This dissertation contains three essays concerning two broad areas, namely, optimal capital structure and risky assets modeling. In the first paper, we study corporate debt values, capital structure, and the term structure of interest rates in a unified framework. We employ numerical techniques...

This dissertation focuses on the heterogeneous production technologies in banking and finance within the context of efficiency-analyses.The first essay studies the cost efficiency of Turkish banking industry. Studies of bank efficiency tend to draw conclusions from pooled estimates, assuming...

Actual investment performance reflects the underlying strategy of the portfolio manager and the execution costs incurred in realizing those objectives. Execution costs, especially in illiquid markets, can dramatically reduce the notional return to an investment strategy. This paper examines the...