We use Bayesian model averaging to analyze the sample evidence on industry return predictability within the U.S. stock market in the presence of model uncertainty. The posterior analysis shows the importance of inflation and earnings yield in predicting industry returns. The out-of-sample...

We present a numerical analysis of valuation models for employee stock options. In particular, we analyze the impact of the model on the resulting option prices and investigate the sensitivity of pricing differences between models with respect to changes in the parameters. We show that, for most...

We extend the EBIT-based dynamic capital structure model proposed by Goldstein, Ju and Leland (2001) to finite-maturity debt and multiple bond issues. The complete tax structure of Goldstein, Ju and Leland (2001) is maintained. In our setting, the usually available market data can be used for...

We analyze the impact of prior performance on the risk-taking behavior of mutual fund managers. We contribute to the existing literature by using different measures of risks, a larger data set, and an econometric approach capturing non-linear effects and assigning exact probabilities to the...

Using a complete sample of US equity options, we analyze patterns of implied volatility in the cross-section of equity options with respect to stock characteristics. We find that high-beta stocks, small stocks, stocks with a low-market-to-book ratio, and non-momentum stocks trade at higher...

The four risk factors controlling for the market, size, value, and momentum effect have become a state-of-the-art framework for various applications in financial markets research. However, previous work shows that these broadly recognized risk factors are country-specific. For these reasons,...

We investigate statistical arbitrage strategies for index options. To test the efficiency of markets in pricing relative implied volatilities in highly correlated markets, U.S. stock indices for which listed options are available are matched into pairs according to their degree of correlation....

We present a simple new explanation for the diversification discount in the valuation of firms. We demonstrate that, ceteris paribus, limited liability of equity holders is sufficient to explain a diversification discount. To derive this result, we use a credit risk model based on the value of...

This dissertation consists of three independent papers. The third paper proposes an explanation for the empirically documented relation between the value factor and the investment factor of the Fama-French five-factor model: Investors observing that a firm decreases its investment perceive the...

This dissertation consists of three independent papers. The first paper investigates the role of incomplete investor information in financial innovations. We analyze the information that structured product issuers provide to the investors and find that issuers have an information advantage over...