The first essay examines the determinants of returns for bidding firms' stocks in mergers and tender offers using cross-sectional micro-firm data. First, we find that potential overpayments to target shareholders are important for explaining cross-sectional differences in bidders' returns upon...

This study contributes to the issue of bank product deregulation by examining whether cost synergies, measured by economies of scope, exist in the production of banking services. Using the multiproduct cost economies approach, the existence of overall and product-specific economies of scope and...

The Introductory chapter briefly describes the unintended emergence of the seconday market for developing country loans after protracted and unsuccessful negotiations between lending bankers and the indebted countries. The innovative Brady plan presented the banks involved in this market with...

The main purpose of the thesis is to investigate the link between financial policy and economic growth by focusing on the link between financial intermediation and capital accumulation. The investigation strategy is to examine the effect of recent reform in financial markets in Taiwan on its...

In the first essay, "Do Firms Knowingly Sell Overvalued Equity?", I develop a simple equilibrium model which shows that insider trading around seasoned equity offerings (SEO) depends on both the quality of issuing firms and insiders' exogenous consumption shocks, neither of which are known by...

The economic analysis of financial intermediaries has been a growing field. The goal of many works in this area has been to show that contractual arrangements can lead to symmetric Pareto optimal allocations in an economy with asymmetric private information.

This is a study of financial and strategic factors relating to the failure and bankruptcy of 73 firms that went bankrupt from 1980 to 1986. The characteristics of the bankrupt firms were compared with those of a matching sample of nonbankrupt firms. On average the bankrupt firms were weaker than...

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,...