My dissertation consists of three chapters. In the first chapter, I analyze theeffect of the merger between American Airlines (AA) & US Airways (US) on market price and product quality. I use two complementary methodologies: difference-in-differences (DID) and merger simulation. Contrary to other results in the airline literature, the DID analysis shows that, overall, price has decreased as a result of themerger. While divestitures required as part of the merger had a strong price-reducing effect, the overall decrease involves non-divestiture markets as well. Interestingly, the decrease appears only in large airport-pair markets, whereas prices rose considerably in smaller ones. Effects on quality are mixed. The DID analysis shows that the merger reduced flight cancellations, increased flight delays, and had no effect on flight frequency or capacity overall. Using merger simulation, I find that the change in ownership leads to a 3% increase in price. The structural model performs betterin predicting the post-merger price if I allow the model to deviate from the Bertrand-Nash conduct. A 10% cost reduction due to the merger is able to predict the post-merger price quite well. When I incorporate a conduct parameter into the model, the required percentage of cost savings is lower. Given the divestiture and the subsequententry of low-cost carriers (LCCs), tacit collusion may break down. Thus both cost savings and reduced cooperation could explain a reduction in the price in the post-merger period.<div><br></div><div>In my second chapter, I analyze possible reasons why airline prices are higher inthe smaller markets compared to larger markets. In the literature, most of the studies ignore the fact that the smaller markets are different compared to larger markets in terms of the nature of competition. I find that a combination of lower competition, and lack of entry from low cost carriers (LCCs) are the reasons behind higher prices in the smaller city-pair markets. I show that price is substantially higher in a market with a fewer number of firms controlling for several other factors. My paper estimates the modified critical number of firms to be 5 and the critical value of the HHI to be .6.<br><div><br></div><div>In my third chapter, I study the effect of announcement of investment in research & development (R&D) on the value of a firm in the pharmaceutical industry. Three types of R&D by the pharmaceutical firms are considered for the analysis: acquisition of other smaller firms, internal investment in R&D, and collaborative investment in R&D. This chapter finds that few target specific characteristics and financial charac-teristics of the acquiring firm are important drivers of the abnormal returns around the announcement period.<br></div><div><br></div></div>

This paper examines the impact of financial sector foreign direct investment (FSFDI) on economic growth by estimating a panel data model for 11 Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) between 1996 and 2003 in a cross-country growth accounting framework. The analysis concentrates on the efficiency channel linking FSFDI to economic growth. The results clearly indicate that there can be a relationship between FSFDI and economic growth. Approaching a medium degree of financial M&A is rewarded by higher economic growth after two periods. Beyond it, FSFDI seems to spur economic growth depending on a higher human capital stock. FSFDI-induced knowledge-spillovers to domestic banks can be an explanation for this phenomenon. Above a certain threshold, the crowding-out of local physical capital caused by the entry of a foreign bank seems to hamper economic growth. The value of the paper lies in (1) providing novel data on FSFDI in CEECs, (2) analyzing the impact of FDI on a sectoral level and (3) in modeling the hitherto only qualitatively discussed relationship between foreign banks and economic development into a structural, econometric model that combines two streams of economic research: the FDI-growth-literature and the finance-growth-literature. (author's abstract) / Series: EI Working Papers / Europainstitut

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We study some aspects of liquidity of stocks traded through the National Stock Exchange (NSE) of India. Initially we examine the multi-dimensional nature of liquidity by conducting day-wise factor analysis of eleven liquidity proxies across a cross-section of stocks, using data from two periods reflecting different market conditions. Five factors emerge consistently, interpretable as depth, spread, volume, price elasticity and relative activity. Subsequently, we study execution of limit orders in the NSE from three angles. First we consider order execution probability, using 106 stock-specific logistic models. Important predictors of order execution probability are price premium followed by volatility, relative activity, bid ask spread and order imbalance. Some differences are noted when comparing companies of different sizes and between buy and sell orders. Second, we study order execution times using survival analysis. Several diagnostic tests indicate that parametric Accelerated Failure Time models using the log-logistic distribution for the survival time S(t) are suitable for current data. 100 stock-specific models are built; results are consistent with the logistic models. Additionally depth is also found to be important. Finally we build 4 combined models across stocks for both execution probabilities as well as times. These models perform well on out of sample data, suggesting their predictive utility.

