Three essays comprise this dissertation. The first essay uses panel data to show that labor income risk alone cannot explain limited stock market participation. However, transaction costs and household demographics, considered jointly, can determine both the discrete choice of whether to hold...

This paper demonstrates that, after integration, equity portfolios of countries that joined the European Monetary Union have converged at faster rate than those of NON EMU countries. This outcome canbe interpreted as a combination of the convergence of inflation rates and the convergence of...

This paper investigates a sample of 27 OECD countries to test whether national elections induce higher stock market volatility. It is found that the country-specific component of index return variance can easily double during the week around an Election Day, which shows that investors are...

Using micro level panel data, we analyze the impacts of rates of return gap between fixed and financial investments under uncertainty on real investment performance in three emerging markets, Argentina, Mexico and Turkey. Employing a portfolio choice model to explain the low fixed investment...

The basic financial purpose of an enterprise is maximization of its value. Inventory management should also contribute to realization of this fundamental aim. The enterprise value maximization strategy is executed with a focus on risk and uncertainty. This article presents the consequences for...

Evidence suggests that arbitragers exchange investment ideas. We analyze why and under what circumstances sharing occurs. Our model suggests that sharing ideas will lead to the following: more efficient asset prices, larger arbitrager profits, and correlated arbitrager returns. We predict that...

A model is presented to characterise the (optimal) demand for cash balances in deregulated markets. After the model of James Tobin, 1958, net balances are determined in order to maximise the expected return of a certain portfolio combining risk and capital. Unlike the model of Tobin, however,...

We simulate social network games of a portfolio selection to analyze how knowledge, preferences of agents and their level of omniscience affect their decision-making. The key feature of the paper is that preferences and the level of omniscience of agents very much determine the ways agents make...

In this paper we study the hypothesis of “divergent expectations” with a signaling game. Such hypothesis points out that, in emerging economies, local investors tend to be front-runners in a currency crisis. Our analysis shows that changes in the informational structure available to the...

Evidence suggests that arbitragers exchange investment ideas. We analyze why and under what circumstances sharing occurs. Our model suggests that sharing ideas will lead to the following: more efficient asset prices, larger arbitrager profits, and correlated arbitrager returns. We predict that...