personal finance for the dual purposes of preparing students to succeed on the W!SE Financial Literacy Certification Test and preparing students to navigate and succeed in a fixed economic reality firmly committed to neoclassical economics. The role of economic decision-making was diminished by the foregrounding of financial literacy over economics, which served as a mechanism of power to send the silent message that economic circumstances (such as wealth inequality) change through individual choices and that economic and social phenomena can be understood and addressed through the application of technical approaches.
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Uribe, Gil Jorge Mario. "Essays on Risk and Uncertainty in Economics and Finance." Doctoral thesis, Universitat de Barcelona, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/463071.
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This thesis adds to the resolution of two problems in finance and economics: i) what is macro-financial uncertainty? : How to measure it? How is it different from risk? How important is it for the financial markets? And ii) what sort of asymmetries underlie financial risk and uncertainty propagation across the global financial markets? That is, how risk and uncertainty change according to factors such as market states or market participants.
In Chapter 2, which is entitled “Momentum Uncertainties”, I study the relationship between macroeconomic uncertainty and the abnormal returns of a momentum trading strategy in the stock market. I show that high levels of uncertainty in the economy impact negatively and significantly the returns of a portfolio of stocks that consist of buying past winners and selling past losers. High uncertainty reduces below zero the abnormal returns of momentum, extinguishes the Sharpe ratio of the momentum strategy, while increases the probability of momentum crashes both by increasing the skewness and the kurtosis of the momentum return distribution. Uncertainty acts as an economic regime that underlies abrupt changes over time of the returns generated by momentum strategies.
In Chapter 3, “Measuring Uncertainty in the Stock Market”, I propose a new index for measuring stock market uncertainty on a daily basis. The index considers the inherent differentiation between uncertainty and the common variations between the series. The second contribution of chapter 3 is to show how this financial uncertainty index can also serve as an indicator of macroeconomic uncertainty. Finally, I analyze the dynamic relationship between uncertainty and the series of consumption, interest rates, production and stock market prices, among others.
In chapter 4: “Uncertainty, Systemic Shocks and the Global Banking Sector: Has the Crisis Modified their Relationship?”, I explore the stability of systemic risk and uncertainty propagation among financial institutions in the global economy, and show that it has remained stable over the last decade. Additionally, I provide a new simple tool for measuring the resilience of financial institutions to these systemic shocks. My contribution to the literature in this essay is mainly the examination of the characteristics and stability of systemic risk and uncertainty, in relation to the dynamics of the banking sector stock returns. This sort of evidence is new to the literature and is supportive of past claims, made in the field of macroeconomics, which hold that during the global financial crisis the financial system may have faced stronger versions of traditional shocks rather than a new type of shock.
In chapter 5, “Currency downside risk, liquidity, and financial stability”, I analyze downside risk propagation across global currency markets and the ways in which it is related to liquidity. I make two primary contributions to the literature. First, I estimate tail-spillovers between currencies in the global FX market. This index is easy to build and does not require intraday data, which constitutes an important advantage. Second, I show that turnover is related to risk spillovers in global currency markets.
Chapter 6 is entitled “Spillovers from the United States to Latin American and G7 Stock Markets: A VAR-Quantile Analysis”. This essay contributes to the studies of contagion, market integration and cross-border spillovers during both regular and crisis episodes by carrying out a multivariate quantile analysis. I focus the analysis carried out in this chapter on Latin American stock markets, which have been characterized by a highly positive dynamic in recent decades, in terms of market capitalization and liquidity ratios, after a far-reaching process of market liberalization and reforms to pension funds across the continent during the 80s and 90s. I documented smaller dependences between the LA markets and the US market than those between the US and the developed economies, especially in the highest and lowest quantiles.En esta tesis se exploran formas óptimas de medir la incertidumbre macroeconómica y sus impactos sobre la actividad económica y los mercados financieros; así como la propagación internacional del riesgo en los mercados de acciones y de divisas. En el primer capítulo de la tesis se muestra que los retornos de las estrategias de inversión basadas en extrapolar los ganadores y perdedores recientes en el mercado, con el fin de decidir en que títulos invertir en el futuro (momentum), son susceptibles al nivel de incertidumbre registrado en la economía. Cuando la incertidumbre es alta, este tipo de inversiones se vuelven sumamente riesgosas y poco rentables, y por tanto no son recomendables. En el segundo capítulo de la tesis se propone un índice de incertidumbre construido con retornos diarios del mercados de acciones, el cual presenta mejores propiedades que otras alternativas en la literatura. Se utiliza este índice para mostrar las dinámicas macroeconómicas que siguen a un choque de incertidumbre, las cuales son examinadas a la luz de la literatura teórica al respecto. En el tercer capítulo de la tesis se examinan la propagación de la incertidumbre y el riesgo sistémico a las entidades bancarias globales, se estima un modelo de riesgo sistémico que permite mostrar como la propagación del riesgo ha permanecido estable durante las últimas décadas, y además, permite ofrecer nuevas listas de instituciones financieras vulnerables ante los choques de naturaleza sistémica en el mercado, que complementan las que actualmente existen en la literatura y en la práctica regulatoria. En el cuarto capítulo de la tesis se propone un indicador de estabilidad financiera para el mercado de divisas. Tal indicador se basa en el análisis de los cuantiles de depreciación del mercado de divisas, que por definición son de mayor interés para los reguladores, en cuanto está relacionados con las posibilidades de crisis cambiarias. Las asimetrías en la propagación de choques internaciones que se registran durante las depreciaciones (en comparación con los periodos de apreciación) se analizan a la luz del factor de liquidez en el mercado. En el quinto y último capítulo se analiza el efecto choques provenientes del mercado de acciones de Estados Unidos, sobre 6 mercados maduros y seis mercados emergentes de Latino América. Se muestra que la propagación depende del momento en el que se encuentre el mercado al momento de registrarse el choque (al alza o a la baja) y se proponen estrategias de diversificación internacional de portafolios de activos financieros.
