Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 152-161).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-75). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-75). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Bowling Green State University, 2009. / Document formatted into pages; contains x, 137 p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (doctoral) - Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 225-234).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2005. / Thesis directed by Rodney Hero for the Department of Political Science. "December 2005." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 196-215).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-111).

Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2007. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains v, 88 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-88).

Shareholders can utilize internal and external governance mechanisms to minimize agency costs. Internal governance mechanisms purport to improve the alignment between shareholders' interests and those of management by empowering the board of directors, setting value-maximizing compensation packages, employing leverage, and using other internal policies. Extensive discussion on corporate governance and regulations has motivated financial experts to conduct research on governance mechanisms and their relations to firm value. This study is focused on one particular aspect of corporate governance, which is executive compensation. Specifically, this study investigates executive compensation restrictions during the regulatory period and their effect on the performance of firms that received Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds. TARP is a U.S. government program intended to restore the U.S. economy by purchasing assets and equities from troubled institutions. This study is important since it showcases the efficacy of government regulations to revamp unsound executive compensation and governance practices. It also contributes to the governance and regulatory literature by showing whether the public and shareholders benefit from the compensation rules. Using a clean sample of 84 public TARP firms that received at least $50 million from the government, with the period of analysis from 2003 to 2010, I find that firm performance is positively and significantly related to total compensation as well as to both of its components, i.e., equity-based pay and cash-based compensation. However, the magnitude of the relationship between cash compensation and firm performance is much lower than that for equity-based compensation. Testing the pay-for-performance sensitivity in three sub-periods of analysis, the findings show that the relationship between executive compensation and firm performance was significantly positive in the pre-crisis period. However, during the financial crisis and the regulatory periods, this relation was not statistically different from that during the pre-crisis period. During the crisis period, TARP firms did not make necessary adjustments to executive compensation despite the fact that they had been faced with financial difficulties. I also find that the change in firm value is negatively and significantly related to the change in total compensation for TARP firms that have paid back their debts to the government by December 11, 2009, but this relation is less negative than that for TARP firms that have not repaid the bailout money.

This dissertation presents three essays on foreign aid effectiveness. Chapter 1 presents the role of monitoring procedures in improving the effectiveness of foreign aid. It analyzes how monitoring procedures influence the government’s effort and improve the effectiveness of foreign aid. The chapter considers two cases, the case in which the donor has unrestricted aid budget and the case where the donor has a fixed aid budget. The main concern in this chapter is determining the optimal contract for the donor that maximizes the effectiveness of the aid given her aid budget when she dealing with aid-recipients in the presence of moral hazard problem. The model analyzes the monitoring procedures between two players, donor and recipient in a one-shot game. It assumes that the decision to monitor and the choice of the recipient's action are taken simultaneously. It suggests that with a fixed aid budget the donor is unlikely to invest heavily in monitoring cost and reward payment since the primary purpose of such aid is to help the poor in the recipient country. The reward payment which provides incentives for the recipient to work does indeed have a stronger effect on the likelihood of project success. It also shows that both the probability of monitoring and the optimal reward respond differently to change in monitoring cost. Chapter 2 studies the effect of aid-recipient governance on the allocation of foreign aid. It examines the hypothesis that better governance can reduce aid transaction cost which increases the assistance received by developing countries. The following questions were the main concern of this chapter, does better governance increase the amount of foreign aid delivered to developing countries? Do donors consider the levels of recipient’s governance when they allocate their funding? The chapter adopts annual data on a group of 67 developing countries covering Africa, and South Asia for the period from 2003 to 2014. It shows a positive relationship between two of our six governance indicators and the quantity of foreign aid. In fact, only control of corruption and voice and accountability have statistically significant effect on the amount of aid. It also shows that control variables have important effect in the determinate of foreign aid expect GDP per capita. Chapter 3 studies the impact of aid-recipient governance on aggregate welfare in developing countries. It investigates whether the effect of foreign aid on human development depends on the level of governance in recipient countries. These relationships are explored in an econometric analysis, 2SLS estimation, of panel data for the period from 2003 to 2014 in a sample of 67 developing countries. Our hypothesis is that better governance provides a better environment for foreign aid donor to achieve their goals. The main findings show that aid has a positive impact on human development only when it interacts with two out of the six indicators of governance: control of corruption and political stability. Aid by itself and military expenditures have a negative impact on the human development index.