Data on U.S. mergers and aquisitions from 1987 to 2006 indicate that firms with high market-to-book values (i.e., Tobin's Q) tend to merge with firms that have lower Q's, but that target Q's are on average higher than those of firms not involved in mergers at all. We capture this fact with a...

Van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures consist of six group III-V monolayers MX (M=Ga, In, X=P, As, Sb) have been systematically investigated via hybrid functional HSE06 based on DFT calculations in order to evaluate their utilities in potential solar cell materials. 24 different stacking...

Over the past two decades, China has been the worlds fastest-growing economy. My dissertation focuses on several important issues in Chinas recent development and reform:(1) Financial development and economic growth. It is widely recognized that financial sector reform is crucial to Chinas...

This study provides a detailed quantitative analysis of a transition to inflation targeting with a focus on the role of expectations. I investigate the impact of the Turkish central bank's inflation reduction programs on inflation in Turkey from 1996 to 2005. Over this period there was a...

This paper studies the effect of instrumental and institutional stabilization of exchange rate volatility on the integration of goods markets. Rather than using data on volume of trade, this paper employs a 3-dimensional panel of prices of 95 very disaggregated goods (e.g., light bulbs) in 83...

We build a model in which financial intermediaries provide insurance to households against a liquidity shock. Households can also invest directly on a financial market if they pay a cost. In equilibrium, the ability of intermediaries to share risk is constrained by the market. This can be...

Temporary price reductions or sales account for a small fraction of price quotes and a large fraction of items sold. Nevertheless, several recent macroeconomic studies have concluded that sales are not an important source of price flexibility. Using a large set of scanner data covering 31...

The dissertation studies the effect of trade liberalization in one sector on factor prices, employment, and average productivity of firms in the other sector (spillover effect) in a two-country, specific-factors model of international trade where the industry structure of the sector affected by...

We study the role of homophily in group formation. Using a unique dataset of MBA students, we observe homophily in ethnicity and gender increases the probability of forming teams by 25%. Homophily in education and past working experience increases the probability of forming teams by 17% and 11 %...

We study the role of diversity and performance in the entrepreneurial teams. We exploit a unique dataset of MBA students who participated in a required course to propose and start a real micro-business that allows us to examine horizontal diversity (i.e., within the team) as well as vertical...