The major objective of this study is to reassess the life-cycle-permanent-income hypothesis as an explanation of wealth accumulation using microeconomic empirical evidence. The technique of cohort data and cohort analysis is suggested by Deaton (1992) who referred it as a promising tool for...

The neoclassical assumptions of perfect competition and constant returns to scale are commonly used within most areas of macroeconomic research. This is generally true of existing research on business cycles and universally true of previous studies investigating the welfare benefits of taxation...

This dissertation explains the behavior of the bank by focusing on the screening technology used in the loan approval process. The main goal is to find the outcome of bank competition when banks try to overcome hidden information with the screening technology. Essay 1 analyzes the screening...

This dissertation concerns cross-country consumption risk sharing in a long-run perspective. Financial integration, empirically measured by cross-country holdings of assets and liabilities, has increased dramatically in the past two decades. But what can explain the lack of cross-country risk...

This dissertation consists of three essays on corporate pension plan underfunding and securities valuation. The first essay presents evidence that sell-side stock analysts systematically underreact to pension underfunding information when they forecast firm earnings and such underreaction is...

We present a derivative pricing and estimation methodology for a class of stochastic volatility models that exploits the observed 'bursty' or persistent nature of stock price volatility. Empirical analysis of high-frequency S&P 500 index data confirms that volatility reverts slowly to its mean...

This study examines relations between stock returns and potential explanatory factors in Korea, an important and segmented emerging market. Our results show that Korean stock returns in general and returns on stocks listed in Section 1 in particular are significantly positively related to...

Where large-scale investments are needed, especially for infrastructure projects, public-private partnerships (PPPs) have been touted as an option. With encouragement by the international financial institutions, PPPs have been promoted in developing countries, especially those facing large...

This paper outlines an approach to Bayesian semiparametric regression in multiple equation models which can be used to carry out inference in seemingly unrelated regressions or simultaneous equations models with nonparametric components. The approach treats the points on each nonparametric...