This thesis studies three game theoretic models of pricing, in which a seller is interested in optimally pricing and allocating her product or service to a market of agents, in order to maximize her revenue. These markets feature a large number of self-interested agents, who are generally heterogeneous with respect to some payoff relevant feature, e.g., willingness to pay when agents are consumers or private cost when agents are firms. Agents strategically interact with one another, and their actions affect other agents' payoffs, either directly through social influence or competition, or indirectly through a review system. The seller has demand uncertainty and strives to optimize expected discounted revenues. I use either a mean-field approximation or a continuum of agents assumption to reduce the complexity of the problems and provide crisp characterizations of system aggregates and equilibrium policies. Chapter 2 considers the problem of an information provider who sells information products, such as demand forecasts, to a market of firms that compete with one another in a downstream market. We propose a general model that subsumes both price and quantity competition as special cases. We characterize the optimal selling strategy and find that it depends on both mode and intensity of competition. Several important extensions to heterogeneous production costs, information quality discrimination, and information leakage through aggregate actions are studied. Chapter 3 considers the problem of optimally extracting a stream of revenues from a sequence of consumers, who have heterogeneous willingness to pay and uncertainty about the quality of the product being sold. Using an intuitive maximum likelihood procedure, we characterize the solution of consumers' quality estimation problem. Then, we use a mean-field approximation to characterize the transient dynamics of quality estimates and demand. These allow us to simplify and solve the monopolist's problem, and ultimately provide a characterization of her optimal pricing policy. Chapter 4 considers the problem of a seller who is interested in dynamically pricing her product when consumers' utility is influenced by the mass of consumers that have purchased in the past. Two scenarios are studied, one in which the monopolist has commitment power and one in which she does not. We characterize the optimal selling strategy under both scenarios and derive comparisons on equilibrium prices and demands. Our main result is a characterization of the value of price commitment as a function of the social influence level in the market.

A central topic in empirical asset pricing is how to explain anomalies in various trading horizons. This dissertation contains two essays that study several anomalies in medium-term/long-term investment in the equity market and in high-frequency trading in the foreign exchange market. In the first essay, I propose an investor underreaction model with heterogeneous truncations across time and stocks. In this setting, investors are more attracted to dramatic changes in stock prices than to gradual changes. Continuous information causes signals to be truncated which delays their incorporation into stock prices thus generating momentum. Under the assumption that investors are more attracted to winner stocks and ignore more information in loser stocks, I show that a loser portfolio exhibits stronger momentum and higher profitability than a winner portfolio with the same discreteness level. A trading strategy based on this model yields high alphas and Sharpe ratios. Evidence from social media trends aligns well with this model. In the second essay, I develop multivariate logistic models to explain the short-term offer price movement of the currency pair EUR/USD from the EBS limit order book. Using logistic regression based methods, I study the impact of various market microstructure factors on offer price changes in the next second. The empirical results show explanatory power for the testing sample up to 45% and a true positive rate of the prediction up to 87%. The model reveals interesting mechanisms for the underlying driving forces of the tick-by-tick currency price movement.

