China has been experiencing a great transition from a socialist collective economy to a market economy since 1978. Before the transition started, the Communist Party had established a socialist collective system with very low levels of income and wealth inequality. With the deepening of the...

This dissertation studies hedge funds' characteristics, performance and risk, as well as their managerial incentives. In essay one, we find that similar to non-financial industries, there is a balanced allocation to business risk and financing risk in hedge funds. Empirically we find stylized...

To address the lack of attention to construct shift in IRT vertical scaling, a bifactor model is proposed to estimate the common dimension for all grades and the grade-specific dimensions. The bifactor model estimation accuracy is evaluated through a simulation study with manipulated factors of...

My thesis examines the joint hypotheses that firms set optimal levels for CEO incentives, and that firms and CEOs jointly correct deviations from these optimal levels through equity grants and CEO portfolio rebalancing. I investigate two equity-based CEO incentives, pay-for-performance...