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Humavindu, Michael N. "Essays on public finance and environmental economics in Namibia." Licentiate thesis, Umeå : Department of Economics, Umeå University, 2007. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-1163.
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Sabanis, Sotirios. "Applications of stochastic differential equations in economics and finance." Thesis, University of Strathclyde, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.366819.
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Kolar, Marek. "Three empirical essays in financial economics and international finance." Diss., Connect to online resource - MSU authorized users, 2008.
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Lai, Wenlong. "Wavelet theory and its applications in economics and finance." Thesis, University of Leicester, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/2381/32315.
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Wavelets orthogonally decompose data into different frequency components, and the temporal and frequency information of the data could be studied simultaneously. This analysis belongs within local nature analysis. Wavelets are therefore useful for managing time-varying characteristics found in most real-world time series and are an ideal tool for studying non-stationary or transient time series while avoiding the assumption of stationarity. Given the promising properties of wavelets, this thesis thoroughly discusses wavelet theory and adds three new applications of wavelets in economic and financial fields, providing new insights into three interesting phenomena. The second chapter introduces wavelet theory in detail and presents a thorough survey of the economic and financial applications of wavelets. In the third chapter, wavelets are applied in time series to extract business cycles or trend. They are useful for capturing the changing volatility of business cycles. The extracted business cycles and trend are linearly independent. We provide detailed comparisons with four alternative filters, including two of each detrending filters and bandpass filters. The result shows that wavelets are a good alternative filter for extracting business cycles or trend based on multiresolution wavelet analysis. The fourth chapter distinguishes contagion and interdependence. To achieve this purpose, we define contagion as a significant increase in short-run market commovement after a shock to one market. Following the application of wavelets to 27 global representative markets’ daily stock-return data series from 1996.1 to 1997.12, a multivariate GARCH model and a Granger-causality methodology are used on the results of wavelets to generate short-run pair-wise contemporaneous correlations and lead-lag relationships, respectively, both of which are involved in short-run relationships. The empirical evidence reveals no significant increase in interdependence during the financial crisis; contagion is just an illusion of interdependence. In addition, the evidence explains the phenomenon in which major negative events in global markets began to occur one month after the outbreak of the crisis. The view that contagion is regional is not supported. The fifth chapter studies how macroeconomic news announcements affect the U.S. stock market and how market participants’ responses to announcements vary over the business cycle. The arrival of scheduled macroeconomic announcements in the U.S. stock market leads to a two-stage adjustment process for prices and trading transactions. In a short first stage, the release of a news announcement induces a sharp and nearly instantaneous price change along with a rise in trading transactions. In a prolonged second stage, it causes significant and persistent increases in price volatility and trading transactions within about an hour. After allowing for different stages of the business cycle, we demonstrate that the release of a news announcement induces larger immediate price changes per interval in the expansion period, but more immediate price changes per interval in the contraction period, from the old equilibrium to the approximate new equilibrium. It costs smaller subsequent adjustments of stock prices along with a lower number of trading transactions across a shorter time in the contraction period, when the information contained in the news announcement is incorporated fully in stock prices. We use a static analysis to investigate the immediate effects of news announcements, as measured by the surprise in the news, on prices, and adopt a wavelet analysis to examine their eventual effects on prices. The evidence shows that only 6 out of 17 announcements have a significant immediate impact, but all announcements have an eventual impact over different time periods. The combination of the results of both analyses gives us the time-profile of each news announcement’s impact on stock prices, and shows that the impact is significant within about an hour, but is exhausted after a day.
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Bertomeu, Salvador. "Essays on the economics, politics and finance of infrastructure." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2021. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/316958.
