This study constructs a two-step model to test the most prominent market timing factors. We decompose equity issuances into 1) firm-specific components, which are predicted by firms’ characteristics, and 2) market-wide components, which are predicted by aggregate time series measures. Our evidence shows that, at the firm level, firms with higher market-to-book ratio, smaller size, more growth opportunities, and fewer tangible assets are more likely to issue equity. At the aggregate level, a greater proportion of firms issue equity in years with higher aggregate market-to-book ratio and lower asymmetric information. After controlling for the aggregate market-to-book ratio and information asymmetry, sentiment has no direct effect on equity issuance. This paper provides direct evidence that firms time their favorable market conditions to reduce adverse selection costs, and to exploit higher individual security valuations or capture growth opportunities.

Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk., 2004.

Univ., Fak. Wirtschafts- und Sozialwiss., Diss.--Hamburg, 2005.

Thesis (M. Com.)--University of Canterbury, 2009. / Typescript (photocopy). "March 2009." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-82). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Cette thèse propose d'étudier le rôle du secteur privé dans la fourniture des biens et services publics dans le cadre du récent contrat de Partenariat Public-Privé (PPP). Le premier chapitre de cette thèse a pour but de comparer l'efficacité du PPP à sa forme plus ancienne, le contrat de Délégation de Service Public (DSP). Le PPP permet au gouvernement de déléguer à un opérateur privé à la fois la construction d'une infrastructure publique et son exploitation. Cela revient à lui confier de plus grandes responsabilités comparées à ce qu'elles sont dans la DSP et lui confère également une dimension de long terme. L'efficacité du PPP devient alors dépendante des engagements pris par le gouvernement à l'étape de construction, qui peuvent ne pas être honorés à celle d'exploitation. A l'inverse, le contrat de DSP ne souffre pas de cet éventuel opportunisme du fait que les deux tâches relatives à la fourniture de services publics sont réalisées par deux firmes différentes. Nous montrons dans ce chapitre que l'efficacité du PPP est endommagée par l'opportunisme du gouvernement, mais pas suffisamment pour recommander la DSP. Nous concluons que, contrairement à l'opinion générale, l'engagement du gouvernement n'est pas un facteur clés du succès du contrat PPP. Le deuxième chapitre contribue au débat sur l'efficacité de la fourniture du service de l'eau par le secteur privé. Pour cela, nous menons une étude empirique en France, pays pionnier en matière de gestion privée de l'eau. Dans ce chapitre, nous évaluons l'impact du choix de gestion de l'eau sur les prix de l'eau, en prenant soin de corriger le biais de sélection dont souffre cette évaluation. Pour cela, nous estimons un modèle d'effet de traitement à l'aide d'un modèle à variable latente empruntant ainsi la méthodologie de Carpentier et al. (2006). L'effet moyen de la délégation et celui sur une municipalité ayant choisie la gestion privée de l'eau sont examinés. Contrairement aux études empiriques précédentes, nous montrons qu'il n'y a pas de différences significatives de prix de l'eau selon le mode de gestion de l'eau choisi. Le troisième chapitre examine la fourniture de biens publics lorsque ces derniers sont soumis à un risque d'interruption. Afin de pallier ce risque, une autorité publique peut adopter une politique de dédoublement des sources approvisionnement. Au lieu de confier toute la fourniture d'un bien public à une seule et même source, elle peut la confier à deux distinctes. De cette manière, si l'une est interrompue, l'autre peut prendre le relais. Dédoubler les sources approvisionnement permet d'assurer la continuité du bien public mais engendre des coûts, une source plus coûteuse pouvant prendre le relais. C'est ainsi que l'autorité publique fait face à un dilemme entre confier l'approvisionnement du bien public à une ou deux sources. Dans ce chapitre, nous étudions tout d'abord le choix d'approvisionnement avant de nous intéresser au partage respectif de la fourniture du bien public entre les deux sources en cas de dédoublement. Nous analysons également le choix de l'autorité publique en matière d'approvisionnement lorsqu'elle est susceptible d'être influencée par des groupes d'intérêt. / This thesis investigates three questions related to the role of private sector involvement in the provision of public goods or services. The State withdrawal from such provision has led to the use of partnerships between the public and the private sectors. They take place through a variety of contracts from the traditional form of public procurement to the modern form, Public-Private Partnership (PPP). The first chapter analyzes the contracting out of public services through Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) subject to government opportunism. The construction of a public infrastructure and its operation are carried out by a private sector firm. Due to bundling of these two tasks, the PPP efficiency is affected by government's commitment power, contrarily to the traditional procurement, in which the two tasks are contracted out separately. We find that the PPP cost efficiency is damaged by the government opportunism but not sufficiently to recommend the use of TP contract. PPP contract should still be preferred by the government. We conclude that, contrarily to the widespread view, government commitment is not the key factor determining the success of PPP. The second chapter offers an empirical study to contribute to the debate over the efficiency of private provision of water services, looking at the main policy lessons that can be drawn from recent French experience. The purpose of this paper is to accurately evaluate the impact of private management on water prices after taking into account the selection bias. To do so, we use a treatment effect approach in a latent variable framework following the Carpentier et al. (2006) methodology. Two specific treatment parameters are reexamined: the Average Treatment Effect (ATE) and the effect of Treatment on the Treated (ATT). Contrary to the previous empirical findings, we show that private management does not have a significant impact on water prices. The third chapter examines the provision of a public good subject to a risk of disruption in a dynamic setting. To hedge against this risk, a public authority may use a dual sourcing policy. Instead of awarding the entire production to one firm (sole sourcing), he may split production among two firms (dual sourcing). If the production of one firm is disrupted, the other firm may take over. However, ensuring the continuity of production increases the procurement cost since a less efficient firm may be awarded part of the production. The public authority thus faces a trade-off when deciding upon the procurement policy. We first examine the optimal choice between sole and dual sourcing. Then, we determine the optimal share of production awarded to each firm in case of dual sourcing. We also consider how asymmetry of information on the secondary firm's efficiency affects the optimal procurement policy since an informational rent is given up to this firm. Finally, we extend our model to consider the influence of lobbying on the public authority's choice of procurement policy.

