The first chapter “Investment Patterns in Singapore’s Central Provident Fund System” investigates how plan participants in a national defined contribution system invest their pension accumulations. I find that only a small fraction of participants elects to invest in outside investment...

This paper investigates the effect of the introduction of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on the liquidity of individual stocks. Prior analytical studies suggest that uninformed investors strictly prefer trading ETFs to trading individual stocks in order to avoid trading against informed investors....

Over the last two decades, bank credit has evolved from the traditional relationship banking model to an originate-to-distribute model where banks can originate loans, earn their fee, and then sell them off to investors who desire such exposures. We show that the borrowers whose loans are sold...

This paper formulates and estimates a dynamic model of labor supply, occupational sorting, human capital accumulation and discrimination to explain the narrowing gender earnings gap from 1968 to 1993. The paper proves the model is identified and develops a three-step estimation technique....

Theoretical research argues that convertible bonds mitigate the contracting costs of moral hazard, adverseselection, and financial distress. Using firm-specific and macroeconomic factors of the contracting costs,we examine the extent to which they impact the likelihood of issuance and the...

We analyze whether fluctuation in economy-wide factors cause time-series variation in thecontracting costs of moral hazard, adverse selection, and financial distress, and so create windows ofopportunity for firms to issue debt. Using the announcement period abnormal returns as one measure of...

Obtaining health insurance through an employer pools risk, but may lead to moral hazard, where employees with more coverage seek care valued below cost, and adverse selection, where the unhealthy choose more generous plans, driving up premiums. In the first essay, I model the decision to choose...

The average investor reaction is neutral to primary offerings by firms with managerial incentives closely tied to the shareholder value. Investors react negatively (1) when there are insufficient managerial ownership stakes to deter misuse of SEO proceeds and (2) when there are negative signals...

This paper characterizes a key feature of the classic socialist economy and state-owned enterprise, namely that of missing markets in labor quality. Under the socialist regime in which students and workers were assigned to work units, the rights of managers to monitor and reward workers were...

Theoretical research argues that convertible bonds mitigate the contracting costs of moral hazard, adverse selection, and financial distress. Using firm-specific and macroeconomic factors of the contracting costs, we examine the extent to which they impact the likelihood of issuance and the...