The dissertation consists of three essays. The main focus is set on semiparametric regression modeling, which embodies the strength of parametric and nonparametric regression models in terms of flexibility, dimensionality and interpretability. The first essay is “Some Recent Advances in...

The relationship between executive pay and corporate financial performance continues to attract wide academic, media and policy attention. The very high salaries enjoyed by senior executives in corporations in the US are often contrasted with the relatively low pay received by executives in...

The relationship between executive pay and corporate financial performance con-tinues to attract wide academic, media and policy attention. The very high salariesenjoyed by senior executives in corporations primarily in the North American coun-tries are often contrasted with the relatively low...

While the traditional R value is useful to evaluate the quality of a fit, it does not work when it comes to evaluating the predictive power of estimated financial models in finite samples.

We propose a complete framework for model-free difference-in-differences analysis with covariates, where model-free means data-driven, in particular nonparametric estimation and testing, variable and scale choice. We start with searching for the preferred data setup by simultaneously choosing...