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This thesis consists of three essays on the performance implications of senior decision-makers in the banking industry. While the first chapter looks at one aspect of bank performance from a regulatory perspective, the next two chapters study performance from an investor perspective. The first chapter uses regulatory enforcement actions issued against US banks to show that both board monitoring and advising are effective in preventing misconduct by banks. While better monitoring by boards prevents all categories of misconduct, better advising prevents misconduct of a technical nature. Board monitoring increases the likelihood that misconduct is detected, increases the penalties imposed on the CEO, and alleviates shareholder wealth losses following the detection of misconduct by regulators. This chapter offers novel insights on how to structure bank boards to prevent bank misconduct. The second chapter seeks to understand how the characteristics of bank executives affect the market performance of US banks. To explore the expected performance effects linked to executive characteristics, the changes in the market valuation of banks linked to announcements of executive appointments are estimated. The chapter shows that age, education and the prior work experience of executives create shareholder wealth while gender is not linked to measureable value effects. Furthermore, these wealth effects are moderated by the level of influence of incoming executives, with their magnitude diminished under independent boards and higher if the incoming executive is also appointed as CEO. The results are robust to the treatment of selection bias. This chapter contributes to the current debate on whether and how individual executives matter for firm performance. The findings also shed light on the value of human capital in the banking industry. The third chapter explores how the cultural heritage of senior decision-makers affects bank outcomes. To study cultural heritage, this chapter focuses on US-born CEOs who are the children or grandchildren of immigrants. Using a hand-collected dataset that tracks the family tree of US bank CEOs, it is shown that the cultural characteristics prevailing in the country of a CEO’s ancestors influence firm performance under pressure. How CEOs respond to competitive pressure is driven by specific cultural dimensions and is causally related to corporate policy choices. To establish causality, I use variation in industry competition generated by a quasi-natural experiment, the staggered adoption of barriers to US interstate branching in the 1990s. I also use an out-of-sample test using a non-banking competitive shock, the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement, and find robust results.

The New Economic Geography literature has experienced an impressive success in economic theory. At the same time, the empirical evidence about the forces and mechanisms emphasized by this literature is growing. Nevertheless, there is still much to be gained from empirical analysis. The main objective of this work is thus to help mind this gap by providing further evidence on the relevance of agglomeration forces for the distribution of economic activities. We address this task from an eclectic perspective using both descriptive and structural approaches. We also pay particular attention to plants' heterogeneity and its interaction with spatial externalities. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that pecuniary externalities stemming from final consumption and input-output linkages play an important role in location choice. Furthermore, while big plants are more sensitive to very localized externalities, small units display a stronger spatial correlation pattern and can be found more easily close to big consumers' markets.

The New Economic Geography literature has experienced an impressive success in economic theory. At the same time, the empirical evidence about the forces and mechanisms emphasized by this literature is growing. Nevertheless, there is still much to be gained from empirical analysis. The main objective of this work is thus to help mind this gap by providing further evidence on the relevance of agglomeration forces for the distribution of economic activities. We address this task from an eclectic perspective using both descriptive and structural approaches. We also pay particular attention to plants' heterogeneity and its interaction with spatial externalities. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that pecuniary externalities stemming from final consumption and input-output linkages play an important role in location choice. Furthermore, while big plants are more sensitive to very localized externalities, small units display a stronger spatial correlation pattern and can be found more easily close to big consumers' markets.

This thesis consisted of three major components: 1. A sample of randomized controlled trials of herbal medicines was collected and assessed with a recently developed extension of the CONSORT statement for herbal medicine trials. 2. A methodological review of proposed methods of assessing clinical heterogeneity in meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials, 3. The application of permutation based resampling in meta-regression of multiple covariates. An analysis of 406 RCTs of herbal medicine interventions revealed that these trials are regularly under reporting important aspects of the intervention. Next, the second project showed that there are many resources providing suggestions for investigating clinical heterogeneity in systematic reviews of controlled clinical trials and though there is minimal consensus some recommendations are common across sources. Finally, the third project found that permutation tests result in more conservative, larger, p-values potentially reducing the rate of false positive findings when exploring multiple covariates.

