Abstract Information asymmetry in the financial market, especially in the financial organization, usually generates more serious consequences than those in the commodity market. How to reduce or remove the asymmetric information in a bank¡¦s credit rationing has been a challenge for a commercial bank. On the basis of the models developed by Stiglitz and Weiss (1981) and Barro (1986), this study attempts to analyze the issues, faced by a typical commercial bank, of adverse selection, moral hazard, and agent¡¦s reputation, and to simulate the results of such issues in a game-theoretic approach. The study has reached the following conclusions: 1. With regard to the adverse selection issue, this study concludes that if a bank wants to solve the problem of adverse selection on debit and credit, the decision must be made upon the objective evaluation that considers not only the reality and rational assumption but also the external signaling and screening information to assess the enterprise and its investment plan. 2. Regarding the moral hazard issue, this study concludes that if a bank has an effective incentive, the enterprise will automatically select the most beneficial items to the bank on debit. This mechanism reduces the bank¡¦s risk. On the other hand, if a penalty is set forth, then it will be more likely to prevent the moral hazard problem to occur. 3. By the moral hazard model, this study concludes that if an enterprise needs to enter the market to collect funds, it would imply that the game will continue infinitely. Owing to the benefits from reputation is increasing as the number of stage of the game increases, an enterprise will have a strong incentive to build his non-cheating reputation based on a long term consideration. Keywords: Asymmetric Information, Adverse Selection, Moral Hazard, Reputation, Game Theory.

Prior studies that examine audit quality and earnings management mostly separate discretionary accruals from total accruals and use discretionary accruals (or absolute value of discretionary accruals) to measure the magnitude of earnings management. Although most of those studies find audit quality is able to restrain the degree of earnings manipulation, few evaluate whether audit quality is capable of reducing the information risk faced by investors. Compared to discretionary accruals, accruals quality measured by the extent to which current accruals map into operating cash flow realization is more directly related to information risk. The purpose of this study is to examine the association between audit quality and information risk faced by investors, using accruals quality to proxy for information risk and adopting auditor brand name, audit-firm tenure, CPA tenure and auditor industry specialization as measures of audit quality. The study hypothesizes that auditor brand name, audit-firm tenure, CPA tenure and auditor industry specialization will contribute positively to reduce information risk faced by investors. The empirical results indicate (1) higher quality auditors (Big 4 auditors) are able to lower the information risk faced by investors, (2) the longer the audit-firm tenure, the lower the information risk faced by investors, (3) clients of industry specialist auditors have lower information risk than clients of non-specialist auditors, and (4) the relationship between audit-partner tenure and information risk is yet insignificant. Finally, the results further show that the divergence between control rights and cash flow rights will weaken the negative relationship between auditor brand name and information risk as well as the negative relationship between audit-firm tenure and information risk. However, it does not affect the negative relationship between auditor industry specialization and information risk; it may be because the industry specialist auditors can better resist the pressure from the controlling shareholders that can help alleviate the information risk faced by investors.

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This dissertation consists of two essays in international trade and one essay in political economy. The first essay analyzes the role of firm-level and country-level reputation for quality in international transactions. It studies the entry and pricing strategies of high-quality and low-quality exporters when buyers cannot observe the quality of a product prior to purchase. In a steady-state industry equilibrium, country reputations are endogenously set by the quality of their exports, leading to the possibility of multiple equilibria and low-quality traps. We show that export subsidies have a positive long-run effect on average quality, reputation and welfare in countries exporting low-quality goods. However, they have the opposite consequences in countries that export high-quality products. We present some evidence consistent with the model in the empirical pattern of US export prices. The second essay studies the choice between home country and host country financing for multinationals facing demand uncertainty. Three main channels are identified. The cost of capital depends on local financial development. A diversification channel arises from the ability of geographically diversified firms to generate more stable cash flows. By contrast, contagion risk may result in inefficient liquidations when firms raise funds exclusively on their home market. In particular, the model predicts that the prevalence of affiliate production and the share of parent finance should increase with the correlation of business cycles between the home and host markets. Moreover, exchange rate risk tilts the financing decision towards local debt. The third essay deals with the emergence of mass education. Using data from the last 150 years in 137 countries, we show that large investments in primary education systems tend to occur when countries face military rivals or threats from their neighbors. Interestingly, democratic transitions are negatively associated with education investments, although democratic political institutions magnify the positive effect of military rivalries. These empirical results are robust to a number of statistical concerns and hold when we instrument military rivalries with commodity prices or rivalries in a given country’s immediate neighborhood. We also present historical case studies, as well as a simple model, that are consistent with the econometric evidence. / Economics