This dissertation consists of three essays on dynamic contracts. Chapter One studies a dynamic principal-agent model in which the agent continuously works on a project which may yield a success. The principal cannot observe the success, but she observes imperfect signals over time after the agent stops working. The principal is more patient than the agent and both are risk neutral. In the optimal contract where the agent observes the success, the agent is induced to exert full effort until success and report it truthfully. The optimal payment scheme features a combination of wage and deferred bonus. When the agent does not observe the success, the optimal contract features a stochastic deadline and a deferred bonus payment. Chapter Two studies a discrete time principal-agent model where the agent's effort and ability are both private information. The wage is exogenously fixed and the principal designs a firing policy to incentivize the agent to work. In each period, the agent works on a project with binary outcomes. The high type has a higher probability of getting a good outcome than the low type conditional on high effort. The outcome in each period is publicly observed. In the optimal contract, the principal hires the high type for sure and hires the low type with some probability. Conditional on being hired, the high type faces a higher standard of performance. Chapter Three studies a dynamic model of delegated decision making with adverse selection and imperfect monitoring. In each period, a principal may delegate to a biased agent who has better information. The quality of the agent's information depends on his ability. In the optimal mechanism where the agent's ability is publicly observable, the principal delegates to the agent at the beginning of their relationship and the agent behaves in the principal's interest. Depending on the history, the principal either commits to delegating forever or stops delegating eventually. When the agent's ability is private information, the optimal mechanism features pooling at the top. The principal offers the same mechanism to the agent if his ability is known to be above a cutoff.

The peer to peer (p2p) lending industry has grown fast in recent years. This study put an eye on the credit evaluation system of one of the p2p platform named lending club. The author used the empirical method and discussed the determinants of the interest rate and the default risk in the p2p lending market. The author concluded that the evaluation system founded by lending club could predict the risk of loans. Collecting more information about borrowers’ credit history may increase the accuracy of the model.

