The emergence of the international debt crisis in the 1980s is typically explained through exogenous shocks to the global economic system, first generating excess liquidity and then creating conditions which render previously attractive lending operations unprofitable. Thus, the international...

With recent trends toward globalization and capital market integration, emerging markets have increasingly become the target of many investors in search for higher returns. Before placing their money abroad, however, investors need to bear considerable challenges in mind. While investments in...

This dissertation (consisting of two essays) analyzes the impact of policy measures used to control the risk-taking behavior of banks. Specifically, the first essay explores the impact of increasing the required minimum capital to asset ratios on the riskiness of banks' assets. The second essay...

This dissertation develops a supply and demand based theory of equity price determination to investigate the unprecedented run-up in U.S. equity values during 1982-1999. The model draws insight from both fundamental valuation analysis, and various speculative market theories. It also...

The credit default swap (CDS) market has blossomed to become a major asset class in the capital markets. Once largely confined to banks, the market participants have expanded to include insurance companies, hedge funds, mutual funds, pension funds, and other investors looking for yield...

This dissertation investigates different but related aspects of the impact of global financial liberalization on macroeconomic changes and policy formation in a developing country. By using recent time-series econometric techniques for the Turkish case, three essays in this dissertation test the...

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...

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...