This dissertation presents four essays. The first chapter builds a real-options, term structure model of the firm incorporating stochastic volatility and endogenous default to shed new light on the value premium, financial distress, momentum, and credit spread puzzles. The paper uses recently developed methodologies based on asymptotic expansions to solve the model. The second chapter, coauthored with Adam Guren, presents a model that shows how foreclosures can exacerbate a housing bust and delay the housing market's recovery. Quantitatively, the model successfully explains aggregate and retail price declines, the foreclosure share of volume, and the number of foreclosures both nationwide and across MSAs. The third and fourth chapters, coauthored with Stephen W. Salant and Jason Winfree, discuss the economics of untraceable experience goods in a variety of settings. The third chapter drops the "small country" assumption in the trade literature on collective reputation and shows how large exporters like China can address severe problems assuring the quality of its exports. The fourth chapter demonstrates how regulations in the formal sector of developing countries can lead to a quality gap between formal and informal sector goods. It moreover investigates how changes in regulation affect quality, price, aggregate production, and the number of firms in each sector. / Economics

Certifiers have a crucial role in facilitating effective communication in the online and the traditional world. As a way of generating statistically meaningful information, certification has been adopted in financial statements evaluation and more recently in various online communities as well. This dissertation examines three related issues along this common theme: online reputation market, moderation in user-generated content, and strategic communications in the market for certifications, and consists of three essays. The first essay analyzes the impact of various dispute mechanisms on online identity trading. Online identities with a good reputation profile is a valuable and tradable asset. However, with free identity creation, there is room for low quality sellers to free-ride high quality sellers. When there is a lack of incentive for sellers to maintain a good reputation, identity trading becomes ineffective. This essay focuses on the role of an auditing system, such as eBay dispute center, and shows that even a small amount of objective information from the auditors can reverse the negative result and sustain reliable reputation and identity trading. The second essay investigates the impact of moderation on the quality of information in an user-generated content (UGC) environment. In most UGC communities, content contributors have incentive to publish biased or false information. For example, companies hire people to write positive reviews about themselves. This essay establishes a framework for the mechanism design of moderation, and provides insight on how to optimally allocate moderation resource. The third essay examines a market for certification and certifiers' strategic reporting behaviors. The central question is how to induce certifiers to provide statistically meaningful information to investors when they are paid by their client firms. We provide insights on how certifier competition plays an role in firms' certifier choice, how certifiers degrade their accuracies to achieve maximum profit, and how the legal environment impacts the information quality. / text

The undergraduate business program rankings in USNWR are based solely on peer assessments from deans and associate deans of AACSB accredited U.S. business schools. Often these reputation-based rankings are discounted and likened to a beauty pageant because the process lacks transparent input data.In this study, ten deans and ten associate deans representing top 50 USNWR undergraduate business programs were interviewed. Seven of the institutions are public and three are private and all but two universities are AAU member institutions.The research answers the following questions: how do deans and associate deans define quality in their school's undergraduate program and in other schools' programs? How are administrators influenced when evaluating the reputation of peer schools? Are competitors treated differently when evaluating academic reputation? What methods are administrators utilizing to influence brand perception with their stakeholder and educational peers?Business school deans and associate deans emphasized different aspects of an undergraduate program in their description of quality. The deans most valued quality from faculty and research. The associate deans valued the undergraduate experience including sense of community, engagement, involvement, leadership, student services, as creating distinction in a program.Business school administrators are barraged by influences that affect their perceptions about program reputations. Overall the influences on perception included quality of faculty, research, student standardized test scores, resources, characteristics of an institution, professional involvement and social networks including networks with faculty, students, other professionals and employers that provide feedback about schools. Professional involvement and social networks (PhD students, other deans, siblings, friends, students, employers, etc.) provided administrators with important insight into academic reputation. The quality of people that the administrators knew from other schools made a difference in peer schools' reputation.Finally, most schools employ integrated marketing communication (IMC) including taglines, direct marketing, event marketing, feature promotions, customer service and brand messages to influence stakeholders and peers. This study confirmed that everyone in a business school is a brand manager because brand is influenced through numbers of interactions over time with a variety of stakeholders. True to the IMC framework, business schools have moved to a relationship driven educational model.

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the informational role of audit client (i.e. firm) reputation in the auditor switching and retention decision. I perform an experimental examination of an analytical model, prescribing the optimal choices made by firms in the decision to retain or switch auditors without considering firm reputation. Using an experimental markets approach, I provide evidence of the market reaction to a firm's switch/retention decision under two alternative treatments. In the first (baseline) treatment, an explicit test of the analytical model, firms do not incur reputation effects when making the decision to switch or retain auditors. In the second treatment, firms consider market perceptions of opportunistic auditor switching and retention and the potential effects on the firm's reputation.The choice of auditor switching and retention is a significant component of the firm's corporate governance structure. I precisely measures reputation formation and its impact on this specific governance decision by the inclusion of prior period auditor switch/retention decisions made by firms in reputation treatment conditions. Prior archival research has demonstrated a link between auditor quality and earnings quality. These studies suggest that the retention of a high-quality auditor, or dismissal of a poor-quality auditor, can signal high quality earnings to the market. The converse is also suggested; retention of a poor-quality auditor, or dismissal of a high-quality auditor, can signal poor earnings quality. The decision to retain or switch auditors is made annually by firms who have superior information over their auditors and investors. In the short run, the decision to retain or switch auditors offers a temporary signal which the market may not clearly price. However, including the firm's track record of auditor switching and retention decisions among auditors of differing quality allows for the development of a positive or negative reputation on this portion of corporate governance.The results presented provide evidence of the model's descriptive validity for the firm's optimal choices and related market reaction to the auditor switching decision for a finite time horizon. Additionally, the study examines the market reaction to a firm's reputation on the auditor switching and retention decision.