Na trajetória da economia mundial, destaca-se a importância do agronegócio, que exerce um papel essencial no desenvolvimento econômico e social dos países, devido principalmente à sua capacidade de geração de renda e empregos. Entretanto, o agronegócio possui um obstáculo para a sua sustentabilidade, que é sua natureza cíclica, sofrendo influências de vários fatores de mercado e apresentando elevada volatilidade nos preços das commodities. Nesse sentido, vê-se a necessidade de explorar o aspecto cíclico dos preços das commodities, com o intuito de captar a dinâmica dos fatores de mercado que influenciam a formação do preço, para o seu monitoramento antecipado. Dentro desse contexto, o objetivo do presente estudo foi propor o desenvolvimento de uma ferramenta para prever o comportamento dos ciclos de crescimento e retração de uma commodity, especificamente o açúcar, com base no modelo de indicador antecedente. Para isso, foi construído, primeiramente, o ciclo de preços agrícolas, com base nos ciclos de negócios e na exposição das estruturas que representam os principais fatores de alteração nos preços das commodities: econômica, fundamentalista, climática e relacionada. O próximo passo foi datar os pontos de mudança do preço do açúcar, utilizando um modelo de cadeia de Markov e confrontando seus resultados com os acontecimentos históricos do setor. Posteriormente, um modelo de fator dinâmico foi utilizado para extrair movimentos cíclicos comuns a um conjunto de variáveis que apresentam poder de previsão, fora de amostra, com relação ao preço do açúcar. Como resultado, foram encontrados três indicadores antecedentes, que sinalizaram consistentemente a maioria dos picos e vales do ciclo do preço do açúcar, num horizonte de dois anos de antecedência. Cada indicador selecionado é composto por uma combinação linear entre os coeficientes e quatro variáveis independentes, as quais representam, respectivamente, as estruturas setoriais analisadas: fundamentalista, econômica, climática e relacionada. Em seguida, os indicadores foram combinados com o preço em um vetor bivariado auto-regressivo para obter previsões lineares do preço da commodity açúcar. As previsões obtidas revelam que os indicadores apresentaram um desempenho de previsão bem superior ao do modelo base, em todos os horizontes, e muito próximo aos valores reais dos preços. Portanto, da análise de previsão de pontos de mudança e de previsão linear, conclui-se que os indicadores antecedentes da commodity açúcar (IAC) constituem-se em um instrumento informativo para sinalizar o comportamento futuro do preço do açúcar, mesmo quando apenas dados preliminares e não revisados estão disponíveis. A ferramenta proposta, além de servir como um instrumento para compreender a natureza das flutuações dos preços das commodities, pretende tornar-se fonte de subsídios para o projeto de diretrizes, ações e formulação de estratégias de desenvolvimento, tanto no âmbito das políticas públicas, quanto daquelas iniciativas que deveriam ser adotadas pelo setor privado, servindo como um instrumento essencial para o planejamento das instituições integrantes do agronegócio. / In the course of the world economy, underscoring the importance of agribusiness, which plays a key role in economic and social development of countries, mainly due to its ability to generate income and jobs. However, agribusiness has an obstacle to its sustainability, which is its cyclical nature, is influenced by various market factors and a very high volatility in commodity prices. In this sense, we see the need to explore the cyclical aspect of commodity prices, in order to capture the dynamics of market factors that influence the pricing for its monitoring anticipated. Within this context, the objective of this study was to propose the development of a tool to predict the behavior of cycles of growth and shrinkage of a commodity, specifically sugar, based on the type of leading indicator. For that was built first, the cycle of agricultural prices, based on business cycles and exposure of the structures that represent the main factors of change in commodity prices: economic fundamentalism, climate and related. The next step was dating the turning points of the price of sugar, using a model of Markov chain, comparing their results with historical events in the industry. Subsequently, a dynamic factor model was used to extract common cyclical movements in a set of variables that have predictive power, out of the sample to the price of sugar. As a result, there were three leading indicators, which signaled consistently most of the peaks and valleys of the cycle of the price of sugar, a horizon of two years in advance. Each indicator selected is composed of a linear combination of the coefficients and four independent variables, which represent, respectively, industry structures analyzed: fundamentalist, economic, climate and related. Then, the indicators were combined with the price in a bivariate vector autoregressive forecasts for linear price of crude sugar. The predictions show that the indicators showed a predictive performance far superior to the base model at all horizons, and very close to the actual values of prices. Therefore, the analysis of forecasting turning points and linear prediction, it is concluded that the leading indicators of crude sugar (IAC) is based on an informative tool for signaling future behavior of the price of sugar, even when only preliminary data not reviewed are available. The proposed tool, besides serving as a tool to understand the nature of fluctuations in commodity prices, hopes to become a source of input for the draft guidelines, actions and formulation of development strategies, both in the public policies and those initiatives that should be adopted by the private sector, serving as an essential tool for planning of institutions of agribusiness.

This dissertation examines three topics in law and finance. In Chapter 1, I show that consumers are more likely to keep a repayment promise they make themselves. When a scheduling conflict prevents a borrower from attending a mortgage closing, a Power of Attorney (POA) empowers a third party to sign the documents promising that the borrower will repay the loan. POAs arise after loan terms are locked in, making POA and non-POA loans virtually indistinguishable. Comparing within-borrower and within-property, I link POAs to greater delinquency and foreclosure. Loan performance data show that POAs are uncorrelated with cash flow shocks but reflect reduced promise-keeping conditional on financial distress. Consistent with prior work on salience and personal responsibility, promise-keeping is higher for loans serviced by the originating lender. Financial intermediation may play an important role in consumer lending. In Chapter 2, using a unique episode in which the SEC distributed securities disclosures to some investors before the public, we study the impounding of private information into stock prices. Because the delay between the private and public release of the information was random, our setting offers a rare natural experiment for studying how markets process private information. As theory predicts, speculators seem to smooth out the price impact of their trading, and more information is impounded into prices during the expected rather than the actual delay before the information becomes public. Finally, we document investor overreaction when already-stale filings are publicly released. Finally, in Chapter 3, we use quantitative data to show a systematic relationship between the appointment of a hedge fund nominated director to a certain corporation and an increase in informed trading in that corporation’s stock (with the relationship being most pronounced when the fund’s slate of directors includes a hedge fund employee). From a governance perspective, activist hedge funds represent a new and potent force in corporate governance. This is the first attempt to investigate whether the activist hedge fund also imposes new agency costs through widened bid/ask spreads and informed trading. We assembled a data set of 475 settlement agreements, between target companies and activist funds relating to the appointment of fund nominated directors, from 2000 and 2015, in order to focus on what happens once such a fund-nominated director goes on the board.