In most markets, competition induces efficiency by ensuring that goods are priced according to their marginal cost. This is not the case in health insurance markets. This is due to the fact that the cost of a health insurance policy depends on the characteristics of the consumer purchasing it, and asymmetric information or regulation often precludes an insurer from matching the price an individual pays to her expected cost. This disconnect between cost and price causes inefficiency: When the premiums paid by consumers do not match their expected costs, consumers may sort inefficiently across plans. In this dissertation, I study the effects of policies used to alleviate selection problems. In Chapter 1, I develop a model to study the effects of risk adjustment on equilibrium prices and sorting. I simulate consumer choice and welfare with and without risk adjustment in the context of a Health Insurance Exchange. I find that when there is no risk adjustment, the market I study unravels and everyone enrolls in the less comprehensive plan. However, diagnosis-based risk adjustment causes over 80 percent of market participants to enroll in the more comprehensive plan. In Chapter 2, we study an unintended consequence of risk adjustment: upcoding. When payments are risk adjusted based on potentially manipulable risk scores, insurers have incentives to maximize those risk scores. We study upcoding in the context of Medicare, where private Medicare Advantage plans are paid via risk adjustment but Traditional Medicare is not. We find that when the same individual enrolls in a private plan her risk score is 5% higher than if she would have enrolled in Traditional Medicare. In Chapter 3, we study two forms of insurance for insurers: Reinsurance and risk corridors. Protecting insurers from risk can lower prices and improve competition by inducing entry into risky markets. It can also induce inefficiencies by causing insurers to manage risk less carefully. We use simulations to compare the power of reinsurance and risk corridors to protect insurers against risk while limiting efficiency losses. We find that risk corridors are always able to limit insurer risk with the lowest efficiency cost.

This dissertation contributes to theoretical and empirical studies in microeconomics, with a focus on evaluating policy relevant problems to provide new insights into questions. Within labor economics, I strive to understand the labor market returns to skills, taking into consideration the business cycle. In the first chapter, I investigate how the labor market returns to cognitive skills and social skills vary during recessions. In the second chapter, I examine the short-, medium and long-term career outcomes of college graduates as a function of economic conditions at graduation and both cognitive and social skills. In the third chapter, within information economics, I study how asymmetric information and demand uncertainty influence pricing strategies through learning. In Chapter 1, I examine how labor market returns to cognitive skills and social skills vary with the business cycle over the past 20 years, using data from the NLSY79 and the NLSY97. Exploiting a comparable set of cognitive and social skill measures across survey waves, I show that an increase in the unemployment rate led to higher demand for cognitive skills in the 2000s. High unemployment also sorted more workers into information use intensive occupations that require computer skills in the 2000s, but it sorted more workers into routine occupations in the 1980s and 1990s. This evidence suggests that recessions accelerate the restructuring of production toward routine-biased technologies. I also find that the returns to social skills increase during periods of high unemployment, though only in terms of the likelihood of full-time employment for experienced workers. Furthermore, an increase in unemployment increases the social skill task intensity of a worker's occupation in the 2000s, while it shows the contrary in the 1980s and 1990s. Based on these results, I argue that routine-biased technological change may not readily substitute for workers in tasks requiring interpersonal interaction, and therefore such technologies demand experienced laborers who have high social skills during recessions. In Chapter 2, I study the impacts of entry conditions on labor market outcomes to cognitive and social skills for the US college graduating classes of 1979–1989. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, I find that Workers with higher cognitive skills are more likely to be employed, find job more quickly and have higher-quality employment, while those with higher social skills voluntarily switch jobs more often. I also show that graduating in a worse economy intensifies the roles of social skills, allowing workers with higher social skills to catch up more quickly from poor initial conditions by switching jobs more often. This could partly explain why wage returns to cognitive skills declines but wage returns to social skills increases from graduating in recessions. In Chapter 3, we consider a dynamic pricing problem facing a seller who has private information about the quality of her good, but is uncertain about the arrival rate of buyers. Restricting attention to the equilibria in which the high-quality seller insists on a constant price, we show that the low-quality seller's expected payoff and equilibrium pricing strategy crucially depend on buyers' knowledge about the demand state. If they are also uncertain about the demand state, then demand uncertainty increases the low-quality seller's expected payoff, and her optimal pricing strategy is to offer a high price initially and drop it to a low price later. If buyers know the demand state, then demand uncertainty does not affect the low-quality seller's expected payoff, and a simple cutoff pricing strategy cannot be a part of equilibrium. In the latter case, we show that there exists an equilibrium in which the low-quality seller begins with a low price, switches up to a high price, and eventually reverts back to the low price.

This dissertation includes two essays on adverse selection and moral hazard problems in reinsurance markets. The first essay builds a competitive principal-agent model that considers adverse selection and moral hazard jointly, and characterizes graphically various forms of separating Nash equilibria. In the second essay, we use panel data on U.S. property liability reinsurance for the period 1995-2000 to test for the existence of adverse selection and moral hazard. We find that (1) adverse selection is present in private passenger auto liability reinsurance market and homeowners reinsurance market, but not in product liability reinsurance market; (2) residual moral hazard does not exist in all the three largest lines of reinsurance, but is present in overall reinsurance markets; and (3) moral hazard is present in the product liability reinsurance market, but not in the other two lines of reinsurance.