Denna studie undersöker fem olika tillgångar under tre olika kriser för att se vilka tillgångar som kan definieras som en safe haven på den svenska aktiemarknaden. Tillgångarna som undersöks är guld, 10-årig statsobligation, japansk yen, schweizisk franc och amerikansk dollar. Kriserna som de undersöks under är IT-bubblan, finanskrisen och covid-19 pandemin. En safe haven tillgång definieras som en tillgång som inte är korrelerad eller negativt korrelerad med andra tillgångar eller portföljer under finansiella kriser, i denna studie jämförs respektive tillgång med den svenska aktiemarknaden. Den metod som används är kvantitativ med sekundärdata i form av den dagliga förändringen för aktiemarknaden och respektive tillgång. Dessa analyseras med hjälp av en regressionsmodell som fångar de dagar då marknaden fallit som mest där sambanden mellan tillgången och marknaden mäts för att få ett resultat. Bland de tillgångar som har undersökts finner studien att alla tillgångar förutom schweizisk franc har varit någon form av safe haven under en viss period för någon av de olika kriserna. / This study examines five different assets during three different crises to see which assets can be defined as a safe haven in the Swedish stock market. The assets examined are gold, 10-year government bonds, Japanese yen, Swiss francs and US-dollars. The crises in which they are investigated are the IT-bubble, the financial crisis and the covid-19 pandemic. A safe haven asset is defined as an asset that is not correlated or negatively correlated with other assets or portfolios during financial crises, in this study each asset is compared with the Swedish stock market. The method used is quantitative with secondary data in the form of the daily change for the stock market and the respective asset. These are analyzed using a regression model that captures the days when the market has fallen the most, where the relationship between the assets and the market are examined to get a result. Among the assets that have been examined, the study finds that all assets except the Swiss franc have been some form of safe haven during a certain period for any of the various crises.

<p><br></p> <p>In my dissertation research I document information price discovery through investments in the alternate asset class of Venture Capital. The two chapters of this dissertation studies the effect of these investments in two different contexts. The first chapter analyses improvements in valuations of venture capital funds through syndication by VC funds. The second chapter documents improvements in stock prices, and valuations, of publicly traded firms through investments by institutional investors in VC funds and in public equity.</p> <p><br></p> <p>In the first chapter I examine the effect of syndication among venture capital (VC) funds on the funds' incentives to manipulate their performance measures. I show that the presence of new syndicate partners reduces misreporting by VC funds. About half of the reduction in manipulation is during the follow-on fundraising period. To identify that syndicate partners reduce performance misreporting I use: (i) a triple-difference approach around fundraising and (ii) availability-of-syndicate-partners as an instrument for the number of new syndicate partners. The implications of my findings are that LPs should better monitor VC funds with fewer new syndicate partners and regulators should consider the presence of peer-monitoring among VC funds before imposing disclosure requirements.</p> <p>  </p> <p>  Chapter two includes John J. McConnell, Timothy E. Trombley, and M. Deniz Yavuz as coauthors. In this chapter we report evidence consistent with institutional investors using industry-level information that they obtain from their investments in venture capital (VC) funds to earn excess returns in publicly-traded equities.  We use court rulings regarding the Freedom of Information Act as an exogenous shock affecting the information flow between VC firms and institutional investors to show that the excess returns are explained by information received via this channel.  Thus, institutional investors serve as conduits of information, making publicly-traded stock prices more efficient.  In the process, institutional investors earn higher returns from their VC investments than implied by the cash flows thereby received. </p>

