Essay I: This essay provides an overview of the history of the Swedish pension system. Starting with the implementation of the public pension system in 1913, it outlines the key components of each major pension reform up until today along with a discussion of the main trade-offs and concerns that policy makers have faced. It also describes the historical background of the four largest occupational pension plans in Sweden and the mutual influence between these plans and the public pension system.        Essay II: Despite the fact that the increasing involvement of the private sector in pension provision has brought more flexibility to the pay-out phase of retirement, little is known about the characteristics of those who choose to annuitize their pension wealth and those who do not. I combine unique micro-data from a large Swedish occupational pension plan with rich national administrative data to study the choice between life annuities and fixed-term payouts with a minimum payout length of 5 years for 183,000 retiring white-collar workers. I find that low accumulation of assets is strongly associated with the choice of the 5-year payout. Consistent with individuals selecting payout length based on private information about their mortality prospects, individuals who choose the 5-year payout are in worse health, exhibit higher ex-post mortality rates and have shorter-lived parents than annuitants. Individuals also seem to respond to large, tax-induced changes in annuity prices.            Essay III: This essay estimates the causal effect of postponing retirement on a wide range of health outcomes using Swedish administrative data on cause-specific mortality, hospitalizations and drug prescriptions. Exogenous variation in retirement timing comes from a reform which raised the age at which broad categories of Swedish local government workers were entitled to retire with full pension benefits from 63 to 65. The reform caused a remarkable shift in the retirement distribution of the affected workers, increasing the actual retirement age by more than 4.5 months. Instrumental variable estimation results show no effect of postponing retirement on the overall consumption of health care, nor on the risk of dying early. There is evidence, however, of a reduction in diabetes-related hospitalizations and in the consumption of drugs that treat anxiety. Essay IV (with Per Engström): The consumption based method to estimate underreporting among self-employed, introduced by Pissarides and Weber (1989), is one of the workhorses in the empirical literature on tax evasion/avoidance. We show that failure to account for transitory income fluctuations in current income may overestimate the degree of underreporting by around 40 percent. Previous studies typically use instrumental variable methods to address the issue. In contrast, our access to registry based longitudinal income measures allows a direct approach based on more permanent income measures. This also allows us to evaluate the performance of a list of instruments widely used in the previous literature. Our analysis shows that capital income is the most suitable instrument in our application, while education and housing related measures do not seem to satisfy the exclusion restrictions.

The core focus of this thesis is the principal-agent problem and its role in the outbreak of the 2007 financial crisis. Analysis of key elements of the problem like moral hazard and adverse selection lays foundations for identifying situations, in which conflict of interests led to negative impacts on the economic performance before and during the financial crisis. This work also studies the influence of factors that are often overlooked by theoretical economists but are still tightly connected to the principal-agent problem, like exogenous incentives based on the mechanism of trust. The author also evaluates mechanisms that have been put into place after the financial crisis and which could help lower agency costs. He also sketches out possible venues of future research in this area.

The financial crisis in the USA is due to its great consequences still considered to be current topic. Its causes were discussed and analyzed by many researchers, but mostly from the financial point of view. This thesis takes different approach and identifies the role of the moral hazard in the pre-crisis period. Moral hazard is very often underestimated and for many people uninteresting factor. Therefor, the thesis is divided into four parts, which present the theoretical background of moral hazard and bring up the importance and constant presence of it in today's world. The main part of this work is last chapter, which analyzes moral hazard in the causes of the financial crisis. Moral hazard played key role in the pre-crisis period when it was present at all possible levels deforming the behavior of market players and causing the market failure. The deformation had mostly form of excessive risk-taking, unfavourable financial products and abuse of the information asymmetry. Very specific and dangerous kind of moral hazard is associated with the government interventions such as Greenspan doctrine or Too big to fail policy. It is because of its systematic character, when opposed to the moral hazard in the private sector is not required the presence of information asymmetry.