This thesis makes new observations of market phenomena for various commodities and trading strategies centered around these observations. In particular, our results imply that many aspects of the commodities markets, from delivery markets to producers and consumer derivative based ETFs can be modeled eectively using nancial engineering techniques. Chapter 2 examines what drives the returns of gold miner stocks and ETFs. Inspired by our real options model, we construct a method to dynamically replicate gold miner stocks using two factors: a spot gold ETF and a market equity portfolio. We find that our real options approach can explain a significant portion of the drivers of firm implied gold leverage. Chapter 3 studies commodity exchange-traded funds (ETFs). From empirical data, we find that many commodity leveraged ETFs underperform significantly against our constructed dynamic benchmark, and we quantify such a discrepancy via the novel idea of realized effective fee. Finally, we consider a number of trading strategies and examine their performance by backtesting with historical price data. Chapter 4 studies the phenomenon of non-convergence between futures and spot prices in the grains market. In our proposed approach, we incorporate stochastic spot price and storage cost, and solve an optimal double stopping problem to understand shipping certificate prices. Our new models for stochastic storage rates explain the spot-futures premium.

This dissertation is a collection of three essays on price and welfare. The first chapter investigates the optimal price index for central banks to stabilize in a model economy where volatile prices are harmful to welfare through monetary friction. The second chapter estimates the impact of recent technological innovation, namely the internet, on the dynamics of prices and welfare through a variety of real mechanisms. The third chapter analyzes the impact of financial regulation on the prices of financial assets and the welfare of the financial market participants. There is currently a debate about what price index central banks should target when economies are open and exposed to international price shocks. Chapter 1 derives the optimal price index by solving the Ramsey problem in a New Keynesian small open economy model with an arbitrary number of sectors. This approach improves on existing theoretical benchmarks because (1) it makes an explicit distinction between the consumer price index (CPI) and the producer price index (PPI), and (2) it allows exogenous international price shocks to play a role. Qualitatively, I use the analytical expression of the optimal price index to discuss that popular indices, such as the PPI and the core/headline CPI, are suboptimal because they ignore the heterogeneity in price stickiness and the effect of inflation on the trade surplus. Quantitatively, I calibrate a 35-sector version of the model for 40 countries and show that stabilizing the optimal price index yields significantly higher welfare than alternative indices. In Chapter 2, which is joint work with Yoon J. Jo and David Weinstein, we estimate the impact of e-commerce on Japanese prices and welfare. First, we consider the possibility that e-commerce may have lowered prices by driving down the average prices of goods available online. Second, we compute the welfare gains due to the ability of e-commerce to enable consumers to purchase goods from other regions. Third, we compute the gains that arise through e-commerce's ability to arbitrage intercity price differences. We find that all three channels produced welfare gains in Japan, but our estimates suggest that the first and second channels are by far the most important, with welfare gains through these channels being eleven to sixteen times larger than through the price arbitrage channel. Overall, we find that increased inter-city arbitrage raised Japanese welfare by 0.12 percent, the gains due to new varieties available through online shopping raised welfare 0.7 percent, and the gains due to overall price reductions for goods available online raised welfare by 1 percent. In Chapter 3, which is joint work with Sakai Ando, we analyze the impact of dealer regulation on price quality (informativeness and volatility) and its implications for the welfare of market participants. We argue that although price informativeness, volatility, and the dealer's profitability all deteriorate, against conventional wisdom, other market participants are better off due to the dealer's risk-shifting motive. A static model is used to clarify the main intuition, and the robustness of the welfare results, as well as the fragility of the conventional wisdom about price quality, are discussed by incorporating dynamics and endogenizing information acquisition.