Trust is required in file sharing peer-to-peer (P2P) systems to achieve better cooperation among peers and reduce malicious uploads. In reputation-based P2P systems, reputation is used to build trust among peers based on their past transactions and feedbacks from other peers. In these systems, reputable peers will usually be selected to upload requested files, decreasing significantly malicious uploads in the system. This thesis surveys different reputation management systems with a focus on reputation based P2P systems. We breakdown a typical reputation system into functional components. We discuss each component and present proposed solutions from the literature. Different reputation-based systems are described and analyzed. Each proposed scheme presents a particular perspective in addressing peers’ reputation. This thesis also presents a novel trust management framework and associated schemes for partially decentralized file sharing P2P systems. We address trust according to three identified dimensions: Authentic Behavior, Credibility Behavior and Contribution Behavior. Within our trust management framework, we proposed several algorithms for reputation management. In particular, we proposed algorithms to detect malicious peers that send inauthentic files, and liar peers that send wrong feedbacks. Reputable peers need to be motivated to upload authentic files by increasing the benefits received from the system. In addition, free riders need to contribute positively to the system. These peers are consuming resources without uploading to others. To provide the right incentives for peers, we develop a novel service differentiation scheme based on peers’ contribution rather than peers’ reputation. The proposed scheme protects the system against free-riders and malicious peers and reduces the service provided to them. In this thesis, we also propose a novel recommender framework for partially decentralized file sharing P2P systems. We take advantage from the partial search process used in these systems to explore the relationships between peers. The proposed recommender system does not require any additional effort from the users since implicit rating is used. The recommender system also does not suffer from the problems that affect traditional collaborative filtering schemes like the Cold start, the Data sparseness and the Popularity effect. Over all, our unified approach to trust management and recommendations allows for better system health and increased user satisfaction.

Kiekviena organizacija taip pat ir ugdymo įstaiga, nepriklausomai nuo jos veiklos, pobūdžio, nepriklausomai nuo to, ar ji nori, ar ne, turi vienokį arba kitokį įvaizdį. Švietimo organizacijų įvaizdžio problema išryškėjo tik po Lietuvos nepriklausomybės atgavimo. Iki tol niekas apie būtinybę kurti mokyklų įvaizdį net nepagalvojo. Ugdymo įstaigų įvaizdžio svarba dar labiau sustiprėjo, kai buvo pradėta taikyti „moksleivio krepšelio" skaičiavimo metodika. Tyrimo tikslas: išryškinus kaimo pagrindinės mokyklos įvaizdį įtakojančius veiksnius, numatyti strateginio plano tobulinimo perspektyvą. Tyrimo uždaviniai: atskleisti mokyklos įvaizdžio sampratą, nustatyti svarbiausius veiksnius, kurie lemia organizacijos (mokyklos) įvaizdį,numatyti organizacijos (mokyklos) įvaizdžio kūrimo ir valdymo priemones, atskleisti mokyklos mokytojų, mokinių, jų tėvų ir socialinių partnerių nuomonę apie kaimo pagrindinės mokyklos įvaizdį, nustatyti pagrindinius palankaus kaimo pagrindinės mokyklos įvaizdžio formavimo trukdžius bei įvaizdžio gerinimo kryptis. Tyrimo metodai: mokslinės literatūros analizė, anketinė apklausa, interviu metodas, dokumentų analizė. Tyrimu buvo pasiekti tokie rezultatai: atskleista, kad vieningos ir visa apimančios organizacijos įvaizdžio sąvokos nėra; organizacijos įvaizdis kuriamas ir valdomas per organizacijos identitetą; svarbiausi veiksniai, kurie lemia vidinį ir išorinį mokyklos įvaizdį yra mokytojai, vadovai, mokiniai ir komunikacija tarp šių auditorijų; šiuo metu... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Each organization as well as educational has an image not depending on its activity or character and wishes. The image problem of educational organizations was revealed only after the reestablishment of independence in Lithuania. The importance of it strengthened when it was started to apply the method of ,,pupil basket”. The goal of research is to foresee the perspective development of strategical plan by revealing factors which have influence on rural basic school. The tasks of research are to reveal the definition of school image, to establish the main factors which decide the image of organization (school), to foresee the means of creation and control of organization (school) image, to reveal the school teachers’, pupils’, their parents’ and social partners’ opinion on the image of the rural basic school, to find out the main hindrances in formatting the favorable school image and improving the directions of image. The methods of research are: analysis of scientific literature, questionnaire, interview, analysis of documents. The results achieved were as follow: it was revealed that there isn’t a unique definition on image; the image of organization is created and controlled by the identity of organization; the main externally and internally factors which influence school image are school teachers, administration, pupils and communication between them; the image which is now in rural basic school is quite good in different layers; the main... [to full text]