This thesis consists of two parts. In chapter 2, we focus on optimal smoothing with correlated data and chapter 3 is devoted to marginal semiparametric modelling of longitudinal/clustered data. Penalized likelihood method offers versatile smoothing techniques in a variety of stochastic settings,...

Using changes in the MSCI Standard Country Indices for 29 countries between 1998 and 2001, we document that stock returns and volumes exhibit quot;index effectsquot; in international markets similar to those detected by the studies of US stocks. The stocks added to the indices experience a sharp...

Using changes in the MSCI Standard Country Indices for 29 countries between 1998 and 2001, we document that stock returns and volumes exhibit quot;index effectsquot; in international markets similar to those detected by the studies of US stocks. The inclusion of a stock generally leads to higher...

Using changes in the MSCI Standard Country Indices for 29 countries between 1998 and 2001, we document that stock returns and volumes exhibit quot;index effectsquot; in international markets similar to those detected by the studies of US stocks. The inclusion of a stock generally leads to higher...

To the extent that investors diversify internationally, large-cap stocks receive the dominant share of fund allocation. Increasingly, however, returns to large-cap stocks or stock market indices tend to co-move, mitigating the benefits from international diversification. In contrast, stocks of...

We study a transitional economy where state-controlled banks make loan decisions based on noisy inside information on prospective borrowers, and may lend to avert unemployment and social instability. In China, poor financial performance and high managerial expenses increase the likelihood of...

We investigate whether recent country-level evidence of global pricing is particular to large-cap stocks. Specifically, we examine cross-country return correlations and conduct asset pricing tests on three size-based stock portfolios for nine developed countries over the 1980 to 2004 period. We...

We propose a measure for extreme downside risk (EDR) to investigate whether bearing such a risk is rewarded by higher expected stock returns. Constructing an EDR proxy with the left tail index in the classical generalized extreme value distribution, we document a significantly positive premium...

We conduct comprehensive analyses of the return characteristics of stock portfolios sorted by idiosyncratic volatility. We show that the relationship between idiosyncratic volatility and expected stock returns depends on whether the portfolio is composed of stocks with extreme performance and...

The empirical evidence on the cross-sectional relation between idiosyncratic risk and expected stock returns is mixed. We demonstrate that the omission of the previous month's stock returns can lead to a negatively biased estimate of the relation. The magnitude of the omitted variable bias...