After pressure from shareholder activists, proxy advisory firms, and the New York Stock Exchange, the Securities and Exchange Commission has eliminated uninstructed broker voting in director elections. We observe that average director approval rates remain high after the change in regulation,...

We estimate the Smets and Wouters (2007) model augmented with the Gertler and Karadi (2011) financial intermediation sector on US data by using real and financial observables. Given the framework of the estimated model, we address the question whether and how standard monetary policy should...

This thesis consists of an introductory chapter and three self-contained essays that apply insights from the microeconomic theory of corporate finance in a macroeconomic setting in order to explain and understand various market failures that were at the roots of the global financial crisis of...