本論文是由三篇關於金融市場的實證研究組合而成。第一篇以權益存續期間為主題，主要是利用迴歸模型估計台灣上市產業指數的實證權益存續期間，以探討股票報酬率的利率敏感度。迴歸模型中控制了三個重要的股票風險因子─市場因子、規模因子與價值因子。但其中，我們改以正交市場因子代替市場因子，以避免因為利率變動與市場報酬間存在共線性，而造成權益存續期間有可能錯估的問題。此外，基於權益存續期間具有會隨時間改變的動態特性，本文亦對各產業指數最近一次結構性變化的發生時點進行偵測，並據以推估最近期的權益存續期間。實證結果顯示：除了鋼鐵業的權益存續期間不顯著之外，其他所有產業指數皆具有負的權益存續期間，表示其報酬率與利率變動呈現出正向關係。在程度上，則以營建類指的利率敏感度最大，汽車類指最小。 第二篇應用了Diebold and Yilmaz (2009)的外溢指標分析台灣上市產業指數間的連動性，其優點是可以瞭解到產業間相互影響的方向以及程度。實證結果顯示：台灣上市產業指數間的外溢程度頗高，並以營建業為最主要的影響者，而相反地，鋼鐵業則是主要的被影響者。外溢指標具有隨時間改變的動態特性，而且透過動態外溢指標可觀察到次貸風暴蔓延的嚴重性。 第三篇應用了Goyal, Perignon and Villa (2008)所提出的多群組因素分析法，檢測美國總人口死亡率的共同因子個數。該方法最大的優點是能夠有效地辨識出真正的共同因子，避免了一般因素分析容易將解釋能力高的群組內獨特因子誤認為共同因子的缺點。根據檢測結果顯示，美國總人口死亡率的共同因子共有兩個，而且第二個因子的重要性隨時間愈來愈明顯。 / This thesis consists of three empirical essays about financial markets. The first essay analyzes the sensitivity of stock returns to changes in interest rates by estimating empirical equity duration of 18 industrial indices in the Taiwan Stock Exchange. In the regression models, we also control for the market excess return and the Fama-French mimicking returns for size and book-to-market factors. To avoid the effects of the multicolinearity between the market excess return and the interest rate changes, we replace the market excess return by the orthogonalized market factor. In addition, considering the time-varying pattern of empirical equity duration, we further adopt the reversed ordered Cusum test proposed by Pesaran and Timmermann (2002) to identify the most recent break of the regression relationship, and then extract the post-break data to re-estimate the up-to-date empirical equity duration. The result shows that except the Steel index, all industrial indices exhibit significantly negative equity durations, indicating a positive relationship between industrial index returns and interest rate changes in Taiwan. Among them, the Construction index has the largest interest rate sensitivity, while the lowest one is for the Automobile index. The second essay focuses on the nature of financial market interdependence, both in terms of returns and returns volatilities. Being capable of identifying the direction and magnitude of linkages among financial markets, the spillover index proposed by Diebold and Yilmaz (2009) is used to measure return and volatility spillovers between the top eight industrial indices based on market value in the Taiwan Stock Exchange. We find that for both returns and volatilities, the spillover effects among industrial indices in Taiwan are substantial. In particular, the Construction index is the major transmitter of shocks to other industries, and the Steel index, in contrast, suffers the most shocks from others. The spillover index fluctuates over time and indeed detects the severity of subprime mortgage crisis. The third essay adopts the multigroup factor analysis proposed by Goyal, Perignon and Villa (2008) to estimate the number of common pervasive factors for annual age-specific mortality for the entire U.S. populations. While the standard principal component analysis easily treats any group-specific factor as pervasive one due to its high contribution to total system variance, this methodology is able to estimate the space spanned by common and group-specific pervasive factors and recognize the true common factors. Empirical result shows that there are only two common pervasive factors governing the death rates in the United States; in particular, the importance of the second factor increases over time.