How do exporting firms react to changes in the cost of credit? To answer this question, we exploit an exogenous variation in banking regulation which increases the cost of financ- ing for exports in the European Union. Using a unique dataset which combines customs, firm-level, and credit registry data on...
In Chapter 1, I analyze optimal capital structure using a model in which firms issue securities in order to (1) finance investments in operations and (2) recapitalize the firm. In this trade-off model, firms balance the tax benefits of debt against the costs of financial distress. Key to the analysis,...
Monetary Policy plays a crucial role in modern economies by supporting price, financial and economic stability. Its efficacy, however, exhibits variation both over time and across space leading to partially unpredictable and inconsistent outcomes. This thesis shows that the variation in the efficacy of monetary policy crucially relates to the...
The first chapter of this dissertation looks at strategic complementarities among investors inpooled investment vehicles where fund managers and investors have different objectives. Could
lessening strategic complementarities among the investors of a fund make investing in the fund
less appealing? Exploiting the 2014 Reform of the money market mutual fund...
This dissertation is the culmination of a four-year project on local governments and local economic activity during the Great Depression in the United States (1929 - 1937). Chapter 1 investigates how U.S. municipal governments coped during the Depression and studies whether debt-induced financial constraints affected local public good provision. Local...
This dissertation studies the real effects of firms’ financing decisions as well as the economics consequences of bias in fair value prices of corporate bonds. The first chapter examines the impact of compliance with changes in mandated financial reporting on corporate financing and investment decisions. I employ the recent implementation...
I set up a disagreement model where traders not only have different interpretations of a public signal that conveys information of a stock, but are also uncertain about the information quality of others' interpretations. The model along with traders being ambiguity-averse predicts a positive relation between investor disagreement (ID) and...
This dissertation consists of three chapters that each study the interaction between government policy and real estate markets. All three chapters are connected by a broad interest in renters, landlords, and rental markets. Chapter 1 investigates the relationship between place-based policies and real estate and rental markets empirically by studying...
This dissertation studies the pricing of jump risk in the cross-section, which builds on understanding the cross-sectional structure of jumps at market jump times, develops nonparametric measures of idiosyncratic jump risk, and investigates its asset pricing implications. Chapter 1 is joint work with Professor Viktor Todorov, in which we study...
This thesis examines the role of the media in stock markets and the role of transparency in investment decisions. In the first two chapters, I investigate how the contrasting trends in media coverage and earnings guidance have affected stock price informativeness over the past two decades. I develop a model...
Chapter 1: Despite the rapid growth of passive ownership over the past 30 years, there is no consensus on how or why passive ownership affects stock price informativeness. This paper provides a new answer to this question by examining how passive ownership changes investors' incentives to acquire information. I develop...
his dissertation addresses questions of investment theories in financial economics. Chapter 1 studies investment problem with ambiguity and agency friction in a optimal contracting framework, where investors (principal) have ambiguous beliefs about the cash flows and the managers (agent) can pursue unobservable risk-taking strategies that earn cash flow but may...
This dissertation contains three chapters. In Chapter 1, I study the effects of bank leverage ratio restrictions in a general equilibrium model of the macroeconomy where lenders can anticipate bank runs. This framework allows the analysis of the tradeoffs associated with bank capital requirements - while unlimited leverage allows capital...
This dissertation addresses questions in the fields of household finance and corporate finance. In Chapter 1, I use a quasi-experiment in Norway to examine how households respond to capital taxation. The introduction of a new wealth assessment methodology in 2010 led to geographic discontinuities in household exposure to wealth taxes,...
This thesis investigates various aspects of productivity. In the first chapter I investigate the role of consumer demand in generating productivity dispersion. In particular, I study how differences in consumer preferences across the household income distribution generate dispersion in markups across the Indian manufacturing sector. I find that this consumer...
Technological innovation is a key determinant of economic growth, and my dissertation is to understand the links between the investment of technological innovation and financial markets, with a focus on how the macroeconomic environment interacts with and is influenced by the financial constraints facing firms. Chapter one investigates the links...
Chapter 1 proposes a parsimonious two-country, two-good, and complete-market model featuring heterogeneous beliefs to address the Backus-Smith, volatility, and forward premium puzzles in international finance. The presence of the time-varying difference in beliefs has direct and indirect effects on equilibrium exchange rates. The direct effect appears as a wedge in...
This dissertation is a wide-range study of the relationships between the three central elements of the production function: technology, capital and its financing, and labor. Chapter 1 analyzes the relationship between labor and recent wave of automation and digitization technologies, showing that while they typically substitute for workers, in several...
Foreign currency debt has led to many crises in emerging markets. In the past decade, firms in emerging economies have drastically increased their foreign currency borrowing, making them significantly exposed to depreciation shocks. To reduce their exposure to external shocks, central banks have increased their use of regulation, such as...