The last decade has witnessed a dramatic growth in passive investing via exchange-traded funds (ETFs). To the extent that the demand for stocks via ETF flows is not related to firm-specific fundamental values, large ETF flows may push the price of the underlying stocks away from their fundamentals-based value. In this study I provide evidence consistent with this conjecture. In particular, I first document a positive association between ETF flows and the price-to-fundamentals relation of underlying stocks. Then, by using BlackRock’s expansion into the ETF business as an exogenous shock, I provide evidence that the association is likely to be causal rather than reflect some form of endogeneity (i.e., ETFs selecting certain stocks). Also, I find that high-flow firms subsequently underperform low-flow firms in operating and stock performance, consistent with the misvaluation being caused by non-fundamental demand shocks. Cross-sectional tests suggest that the ETF-related misvaluation is stronger for stocks with: a less competitive equity market (i.e., with prices more sensitive to demand shocks), lower ownership by active investors, and more costly arbitrage constraints. Finally, I find that high-flow firms exhibit behavior typically associated with perceived overvaluation (e.g., more secondary equity offerings).

As plataformas de e-marketplace (EM) atuam como um ponto de encontro virtual, onde vendedores e compradores encontram-se e eventualmente fecham negócios. Em um EM, diversos vendedores competem entre si anunciando ao mesmo tempo produtos exatamente iguais por preços possivelmente diferentes. No entanto, não necessariamente o anúncio mais barato é o que realiza a venda. Dado que nos anúncios publicados nestas plataformas há um grande conjunto de elementos sob responsabilidade do operador do EM, iguais entre todos os anúncios, este trabalho busca colaborar com a compreensão dos fatores controláveis pelo vendedor que influenciam na geração de preço-prêmio em e-marketplaces. A partir da revisão de pesquisas anteriores sobre o tema, foi elaborado um modelo que considera que a geração do preço-prêmio é influenciada pelas características do vendedor (reputação, porte e localização), do anúncio (utilização de recursos multimídia, divulgação, opções de pagamento e entrega, serviço e histórico do anúncio) e do produto (condição e tipo). Para validar este modelo, foi desenvolvido um programa que ao longo de 56 dias coletou dados reais de vendas de três produtos diferentes (celulares iPhone, videogames Playstation 4 e tênis femininos da marca Osklen) no maior e-marketplace deste tipo no Brasil. Estes dados analisados e utilizados para a verificação de nove hipóteses. A reputação que o vendedor construiu ao longo das vendas anteriores mostrou-se como um importante fator de influencia. Vendedores com boa reputação conseguem vender com preços maiores, assim como vendedores com pior reputação são penalizados nos valores de suas vendas. O porte dos vendedores influencia positivamente até certo ponto. Existem vendedores de grande porte que, possivelmente se beneficiando dos ganhos de escala, praticam preços menores. A localização do vendedor é relevante no preço da venda e esta relevância varia de acordo com o produto. Também há diferença na influência de acordo com o produto para a utilização de recursos multimídia e para o envio da nota fiscal junto ao produto. Pagar por um pouco mais de exposição que os padrão oferecido pela plataforma gratuitamente permitiu a realização de vendas com preços maiores, mas o efeito oposto foi observado quando pagou-se pela máxima exposição possível. Também venderam por valores mais altos os anúncios mais antigos e os que ofereceram frete gratuito. / E-Marketplace (EM) platforms are virtual meeting points where sellers and buyers can meet and eventually close a deal. In an EM, various sellers compete against each other offering similar products with different prices. The cheapest offer is not necessarily the one that make the sale. As listings published in an EM have a great number of elements controlled by the platform operator, hence equal to all listings. This work aims to understand the factors controllable by the seller that can influence premium price generation in EMs. Based on the existing literature a model is proposed, in which premium price is influenced by seller characteristics (reputation, size and location), listing characteristics (multimedia resources, exposure, payment and shipping methods, service and ad history) and product (item condition and type). To validate this model a software was developed to collect real data from the largest retail EM in Brazil. During 56 days sales of three products (iPhone smartphones, Playstation 4 videogame consoles and Osklen female tennis shoes) were watched and stored in a database. This data was analyzed and used for verification of nine hypotheses. Reputation acquired by a seller with his previous sales was found as an important element influencing the sale price. Sellers with good reputation were able to sell its items by a higher price and sellers with bad reputation had to sell it cheaper. Seller size exerted positive influence to some extent. Big retailers selling in the EM may be able to sell for a smaller price and make profit thanks to the economies of scale. Seller localization is also relevant. The intensity of this relevance varies by product. It was also noticed difference according to the product for the use of multimedia resources and to if the seller says it will provide a tax invoice attached for the sale. Paying to the EM operator for some additional exposure also made it possible for the seller to achieve prices, but the effect was the opposite when the seller paid for the maximum exposure possible. Old listings and listings that offered free shipping also reached higher prices.

