When comparing the transparency of the ECB now with the transparency of the<br/>ECB about one decade ago, we notice that transparency still can be improved in<br/>a few ways. In particular the disclosure related to the ways decisions are reached<br/>and the disclosure on its policy (what is the envisioned path...

This thesis has three chapters and focuses on the performance of banks and on corporate culture. The first two chapters focus on bank performance and economic expectations. Specifically, the first chapter sheds light on the consistency between investors’ reaction to merger announcement and...

The customer lifetime value combines into one construct the transaction timing, spending and dropout processes that characterize the purchase behavior of customers. Recently, the potential relationship between these processes, either at the individual customer level (i.e. intra-customer...

We derive a new lower bound for the bandwidth of a graph that is based on a new lower bound for the min-cut problem. Our new semidefinite programming relaxation of the min-cut problem is obtained by strengthening the known semidefinite programming relaxation for the quadratic assignment problem...

This dissertation contains three essays on financial reporting, tax, and politics. The first essay explores whether the tax authority is able to generate spillover effects for auditors. The IRS can generate spillover effects for auditors, as a strong IRS increases manager’s incentives to...

This thesis consists of three chapters of a theoretical nature, all related to the topic of competition in the financial sector. The first chapter studies how competition for talented workers induces banks to set variable wage schemes, and how these wage schemes can lead to excessive risk. The...

As a result of the surging rate of technological innovation in the last decades, firms in high-technology industries increasingly rely on alliances to tap into external knowledge sources and to develop new products and services. While alliances are of vital importance to many firms to develop...