博士（商学） / 乙第395号 / 63p / 一橋大学

The current thesis explores a relatively new academic topic – equity-based crowdfunding. The purpose is to examine which quality signals, used by the entrepreneurs in their fundraising process, tend to increase the probability of closing an equity-based crowdfunding campaign successfully. The findings in this thesis serve as an additional contribution to a relatively unexplored topic of signaling in equity crowdfunding. Besides a theoretical contribution, it provides practical insights that may help entrepreneurs and crowdfunding platforms to increase the probability of successful campaign closure. The data for this study was collected from an international crowdfunding platform Fundedbyme.com. The explanatory variables, both continuous and binary, were divided into several thematic groups, while the dependent variable was defined by either successful or unsuccessful outcome of the campaign. The effect of the explanatory variables on the outcome of the campaign was tested with the help of the logistic regression (logit) model. The results showed that crowd investors in the network of Fundedbyme.com use particular quality signals to distinguish between the projects, in fact, both financial signals and more qualitative signals. Increases in the financial signals such as funding goal and price per share affect the probability of success negatively, while the presence of the qualitative signals (received awards and the indication of the non-executive board) contribute to a higher probability of success. Secondly, the results imply some similarities between the selecting mechanism in traditional funding, reward-based and the equity-based crowdfunding. As a third point, this research shows that the presence of a specific selecting mechanism in crowdfunding helps to some extent decrease the information asymmetry and adverse selection in the market of crowdfunding.

Föränderlig, ofullständig eller osäkerhet kring informationen från företagslåntagare kan skapa betydande utmaningar med kreditrisker för bankerna. På grund av detta ser banker de små och medelstora företagen (SMF) som högre risk. Tidigare forskning tyder på att följder av informationsasymmetri är att banker försvårar företagens tillgång till finansiering. Utifrån detta är syftet med denna studie att beskriva och analysera hur de svenska storbankerna hanterar kreditriskerna vid utlåning till SMF, samt vilka likheter och skillnader det finns mellan bankerna. Med användningen av en kvalitativ datainsamlingsmetod genomfördes semistrukturerade intervjuer med relevanta bankanställda på SEB, Handelsbanken och Swedbank från vilket en tydlig empiri kunde sammanställas. Detta analyserades sedan utifrån teorin om negativt urval och minskad kapitalkostnad samt signaleringsteorin.  Studien fann att de svenska storbankernas strategier för kreditriskhanteringen vid utlåning till SMF utgår från liknande delar. Detta för att både kunna identifiera, förebygga och åtgärda eller minska påverkan från kreditrisker. Skillnaderna mellan bankernas strategier i kreditriskhantering ses i hur de genomför vissa processer och vad de främst fokuserar på vid utlåningen till SMF. Dessa skillnader ses inom vilka externa källor storbankerna använder för informationsinsamling, vilka som har ansvaret för beslutet om kreditvärdighet och om banken använder standardiserade lånevillkor eller inte. / Changing, incomplete or uncertain information from corporate borrowers can create significant credit risk challenges for banks. Because of this, banks see the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as higher risk. Previous research suggests that consequences of information asymmetry are that banks make it more difficult for companies to access financing. Based on this, the purpose of this study is to describe and analyze how the major Swedish banks manage credit risks when lending to SMEs, as well as what similarities and differences exist between the banks. Using a qualitative data collection method, semi-structured interviews were conducted with relevant bank employees at SEB, Handelsbanken and Swedbank from which a clear empirical record could be compiled. This was analyzed based on the theory of adverse selection and reduced cost of capital, as well as the signalling theory.  The study found that the major Swedish banks strategies for credit risk management when lending to SMEs are based on similar elements. This is to be able to both identify, prevent and remedy or reduce the impact from credit risks. The differences between the banks strategies in credit risk management are seen in how they carry out certain processes and what they mainly focus on when lending to SMEs. These differences are seen in which external sources the big banks are using for information gathering, who is responsible for the decision on creditworthiness and whether the bank uses standardized loan terms or not.