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The main idea of this thesis is to study three different issues, economic, political, or financial, related to three different public infrastructure sectors, transport, water and sewerage, and electricity, by using three different methodological approaches. In the first chapter, I make creative use of a non-parametric technique traditionally used to measure the relative efficiency of a set of similar firms, data envelopment analysis, to identify the most likely objective, economic vs. political, behind a specific policy. In the second chapter I empirically investigate the effects of the increasing private financial ownership of the water and sewerage utilities in England and Wales on key outcome variables such as leverage levels and consumer bills. Finally, in the third chapter, I evaluate an equity-aimed policy introduced in the electricity sector in Spain in 2009 by measuring the effect of its introduction on the probability of a household of being energy poor.Chapter One – Unbundling political and economic rationality: a non-parametric approach tested on transport infrastructure in SpainThis paper suggests a simple quantitative method to assess the extent to which public investment decisions are dominated by political or economic motivations. The true motivation can be identified by modeling each policy goal as the focus of the optimization anchoring a data envelopment analysis of the efficiency of the observed implementation. In other words, we rank performance based on how far observed behavior is under each possible goal, and the goal for which the distance is smaller reveals the specific motivation of the investment or any policy decision for that matter. Traditionally, data envelopment analysis is used to measure the relative efficiency of a set of firms having a similar productive structure. In this case, each firm corresponds to a different policy year, the policy being the determinant of the investment made.The approach is tested on Spain’s land transport infrastructure policy since it is argued by many observers to be driven more by political than economic concerns, resulting in a mismatch between capacity investment and traffic demand. History has shown that when the source of financing has been private, the network has been developed in areas with high demand, i.e. the Northern and Mediterranean corridors. When the source has been public, the network has been developed following a radial pattern, converging from a to Madrid. The method clearly shows that public investments in land transport infrastructure have generally been more consistent with a political objective – the centralization of economic power – than with an economic objective – maximizing mobility –.Chapter Two – On the effects of the private financial ownership of regulated utilities: lessons from the UK water sectorThis paper analyzes the quantitative impact of the growing role of non-traditional financial actors in the financing structure and consumer pricing of regulated private utilities. The focus is on the water sector in England and Wales, where the effect of the firms’ corporate financing and ownership strategies on key outcome variables may have been underestimated. The sector was privatized in 1989, year in which the 10 regional monopolies became 10 water and sewerage companies, listed and publicly traded on UK Stock Exchanges. Since then, six of the ten have been de-listed, bought-out by private equity – investment and infrastructure funds. I make use of this variation in ownership to measure the effect on leverage levels and consumer bills.I develop a theoretical framework allowing me to derive two hypotheses: first, the buyout of a company increases its leverage level, and second, the buyout of a company increases the consumer bill through higher leverage levels. The empirical analysis is based on two sequential steps: a staggered difference-in-differences estimation shows that private equity buyouts increase the leverage levels of water utilities. An instrumental variable and two-stage least squares estimation then show that these higher leverage levels increase the average consumer bills of bought-out utilities more than if they had not been bought-out. The estimated impact of the private equity buyouts in the sector in England and Wales on the annual average consumer bill ranges from 13.5 to 32.6 GBP, for a sample average bill of about 427 GBP.Chapter Three – Understanding the effectiveness of the electricity social rate in reducing energy poverty in SpainThis paper analyzes the causal impact of the introduction of a social subsidy, the bono social de electricidad, in Spain's electricity market in 2009. The measure was introduced following the surge in energy poverty, increasing particularly after the financial crisis. Using data from the family budget survey from 2006 to 2017, we evaluate the social policy in its fight against energy poverty.We proceed in two steps. First, we use a difference-in-differences approach to measure such a causal impact and to analyze how the introduction of the measure directly affected eligible households. We find that the introduction of the subsidy has reduced the likelihood of energy poverty for the eligible households. Therefore, the bono social de electricidad has reached its equity objective of increasing affordability of electricity. The second step aims at understanding how specifically the introduction of the subsidy affects consumers. We find that, in reaction to lower effective prices, households do not increase their consumption of electricity, resulting in lower total electricity expenditure. We are therefore able to show that this policy did not induce a change in the consumption behavior and that the increased affordability entirely resulted in a decrease of expenditure in electricityDoctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion
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Xu, Sheng-Jun. "Essays in corporate finance, labour economics, and political economy." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/62401.
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This thesis presents a collection of essays on the intersection of finance, labour, and political economy. In Chapter 2, I exploit the 2003 reduction in the legislative cap for the H-1B visa program to show that a firm’s ability to hire skilled workers affects corporate investment. U.S. firms use the H-1B program to recruit foreign skilled (college-educated) workers, and I find that the reduction in the cap caused a significant decrease in investment for firms that were more reliant on H-1B workers as a source of skilled labour. The effect persists for several years, and is more pronounced for firms hiring workers in “industrial” occupations compared with firms hiring workers in “knowledge” occupations. The remaining essays examine how political incentives affect the policies of U.S. public-sector defined benefit pension plans. In Chapter 3, I present novel empirical evidence that “pension deficits”—the difference between liability accrual rates and asset accumulation rates—are systematically higher in gubernatorial election years. This electoral cycle pattern is explained by systematic dips in governmental contributions, and plans that exhibit larger electoral cycles tend to experience deteriorating funding levels and lower economic growth. Falsification tests, including analysis of private-sector DB pension plans and unexpected Governor transitions, indicate that non-political factors are unlikely to explain the documented electoral cycles. In Chapter 4, I present a theoretical model detailing how electoral incentives induce incumbent politicians to borrow from public pension plans in a short-sighted manner at the expense of taxpayers. Using a career concerns model framework, I show this conflict is rooted in (1) moral hazard stemming from protections that insulate employees from the costs of unfunded pension liabilities, and (2) information asymmetry stemming from the opacity of public pension plans. The model generates predictions consistent with empirical findings from Chapter 3. Specifically, electoral cycles in pension deficits are more pronounced for states that place the burden of funding unfunded pension liabilities on taxpayers, and for states with less transparent public pension systems. Furthermore, pension deficits are larger during elections that are more closely contested and during gubernatorial terms in which the incumbent remains eligible to run for re-election.Business, Sauder School of
Finance, Division of
Graduate
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Uddin, Gazi Salah. "Nonlinear and Nonparametric Dynamical Methods in Economics and Finance." Doctoral thesis, Linköpings universitet, Nationalekonomi, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-127340.