This thesis considers the position of the British financial sector in the economic strategy of social democracy during the 1960s and 1970s. In doing so it attempts to shed light on a broader question – what caused the collapse of the postwar social democratic project in Britain during the final quarter of the twentieth century? It contends that the social democratic project faced a variety of challenges to its principles, assumptions, and practices in the two decades prior to the election of Margaret Thatcher as a result of changes to the financial system. These challenges offered opportunities for the advance of social democracy beyond the norms established following the Second World War, but the capacity to pursue these was constrained in a number of ways. The emergence of institutional investment, and the breakdown of the postwar banking settlement, undermined the social democratic methods for managing and controlling credit and investment, yet also offered the opportunity to advance the State’s capacity to intervene in the economy. However the ability of the left to renew and rebuild the social democratic economic project along more advanced, interventionist lines was limited by new material constraints which made extensive reform of the financial system and the domestic economy extremely difficult. Structural changes to the international financial system following the breakdown of the Bretton Woods settlement, combined with the severe economic crisis of the 1970s, imposed new limits on the freedom of governments to engage in domestic-focused macroeconomic management. As the methods and techniques of social democratic economic strategy became less effective, the ideal of developing an advanced industrial economy through State coordination faded. In its place a new conception of the British economy was promoted which sought to revive its historic liberal and internationalist role in which the City of London was at its heart.

This thesis consists of three papers that makes independent contributions to the fields of forecast evaluation and financial econometrics. As such, the papers, chapter 1-3, can be read independently of each other. In Chapter 1, “Inferring an agent’s loss function based on a term structure of forecasts”, we provide conditions for identification, estimation and inference of an agent’s loss function based on an observed term structure of point forecasts. The loss function specification is flexible as we allow the preferences to be both asymmetric and to vary non-linearly across the forecast horizon. In addition, we introduce a novel forecast rationality test based on the estimated loss function. We employ the approach to analyse the U.S. Government’s preferences over budget surplus forecast errors. Interestingly, we find that it is relatively more costly for the government to underestimate the budget surplus and that this asymmetry is stronger at long forecast horizons. In Chapter 2, “Monitoring Systemic Risk”, we define systemic risk as the conditional probability of a systemic banking crisis. This conditional probability is modelled in a fixed effect binary response panel-model framework that allows for cross-sectional dependence (e.g. due to contagion effects). In the empirical application we identify several risk factors and it is shown that the level of systemic risk contains a predictable component which varies through time. Furthermore, we illustrate how the forecasts of systemic risk map into dynamic policy thresholds in this framework. Finally, by conducting a pseudo out-of-sample exercise we find that the systemic risk estimates provided reliable early-warning signals ahead of the recent financial crisis for several economies. Finally, in Chapter 3, “Equity Premium Predictability”, we reassess the evidence of out-of- sample equity premium predictability. The empirical finance literature has identified several financial variables that appear to predict the equity premium in-sample. However, Welch & Goyal (2008) find that none of these variables have any predictive power out-of-sample. We show that the equity premium is predictable out-of-sample once you impose certain shrinkage restrictions on the model parameters. The approach is motivated by the observation that many of the proposed financial variables can be characterised as ’weak predictors’ and this suggest that a James-Stein type estimator will provide a substantial risk reduction. The out-of-sample explanatory power is small, but we show that it is, in fact, economically meaningful to an investor with time-invariant risk aversion. Using a shrinkage decomposition we also show that standard combination forecast techniques tends to ’overshrink’ the model parameters leading to suboptimal model forecasts.

Four essays, or chapters, model the capital structure, governance, and investment decisions as part of a sequential game. Each chapter is separate in its context, assumptions, and conclusions. The titles of the chapters are below. Abstracts of each essay or chapter can be found at the beginning of each chapter. The titles of the chapters or essays are as follows: I. Managerial Ownership with Rent-Seeking Employees, II. Financing Professional Partnerships, III. Sunk Cost Efficiency with Identical Competitors, and IV. Business Stealing and Bankruptcy. With the exception of Chapter III, which is meant to complement Chapter IV, these essays argue that the structure of financial contracts can affect the real behavior of firms. The first chapter argues that financial governance policies affect the behavior of rank-and-file employees. In Chapter II, the governance and capital structure of professional service firms affects clients’ expectations of the firm’s quality. In Chapter IV, the enforcement of financial contracts by bankruptcy courts affects the number of firms that enter and exit the industry.