This thesis consisted of three major components: 1. A sample of randomized controlled trials of herbal medicines was collected and assessed with a recently developed extension of the CONSORT statement for herbal medicine trials. 2. A methodological review of proposed methods of assessing clinical heterogeneity in meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials, 3. The application of permutation based resampling in meta-regression of multiple covariates. An analysis of 406 RCTs of herbal medicine interventions revealed that these trials are regularly under reporting important aspects of the intervention. Next, the second project showed that there are many resources providing suggestions for investigating clinical heterogeneity in systematic reviews of controlled clinical trials and though there is minimal consensus some recommendations are common across sources. Finally, the third project found that permutation tests result in more conservative, larger, p-values potentially reducing the rate of false positive findings when exploring multiple covariates.

This study developed new concepts and interpretative methods for mapping reservoir heterogeneity and connectivity of a fault controlled Wilcox clastic reservoir in Texas, USA. The application of high-resolution seismic enhancement in this study allows for better delineation of subsurface geologic features, detailed mapping of reservoir heterogeneities and more accurate identification of depositional, structural, and stratigraphic characteristics that control reservoir connectivity and fluid flow. Seismic enhancement in this study pertains to amplitude preserving neural network implementation of the Volterra integral equation of the first kind from a plane-wave solution of poro-viscoelasticity (Sun, et al., 2003). This enhancement amounts to an advanced spiked deconvolution of post-stack seismic data that broadened the dominant seismic frequency from 16Hz for the conventional seismic to 65Hz for the enhanced seismic. Bed resolution is improved from 175ft to 45ft and fault offset resolution is improved from 80ft to 20ft. High-resolution seismic interpretation was validated through synthetic seismograms, stratigraphic surface comparisons, and most importantly using a comprehensive model-based knowledge of regional tectonics and depositional environments. Stratigraphic features that were not resolvable in conventional seismic data can now be interpreted using the enhanced seismic data. An Upper Wilcox reservoir was identified as a transgressive sheet sand overlaying a progradational deltaic seismic facies. An Upper Middle Wilcox reservoir was identified as a probable lobate gravity flow, and a Middle Wilcox reservoir was identified as a transgressive sheet sand with over and underlying progradational deltaic seismic facies. Geobody extraction from seismic inversion volumes delineates reservoir compartments and flow units. Reservoir connectivity analysis performed on the Middle Wilcox reservoir determined the probable drainage area for a producing well by comparing estimates of compartmentalized hydrocarbon volumes with production information. The methodology developed could help extract connected geobodies defined by sand, porosity, permeability, and hydrocarbon indicators, to map in detail the internal structure of produced reservoir and to locate new development prospects. Enhanced seismic may thus enable us to find bypassed hydrocarbons and to provide better methods for improving recovery in the studied and other mature fields.

In many robotics tasks, it is advantageous for robots to assemble into formations. In many of these applications, it is useful for the robots to have differing capabilities (i.e., be heterogeneous). These differences are task specific, but the most obvious differences lie in sensing and locomotion capabilities. Groups of robots may also have only imperfect or partially-known information about one another as well. One key piece of information that robots lack is how many other robots are in the environment. This thesis describes a method for formation control that allows heterogeneous robots with limited information to dynamically assemble into formations, merge smaller formations together, and correct errors that may arise in the formation. The approach is shown to be scalable and robust against robot failure, and is evaluated in multiple simulated environments.

In many robotics tasks, it is advantageous for robots to assemble into formations. In many of these applications, it is useful for the robots to have differing capabilities (i.e., be heterogeneous). These differences are task specific, but the most obvious differences lie in sensing and locomotion capabilities. Groups of robots may also have only imperfect or partially-known information about one another as well. One key piece of information that robots lack is how many other robots are in the environment. This thesis describes a method for formation control that allows heterogeneous robots with limited information to dynamically assemble into formations, merge smaller formations together, and correct errors that may arise in the formation. The approach is shown to be scalable and robust against robot failure, and is evaluated in multiple simulated environments.