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This dissertation consists of three papers. In the first paper, I study firms' capital raising decisions in a two-stage signaling game. In the model, firms can issue debt or equity to finance sequentially arriving investment projects. Management is assumed to have an initial information advantage over investors. However, when a firm's decision in the first stage can change investors' beliefs and, consequently, impact the security issuance in the second stage, its optimal choice differs significantly from the strict debt-equity preference in a comparable one-stage model. In equilibrium, a dynamic pecking order arises, suggesting that the information friction can solely explain various aspects of observed corporate financing behavior. The second paper is coauthored with Hans Haller. In this paper, we model how different wealth constraints among investors affect an entrepreneur's way of raising capital, his share of project NPV, and his ownership of the new firm. Combining cooperative and noncooperative approaches, we develop and analyze a bargaining framework and demonstrate cases in which a fair division cannot be achieved when sharing of cost and sharing of return are jointly considered. Our results cover conditions on how the entrepreneur can strategically achieve larger net wealth accumulation, and when he can obtain control of the firm. We further discuss the entrepreneur's preferences on the firm's ownership dispersion level under public financing. The third paper argues that although innovation is costlier than imitation, the incumbent firm is endowed with an advantage of enhancing its product ahead of potential competitors. In a model that connects consumers' utility with firms' production, I show that the incumbent's product enhancement decision can foster the creation of a better product, improve consumers' utility, and deter entrance from competitors. The pace of creative activities is determined by the incumbent's potential of improving its product quality and the nature of product differentiation in the industry. Thus, creative destruction may not manifest itself as new firms replacing the incumbent, but as the incumbent constantly renovating its product. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation consists of three papers. In the first paper I study the adverse selection problem faced by firms in a dynamic information environment, the difference between incentives provided by debt and equity securities, and how different contracts and model settings affect the equilibrium outcome, investment efficiency, and social welfare. The premise of the first paper is that dynamic elements of information asymmetry are key to better understanding how firms raise capital. This study aims to provide a more complete description and improve our understanding of the role of information in capital markets and how asymmetric information might interact with other market frictions. In the second paper I study the origin of the firm and the bargaining problem between entrepreneurs and investors. This second paper intends to provide one possible answer for the question why firms do exist. The main point in the paper is that even when we abstract away from standard frictions like adverse selection or moral hazard, an entrepreneur still has to bargain with investors to raise the required amount of capital. The firm has to be established to enforce the bargaining outcome, which takes the form of an ownership contract, because there is a time gap between conducting the investment and when the proceed can be realized. Another purpose of this second study is to investigate fairness instead of efficiency. Finally, in the third paper, I address the question how and when an incumbent monopolist can deter entry by means of investment in product quality enhancement. In some industries, creative destruction can be frequently observed: Incumbent firms are replaced by new firms that offer slightly different but better products. On the other hand, in a number of industries incumbent firms are at the forefront of innovation and stay ahead of potential entrants. I consider a model that allows for the latter fact combined with another frequent fact: that potential entrants more or less copy the incumbent's prior product, regardless of existence and enforcement of intellectual property rights. This third paper offers predictions on product innovation and market failure across firms and industries.

租賃是使用權與所有權分離的一種企業或個人取得資產使權的方式。但是租賃市場中卻隱含二種潛在的訊息不對稱問題--逆向選擇與道德機問題。本文首先導出存在逆向選擇問題時之最適租約，並與充分訊息時之最適租約相比較。隨後我們也導出道德危機與逆向選擇問題並存時之最適租約。 　　有鑑於租賃對企業與個人的重要性，本文希望利用機制設計的方式來設計出存在訊息不對稱問題下的最適租約，以幫助租賃市場更有效地運作。針對逆向選擇問題，我們希望能利用誘因相容的直接控制機制，透過契約的設計，由承租人自己選擇租約，來幫助出租人分辦承租人之類型，並依此決定最適的租賃契約。針對道德危機問題，探究其成因主要是由於租約到期時資產的殘值完全不影響承租人報酬所致，所以我們希望能設計一組能使作維護努力的承租人得到充分獎勵的租約，也就是透過讓承租人作努力決策時將資產殘值納入考量的方式，使承租人的努力決策對出租人也是最適的。