Cheung Ho Sang. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 185-187). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Curriculum Vitae --- p.ii / Acknowledgments --- p.iii / Abstract --- p.v / Table of Contents --- p.viii / Chapter Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter 2. --- The behavior of income velocity of money --- p.3 / Chapter 2.1 --- Introduction --- p.3 / Chapter 2.2 --- Literature Review --- p.4 / Chapter 2.3 --- Data Description --- p.9 / Chapter 2.4 --- Methodology --- p.9 / Chapter 2.5 --- Empirical Result --- p.16 / Chapter 2.6 --- Conclusion --- p.26 / Chapter Chapter 3. --- The behavior of equity premium --- p.106 / Chapter 3.1 --- Introduction --- p.106 / Chapter 3.1 --- Literature Review --- p.106 / Chapter 3.2 --- Data Description --- p.112 / Chapter 3.3 --- Methodology --- p.112 / Chapter 3.4 --- Empirical Result --- p.120 / Chapter 3.5 --- Conclusion --- p.130 / Data Appendices --- p.182 / Bibliography --- p.185

有各式各樣的參數與非參數期貨定價模型被廣泛應用於金融領域。其中一些模型的組合能顯著提升期貨定價的準確性。更具體的說，可以先通過參數模型擬合數據，再使用非參數模型學習並修正誤差估價誤差。本論文作為范和Mancini(2009) 結果的延伸，將市場交易的歐式期權價格作為輸入數據，運用「有參數模型指導的非參數定價方法」對障礙期權進行估價。「自動誤差修正估價法」運用非參數方法對由參數估價法產生的誤差進行修正，使得障礙期權的非參數定價模型可以被視為一系列的歐式期權定價的組合。在整個障礙期權的估價過程中，本論文同時提供了一種分數階快速傅裡葉變換的應用，可通過由非參數方法獲得的標的資產對數的存活函數計算標的資產對數最大值分佈的特徵函數。 / There are a variety of parametric and nonparametric option pricing models commonly used in Finance. A combination of them can enhance the pricing performance significantly. Specifically, one proposes to fit the data with a parametric method and then correct the pricing errors empirically with a nonparametric learning approach. This thesis extends Fan and Mancini's (2009) model-guided nonparametric method to barrier option pricing using market traded European option data. Adopting automatic correction of errors (ACE) method to estimate the risk neutral conditional survivor function, by which the pricing error of the initial parametric estimates is captured nonparametrically, enables the nonparametric pricing procedure to value a barrier option as a sum of sequence of European options. As a byproduct from the valuation process, this thesis also provides a modified fractional fast Fourier transform technique compute the characteristic function of the running maximum log-price of the underlying asset nonparametrically through the calibrated survivor functions. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Chi, Chengzhan. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 38-39). / Abstracts also in Chinese. / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 2 --- Nonparametric Local Regression Modelling --- p.4 / Chapter 2.1 --- Function Estimation by Local Constant --- p.4 / Chapter 2.2 --- Function Estimation by Local Linear Regression --- p.5 / Chapter 3 --- Nonparametric ACE European Option Pricing --- p.7 / Chapter 3.1 --- European Option Prices and Risk Neutral Survivor Functions --- p.7 / Chapter 3.2 --- Estimation of Risk Neutral Survivor Functions --- p.10 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Risk Neutral Survivor Functions and Traded Options --- p.10 / Chapter 3.2.2 --- Survivor Function Estimation with Nonparametric ACE Method --- p.11 / Chapter 3.3 --- Representation of European Option Prices at Log-asset Level and Numerical Example --- p.15 / Chapter 4 --- Nonparametric ACE Barrier Option Pricing Framework --- p.20 / Chapter 4.1 --- Continuous-time Barrier Option --- p.20 / Chapter 4.2 --- Discrete Approximation and Backward Induction --- p.21 / Chapter 4.3 --- Decomposed Problems --- p.25 / Chapter 5 --- Nonparametric Estimation of Cumulative Distribution Function of M{U+2C7C}(R{U+209C}) --- p.28 / Chapter 5.1 --- Survivor Functions and Maxima Probabilities --- p.28 / Chapter 5.2 --- Characteristic Functions of Maxima --- p.30 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- Algorithm --- p.30 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- Preparation --- p.31 / Chapter 5.2.3 --- Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) --- p.31 / Chapter 5.2.4 --- Fractional Fast Fourier Transform (FRFT) --- p.33 / Chapter 5.2.5 --- Derivation of ΦR{U+209C} --- p.34 / Chapter 5.3 --- Numerical Experiments --- p.35 / Chapter 6 --- Conclusion --- p.37 / Bibliography --- p.38