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The objectives of the thesis - which comprises six parts – can be summarized in i) implementing linear and nonlinear/nonparametric approaches toward detecting, measuring and analyzing the nature and directionality of causal relationships in financial markets, ii) elaborating on modern topics in financial investment analysis, iii) probing into the role of commodity futures in constructing optimal portfolios as well as iv) investigating growth dynamics via aggregated and disaggregated indices. The first paper named “Analyzing causal interactions between sectoral equity returns and commodity futures returns in the aftermath of the global financial crisis: The case of the US and EU equity returns”, aims to explore and compare the dependence and co-movement structure between commodity and various asset classes’ returns including the USA and EU stock markets via the use of linear and non-linear causality testing in a comparative context with the additional adjustment for cointegration and conditional heteroscedasticity. The findings provide important implications for optimal asset allocation and portfolio diversification with respect to various market conditions, namely both in “good” and “bad” (crisis) times. The second paper is entitled “On the time scale behaviour of Equity-Commodity links: Implications for Portfolio Management”, and has been published in the Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money (2016). The study is co-authored with Professors S. Bekiros, D.K. Nguyen, and B. Sjö. It develops a holistic framework for the investigation of the multi-horizon and intra-frequency causal directionalities of various asset classes, by means of multi-resolution analysis. The results verify the assumption that financial markets exhibit time-varying co-movement patterns, which are fundamentally important in a) generating profitable trading strategies according to different investor horizon expectations and b) decoding the financialization mechanism across various asset classes. The third paper entitled “Business Cycle (de) Synchronization in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis: Implications for the Euro Area”, was published at Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics and Econometrics (2015) and is co-authored with S. Bekiros, D.K Nguyen and B. Sjö. In this work, the scale-dependent time-varying (de)synchronization effects between the Eurozone and the broad Euro area business cycles are revealed, before and after the global financial crisis. The results, which point towards an increased observed comovement during the crisis period for the Euro area, could be catalytic for the introduction of a more efficient monetary policy by EU institutions and in particular by the European Central Bank. In the fourth paper, “Do financial stress and policy uncertainty have an impact on the energy and metals markets? A quantile regression approach”, which was published in the International Review of Economics and Finance (2016) and co-authored with J.C. Reboredo, the financial and policy uncertainty is investigated in relation to the price dynamics of energy and metal commodity futures’ markets. This work lead to the analysis of the asymmetric interrelationships with respect to changes in the perceptions of various risk measures, covering various periods, i.e., “normal” vs. “turbulent” such as upward or downward market episodes. The fifth paper, co-authored with P. Andreasson, S. Bekiros and D.K. Nguyen, is entitled “The impact of speculation and economic uncertainty on commodity markets”, and is published in the International Review of Financial Analysis (2016). This paper attempts a novel methodological approach to measuring speculation in commodity markets, in particular whether market speculation drives agricultural commodity prices or viceversa. The assessment of the empirical analysis demonstrates that agricultural prices are not affected by speculation. Finally, the sixth paper “Energy and Output Dynamics in Bangladesh”, co-authored with B.P. Paul, was published in Energy Economics (2011) and explores the relationship between energy utilization and economic growth in Bangladesh. Specifically, it deals with the important issue of whether energy consumption can be reduced without affecting economic growth while at the same time implicitly may lead to poverty reduction. The findings substantiate the fact that a) energy usage has become more efficient in recent times, as well as indicate that b) fluctuations in energy consumption did not have a significant impact on economic output.
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Bartz, Wiebke [Verfasser]. "Selected Essays on Small Business Economics and Finance / Wiebke Bartz." Frankfurt am Main : Frankfurt School of Finance & Management gGmbH, 2016. http://d-nb.info/1112149392/34.
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Panchenko, Valentyn. "Nonparametric methods in economics and finance: dependence, causality and prediction." [S.l. : Amsterdam : s.n.] ; Universiteit van Amsterdam [Host], 2006. http://dare.uva.nl/document/30844.
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Creal, Drew D. "Essays in sequential Monte Carlo methods for economics and finance /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/7444.
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Shi, Xianghang. "Applications of nonparametric and semiparametric methods in economics and finance." Diss., Online access via UMI:, 2009.
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Stehle, Simon [Verfasser]. "Three Essays in Real Estate Finance and Economics / Simon Stehle." Konstanz : KOPS Universität Konstanz, 2021. http://d-nb.info/1237221854/34.
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Kazak, Ekaterina [Verfasser]. "Three Essays on Robust Inference in Economics and Finance / Ekaterina Kazak." Konstanz : KOPS Universität Konstanz, 2019. http://d-nb.info/1191692736/34.
