This dissertation consists of a theory essay and an empirical essay that investigate a firm's decision to buy or sell corporate assets. It seeks to answer the following research questions: (1) why do firms choose to buy or sell assets? (2) what makes assets in an industry more likely to be...

This essay examines the impact of foreign portfolio investment on the financial constraints of small firms. Utilizing a dataset of over 195,000 firm-year observations across 53 countries, I examine the impact of foreign portfolio investment on capital issuance and firm growth across countries...

This dissertation consists of three essays. The first essay finds that small firms in poor quality legal environments (poor quality contract enforcement and property rights environments) are more financially constrained relative to small firms in better quality legal environments. Consequently,...

My dissertation consists of three essays on international capital flows. In the first essay, titled "Do small firms benefit more from foreign portfolio investment? Evidence from a Natural Experiment," I test whether an increase in the supply of foreign portfolio capital benefits small firms by...

My dissertation examines a board's decision to hire a star CEO and the implication of such decision on the new CEO compensation and firm performance. I develop a new methodology to identify a star CEO by analyzing the texts contained in 18,240 Wall Street Journal news articles. Unlike previous...

We present two game theoretic models on resource allocation in epidemic control and waiting time competition in service management. The first model considers the drug allocation problem when facing the outbreak of an international influenza pandemic. The drugs are for prophylactic use. Since...