The five essays in this dissertation look at how specific information technologies (such as Electronic Document Management (EDM), Semantic Web and RuleML) and IT in general can be used to automate and standardize data and processes, enable faster and more accurate information flow, and improve...

This thesis consists of three chapters that investigate the complex relation between security prices and trades of market participants. In the first chapter, I study the evolution of stock prices after trades with different underlying motives using a novel data set of portfolio transitions....

There is growing belief that countries with better financing environments are associated with higher economic growth because they facilitate entrepreneurship and hence the Schumpeterian process of 'creative destruction'. This dissertation explores this hypothesis in more detail by understanding...

In this dissertation, we explore problems in two areas of Supply Chain Management. The first relates to strategic supplier management. The second focuses on tactical decisions on inventory and pricing during inter-generational product transition. In many industries, manufacturing firms use...

This dissertation raises two questions: How do customers come to understand and use a technology? What is the influence of customers using a technology on industry evolution and competition? I use two historical cases to answer these questions. The first considers how insurance firms came to...

Bertrand and Mullainathan (2003) find that managers shielded from the threat of takeovers exert less effort to maximize firm value, consistent with a 'quiet life' hypothesis. I study whether the governance role of financial reporting can mitigate adverse effects arising from managerial...

Shared capitalism is a diverse set of compensation practices through which worker pay, or wealth, depends on the performance of the firm or work group; compensation practices include employee ownership, stock options, and profit sharing. Empirical studies on whether employee ownership improves...

This thesis consists of one empirical essay on contagion (co-authored with Joao Manoel Pinho de Mello¹ and Marcelo de Paiva Abreu²). We document a novel type of international financial contagion whose driving force is shared financial intermediation. In the London peripheral sovereign debt...

Amazon.com is a publicly-held company headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It revolutionized the retail industry by being one of the first major companies to sell goods over the Internet. It is an international company servicing countries throughout the world with goods ranging from books to...

Outsourcing maintenance to third-party contractors has become an increasingly popular option for manufacturers to achieve tactical and/or strategic objectives. Though simple in concept, maintenance outsourcing is difficult in execution, especially in a cost-sensitive environment. This project...