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Fredriksson, Anders. "Bureaucracy, Informality and Taxation : Essays in Development Economics and Public Finance." Doctoral thesis, Stockholm : Institute for international Economic Studies, Stockholm University, 2009. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-27256.
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Mukharlyamov, Vladimir. "Essays in Corporate Finance." Thesis, Harvard University, 2016. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33493350.
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This dissertation contains three chapters. In the first chapter, which is joint work with Paul Gompers and Steven Kaplan, we survey 79 private equity (PE) investors with combined assets under management of more than $750 billion about their practices in firm valuation, capital structure, governance, and value creation. Investors rely primarily on internal rates of return and multiples to evaluate investments. Their limited partners focus more on absolute performance as opposed to risk-adjusted returns. Capital structure choice is based equally on optimal trade-off and market timing considerations. PE investors anticipate adding value to portfolio companies, with a greater focus on increasing growth than on reducing costs. We also explore how the actions that PE managers say they take group into specific firm strategies and how those strategies are related to firm founder characteristics.
The second chapter, co-authored with Efraim Benmelech, Nittai Bergman, and Anna Milanez, identifies a new channel through which bankrupt firms impose negative externalities on non-bankrupt peers. The bankruptcy and liquidation of a retail chain weakens the economies of agglomeration in any given local area, reducing the attractiveness of retail centers for remaining stores leading to contagion of financial distress. We find that companies with greater geographic exposure to bankrupt retailers are more likely to close stores in affected areas. We further show that the effect of these externalities on non-bankrupt peers is higher when the affected stores are smaller and are operated by firms with poor financial health.
In the third chapter, using a novel dataset that allows me to capture the education and career trajectories of over 250,000 employees of 224 bank holding companies, I find that banks with shorter employee tenures and higher fractions of MBAs, top school graduates, and job jumpers performed more poorly during the Great Recession. This relationship is driven by the predisposition of these banks to take on greater risk. These same workforce measures also explain banks’ performance in the 1998 crisis. Taken together, my results suggest that investigating workforce measures could be a step towards quantifying components of risk culture or strategy that contribute to financial institutions’ vulnerability to crisis.Economics
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Mezzanotti, Filippo. "Essays in Corporate Finance." Thesis, Harvard University, 2016. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33493570.
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Macroeconomic and institutional shocks are important drivers of firms' activities. In chapter one, I examine the role of patent litigation in affecting companies’ innovation. Studying a landmark Supreme Court decision, I show that an improvement in patent enforcement positively affects the innovation activity of corporations. In chapter two, I study the role of private equity in period of large financial turmoil. In the context of the 2008 crisis in United Kingdom, I show that private equity backed companies experienced a lower decline in investment than a control group of similar companies that were not related to private equity. This effect is explained by the ability of private equity to relax the financing constraints of the portfolio companies when access to credit markets is limited. In chapter three, I explore the role of sovereign securities held by banks in the propagation of a financial shock to the economy. Using detailed loan level data matching firms and banks in Italy, the paper finds that the shock to banks' sovereign portfolio caused by the Greek bailout (2010) was passed on to firms through a contraction in credit. The effects of this shock were particularly disruptive for smaller companies.Business Economics
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Wu, Di. "Three Essays on the Credit Card Debt Puzzle, Income Falsification, and Numerical Approximation." The Ohio State University, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1563316071624495.
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Kathri, Achchige Kapila Devapriyaa. "A study of project finance in Asia with emphasis on private infrastructure project finance." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2003. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31244300.
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Bai, Hang. "Essays in Financial Economics." The Ohio State University, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1469752628.
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Salem, Goncalves Andrei. "Essays in Financial Economics." The Ohio State University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1524063057848301.
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Kirti, Divya. "Essays in Financial Economics." Thesis, Harvard University, 2016. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33493438.
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The chapters in this dissertation study the incidence of risk, risk taking, and the role of markets used to trade risk, with a focus on interest-rate risk. In Chapter 1, I ask why bank-dependent firms bear interest-rate risk. I argue that the short-term nature of banks’ own financing drives the extent to which bank-dependent firms bear interest-rate risk. In Chapter 2, I examine the implications of life insurers’ risk taking for theories of why financial institutions take risk. In Chapter 3, I argue that reference rates mitigate contractual incompleteness and facilitate risk sharing.Economics
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HUANG, Zhen. "A study of household finance in China." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2013. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/econ_etd/25.
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The emerging field of household finance, which studies the welfare benefits of financial markets for households and how effectively households use this market, is of significant importance for both academics and policy makers. However, studies in this new field remain scarce. Using data from a national representative survey that is unique for its combination of abundant household characteristics and heterogeneous individual preferences, attitudes and believes, and for its inclusion of investment behaviour and performances, this thesis pioneers a positive household finance study in developing countries by systematically investigating Chinese householders’ investments in the stock market. Moreover, this is the first study to regard the psychological concept of ‘trait anxiety’ (which refers to a person’s inherent propensity to feel anxious) as negatively associated with stock investment return performance.
