Volatility is inherently unobservable, and thus the selection of models and their definition is crucial in financial research. This dissertation attempts to check the role of investor sentiment and forecast Value-at-Risk (VaR) of the stock market using both parametric and nonparametric...

The objective of this dissertation is to verify and explain the forward exchange rate unbiasedness hypothesis in the foreign exchange market. Since in most of the cases the unbiasedness hypothesis fails to hold, we try to provide three different explanations of this puzzling behavior in the...

This dissertation includes two different groups of objects in macroeconomics and financial economics. In macroeconomics, the aggregate investment fluctuation and its relation to an individual firm's behavior have been extensively studied for the past three decades. Most studies on the...

The world has entered a global recession that is causing widespread business contraction, increases in unemployment, and shrinking government revenues. The process for coping with the crisis by countries across the globe has been manifest in four basic phases. The first has been intervention to...

This work consists of two essays that investigate the pricing of credit risk in the equity and bond markets.The first essay, ?Is there a Distress Risk Anomaly? Bond Spread as a Proxy for Default Risk,? investigates the pricing of default risk in the cross section of equity returns. The...

The three essays in this dissertation examine issues related to corporate governance, investment, and financing. In the first essay, I analyze the consequences of CEO succession on board composition. I show that existing independent directors with no social ties to an incoming CEO are more...

We study the effect of government assistance on bank risk taking. Using hand-collected data on bank applications for government investment funds, we investigate the effect of both application approvals and denials. To distinguish banks? risk taking behavior from changes in economic conditions,...

In Chapter 1, I examine the frequent use of recommended retail prices by manufacturers.I present a model in which price recommendations convey information to consumers aboutaggregate market conditions. The manufacturer uses recommendations to directly affect consumers?search and indirectly...

Chapter 1 is a critique of a highly influential paper in corporate governance. Chhaochharia and Grinstein (2009) estimate that CEO pay decreases 17% more in firms that were not compliant with the recent NYSE/Nasdaq board independence requirement than in firms that were compliant. We document...

Using artificial neural networks (ANN) and ordinal regression (OR) as alternative methods to predict LPT bond ratings, we examine the role that various financial and industry-based variables have on Listed Property Trust (LPT) bond ratings issued by Standard and Poor?s from 1999-2006. Our study...