This thesis comprises three main studies. In the first study, I investigate the reasons households participate in the stock market. I find that the evidence from China is systematically consistent with previous studies, which mainly focus on developed countries. That is, the poor and the less educated are less likely to hold equity in their final portfolios; and variables reflecting cost, constraint, preference and expectation play a statistically significant role in stock market participation. I also investigate the stock market participation problem from the new perspective of job satisfaction. Discontentment with one’s job, especially on job salary motivates stock investment activity. Satisfaction with hours of work and job stability boosts the probability of participation.
Individual investment performance plays an increasingly important role in household wealth accumulation and financial well-being. Then in the second study I examine the performance of the households that participate in the stock market. First, the evidence from China on this issue is also consistent with that from developed countries. Investors that are poor, less-educated and facing high information costs underperform significantly. Moreover, two so-called ‘investor mistakes’ also undermine stock investment outcomes in China. Second, I study investor performance form a new angle, preference for information screening with respect to resources, and find that investors who rely on their own analysis when making trading decisions earn more. These investors are usually wealthier, have more financial knowledge and are more likely to be male.
My third study further explores determinant of investment performance by identifying a more fundamental, intrinsic and stable heterogeneity that is embedded in human personality, i.e., trait anxiety, which reflects people’s innate propensity to feel anxious. I find that investors who are more prone to anxiety have significantly inferior investment performance in terms of stock market return rate, after controlling for many other relevant factors. This finding is robust across investment periods of both half a year and three years, and across regressions using different proxies for trait anxiety.
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Ta, Thanh Hai. "Two essays in international finance." Thesis, McGill University, 2012. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=106348.
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This thesis consists of two essays on the effects of barriers to international investment on risk premium and investors' portfolio holdings. In the first essay, we develop an international asset pricing model in a two-country framework where there are no restrictions in the domestic market (for example the U.S.). On the other hand, trading in the foreign market (for example an Emerging Market) encounters barriers to portfolio flows and short-sale constraints. The model suggests that freely traded assets (for example those traded in the U.S.) are priced with only a global risk premium, whereas assets that trade under capital flow and short sale restrictions (for example those traded in Emerging Markets) command a global risk premium, a conditional risk premium and a conditional discount. Further, the price of risk of the discount factor is a linear, increasing function of legal limits on holdings of securities that trade in the foreign market. This is the first, arbitrage-free international asset pricing model that studies both short-sale constraints and foreign ownership restrictions. The model uncovers a new pricing factor that provides a measure of economic benefit of relaxing equity ownership restrictions. We estimate a conditional version of the model for 18 major emerging markets over the period 1989-2007. We find evidence that global and both local risk factors are priced as well as time varying. The relationship between legal limits on holdings of foreign securities and the price of risk of the discount factor is statistically significant, suggesting economic gains from further liberalization of constraints on capital flows. The second essay evaluates the impact of investability on risk premium in emerging markets. Built upon the theoretical results of the first essay, we decompose the risk premium of non-investable and partially investable portfolios in emerging markets into three components: a global premium, a conditional local premium and a conditional local discount where the discount reflects the benefit of investability on risk premium. Using MGARCH-in-mean technique, we quantify the impact of investability on risk premium for 18 major emerging markets and find that investability contributes to a significant reduction in risk premium of both non-investable and partially investable portfolios. We also document that increase in investability is associated with higher benefit and a larger exposure to the global factor.Cette thèse se compose de deux essais sur les effets des obstacles à l'investissement international sur la prime de risque et les avoirs en portefeuille des investisseurs. Dans le premier essai, nous développons un modèle d'évaluation des actifs internationaux à deux pays où il n'existe aucune restriction sur le marché intérieur (par exemple les États-Unis). D'un autre côté, la négociation des actifs sur le marché étranger (par exemple un Marché Émergent) rencontre des obstacles aux investissements de portefeuille et des restrictions sur les ventes à découvert. Le modèle suggère que les actifs négociés librement (par exemple ceux négociés aux États-Unis) sont évalués uniquement par une prime de risque globale tandis que les actifs qui sont négociés avec l'existence des restrictions aux flux de capitaux et aux ventes à découvert (par exemple ceux négociés sur les Marchés Émergents) sont évalués par une prime de risque mondial, une prime de risque conditionnelle et un escompte conditionnel. De plus, le prix du risque du facteur d'escompte est une fonction linéaire croissante de restrictions légales sur les investissements étrangers en titres qui se négocient sur le marché étranger. Ceci est le premier modèle d'évaluation des actifs internationaux sans arbitrage qui étudie des restrictions sur les ventes à découvert et sur la propriété étrangère ensemble. Le modèle découvre un nouveau facteur d'évaluation qui fournit une mesure des avantages économiques du relâchement des restrictions sur la propriété étrangère des actions. Nous estimons une version conditionnelle du modèle pour 18 principaux marchés émergents sur la période 1989-2007. Nous trouvons la preuve que le facteur de risque mondial et deux facteurs de risque locaux sont évalués et variables dans le temps. La relation entre les restrictions légales sur la propriété étrangère des actions et le prix du risque du facteur d'escompte est statistiquement significative, suggérant que l'assouplissement des restrictions aux flux de capitaux produise des avantages économiques. Le deuxième essai évalue l'impact de l'investability sur la prime de risque dans les marchés émergents. En utilisant les résultats théoriques du premier essai, nous décomposons la prime de risque des portefeuilles non-investable et partiellement-investable dans les marchés émergents en trois composantes: une prime mondiale, une prime locale conditionnelle et un escompte local conditionnel où l'escompte reflète l'avantage de l'investability sur la prime de risque. En utilisant la technique de MGARCH-en-moyen, nous quantifions l'impact de l'investability sur la prime de risque pour 18 principaux marchés émergents et trouvons que l'investability représente une part économiquement significative de la prime de risque des portefeuilles non-investable et partiellement-investable. Nous trouvons également que l'augmentation de l'investability est associée à l'augmentation des avantages économiques et la plus grande exposition au facteur mondial.
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Davila-Ramirez, Eduardo. "Essays on Normative Macro-Finance." Thesis, Harvard University, 2014. http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:11417.
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Doshi, Hiteshkumar. "Three essays in financial economics." Thesis, McGill University, 2011. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=104665.
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This thesis comprises of three essays. The first essay examines the performance of a discrete time reduced form no-arbitrage model with observable covariates in explaining the term structure of credit spreads. The default intensity is specified as a quadratic function of the covariates, ensuring that the intensity function is always positive. The model yields economically plausible results in terms of fit, sign of coefficients and statistical significance. We demonstrate that macroeconomic and firm-specific information can explain most of the variation in credit default swap (CDS) spreads over time and across firms, even with a parsimonious specification. We also investigate the importance of statistical assumptions for analyzing the effects of observable covariates. Our results suggest that although swap spreads are highly auto-correlated, the analysis of spread levels is very informative, and it is often difficult to discern the impact of observable covariates from difference regressions. In the second essay, we estimate a reduced form no-arbitrage stochastic recovery model using information from senior and subordinate credit default swaps. The simultaneous use of information from senior and subordinate credit default swaps allows for improved identification of the dynamics of the term-structure of recovery rates. We find that, on average, the term structure of expected recovery rates is downward sloping. However, an inversion takes place during bad economic times, during which it is upward sloping. Thus, during such periods, the market expects higher recoveries conditional on short-term survival. The inversion of the recovery term structure during economic downturns is more pronounced for firms in distressed industries. Overall, we provide strong empirical evidence for the cyclical nature of recovery. The third essay examines how local and global political risks affect industry return volatility. Our central premise is that some industries are more sensitive to political events than others. We find that industries that are more dependent on trade, contract enforcement, and labor exhibit greater return volatility when local political risks are higher. Volatility is also larger for labor-intensive industries under leftist governments. Political uncertainty in countries of trading partners of trade-dependent industries similarly results in greater volatility. Volatility decomposition results indicate that while systematic volatility is associated with domestic political uncertainty, global political risks translate into larger idiosyncratic volatility.Cette thèse comporte trois essais. Le premier essai traite d'un modèle de forme réduite à temps discret et analyse sa capacité à expliquer la structure à terme des écarts de crédit. Les variables explicatives du modèle sont théoriquement motivées par un argument d'absence d'opportunité d'arbitrage (AOA). L'intensité de défaut y est une fonction quadratique des variables explicatives, ce qui assure la positivité. La variabilité expliquée, le signe des coefficients et la significativité statistique obtenus à l'aide de ce modèle sont économiquement vraisemblables. Nous démontrons que des données macroéconomiques et d'autres spécifiques à la firme peuvent expliquer une large part de la variation des écarts sur CDS à travers le temps et pour différentes firmes, le tout avec un modèle parcimonieux. Nous considérons aussi l'impact de certaines hypothèses statistiques sur l'analyse des variables explicatives. Nos résultats suggèrent que, malgré que les écarts de crédit soient fortement autocorrélés, le niveau des écarts est fort informatif; l'impact des variables explicatives est difficile à quantifier si on ne considère que les différences premières. Le deuxième essai porte sur l'estimation d'un modèle en forme réduite de recouvrement stochastique en AOA qui utilise l'information de CDS séniors et subordonnés. L'utilisation conjointe de ces données permet de mieux identifier la dynamique de la structure à terme des taux de recouvrement. En moyenne, la pente de la structure à terme ainsi obtenue est négative. Toutefois, lorsque les conditions économiques se détériorent, cette pente devient positive. Ainsi, durant ces périodes, le marché anticipe un meilleur recouvrement si une firme arrive à survivre à court terme. Cette inversion de la pente de la structure à terme est plus marquée pour les entreprises faisant partie d'un secteur d'activité en difficultés. En somme, nous démontrons clairement que le recouvrement a un caractère cyclique. Le troisième essai examine l'impact des risques politiques locaux et mondiaux sur la volatilité des rendements d'une industrie. Notre prémisse centrale est que certaines industries sont plus sensibles aux évènements politiques que d'autres. Nous démontrons que les industries qui dépendent plus fortement des échanges commerciaux, des contraintes contractuelles et de la main-d'œuvre présente des rendements plus volatiles lorsque les risques politiques locaux sont plus grands. L'incertitude politique à l'étranger, chez les partenaires commerciaux d'industries reposant fortement sur les échanges internationaux, se traduit aussi par une augmentation de la volatilité des rendements. En décomposant la volatilité, on constate que la composante systématique de la volatilité est associée avec l'incertitude politique locale, alors que la composante idiosyncratique dépend de l'incertitude à l'étranger.
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Kang, Long. "Three essays on financial econometrics and empirical finance." [Bloomington, Ind. ] : Indiana University, 2008. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3344579.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Economics, 2008.Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Oct 5, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-02, Section: A, page: 0642. Advisers: Pravin K. Trivedi; Konstantin Tyurin.
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Col, Burcin. "Three essays on international corporate finance." Thesis, McGill University, 2012. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=110527.
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This thesis consists of three essays on issues that affect valuation and capital allocation decisions of multinational companies (MNCs). The first essay explores the valuation consequences of tax avoidance using an international sample of cross-border mergers that involve tax haven targets and/or acquirers. Cross-border mergers with haven-based firms offer a refined setting to study the valuation implications of tax avoidance. Firms can achieve tax savings through these transactions in two ways: 1) selling to an acquirer based in a tax haven, hence making the newly created multinational a haven resident or 2) setting up a subsidiary in these locations by targeting a tax haven firm. Using the data on cross-border M&As for the period from 1989 to 2010, we find that the announcement returns to targets and acquirers of tax haven firms are lower relative to a control sample of non-tax motivated M&As. The evidence is consistent with the agency cost explanations, as changing a firm's tax home through a 100% acquisition is accompanied by a change in legal system and corporate governance. The adverse effects are less pronounced for firms that have stronger corporate governance practices at the firm - level. Our results therefore provide value evidence on the agency costs of tax-motivated M&As. In the second essay, we investigate two related issues. First, what is the valuation impact of state expropriation for cross-border mergers that involve targets from predatory states. Second, what is the effect of improved shareholder protection and transparency when the target is subject to significant expropriation risk. Using a sample of 902 cross-border acquisitions from 36 target countries during the period from 1989 to 2009, we find that targets, which operate under some degree of state expropriation risk, receive a significantly lower premium. The target shareholders are also not fully rewarded for the improvement in firm governance since the benefits of improvement are mitigated under predation. We thus provide evidence for twin-agency theory of Stulz (2005) through cross-border mergers. In the third essay we investigate how foreign risks affect the capital allocation decisions of the U.S. firms. We argue that international trade is a significant conduit of foreign political uncertainty into U.S. markets. We construct a measure of foreign political risk sensitivity; an index of political risks of trade partners or occurrence of national elections weighted by the relative export volumes of particular industries. We find that industries that export considerable shares of their output to countries with high political risk or countries that hold national elections in a given year experience suboptimal investment efficiency and lower performance.Cette thèse se comporte de trois essais portant sur les décisions relatives à l'allocation des capitaux dans les firmes multinationales ainsi que sur les problématiques se rapportant à leur évaluation. Le premier essai explore les conséquences de l'évasion fiscale en termes d'évaluations, et ceci en se basant sur un échantillon de données portant sur des opérations de fusions et acquisitions internationales impliquant des entreprises se trouvant dans des paradis fiscaux. En utilisant des données sur les fusions et acquisitions portant sur la période de 1989 à 2010, nous trouvons que les rendements autour de la date d'annonce pour les entreprises acquises ou acquéreuses se trouvant dans des paradis fiscaux sont relativement moins élevés en comparaison à ceux des entreprises fusionnant pour motifs autres que fiscaux. Ce résultat est en accord avec la notion des coûts d'agence, puisque le changement fiscal sera accompagné d'un changement du système judiciaire et des pratiques de gouvernance. Les résultats obtenus constituent une preuve de l'impact en termes d'évaluation des coûts d'agence dans les fusions et les acquisitions motivées par des avantages fiscaux. Dans le second essai nous étudions deux problématiques connexes. Tout d'abord, quel est l'impact d'expropriation par l'état, en termes d'évaluation, sur les fusions impliquant des entreprises se trouvant dans des pays prédateurs. Deuxièmement, quel est l'effet d'une amélioration de la protection des actionnaires et de la transparence lorsque l'entreprise acquise présente un risque élevé d'expropriation. En utilisant un échantillon de 902 acquisitions portant sur 36 pays durant la période de 1989 à 2009, nous trouvons que les entreprises acquises qui présentent un certain risque d'expropriation reçoivent une prime moins élevée. Les actionnaires de l'entreprise acquise ne sont pas non plus entièrement compensés pour l'amélioration de la gouvernance puisque les bénéfices de cette amélioration sont mitigés en présence de risque de prédation. Dans le troisième essai, nous étudions l'impact du risque international sur les décisions relatives à l'allocation des capitaux dans les entreprises américaines. Nous affirmons que le commerce international est conduit important d'incertitude des pays étrangers politique pour les marchés américains. Nous trouvons que les industries qui exportent une part importante de leurs produits dans des pays présentant un risque politique élevé ou des pays qui tiennent des élections nationales durant une année donnée, ont un investissement sous-optimal et une performance moins élevée.