Essay 1: Shopping Goals, Goal Concreteness, and Conditional Promotions. We propose a two-stage model to describe the increasing concreteness of consumers' goals during the shopping process, testing the model through a series of field experiments at a convenience store. Using a number of...

Individuals are involved in daily decision making situations under varying levels of certainty and ease of gathering information, characterized by many factors such as the need to make payments, or the desire to fulfill goals. Essay 1 proposes that when individuals are faced with environments...

This thesis consists of three empirical essays on securitization and the resolution of financial distress, examining the information content of prices of mortgage-backed securities, the role of securitization in preventing mortgage renegotiation and the effect of minimum bids in ascending price...

This thesis consists of three essays examining issues related to human capital, careers, and financial economics. In the first chapter, I examine how the process of corporate bankruptcy varies by human capital intensity using a sample of 1,493 public firms that filed for Chapter 11 between 1980...

This thesis consists of three chapters, each with implications on information and trading patterns in financial markets. Chapter 1: In most financial markets, dealers are given trading advantages meant to encourage liquidity provision. However, it is unclear if these advantages truly induce such...

Venture capital has been an important factor in driving innovation and creating wealth in the US. Even outside the US, venture capital is playing an increasingly important role, influencing many aspects of start-up companies. While the US has traditionally been at the forefront of the venture...

Essay 1: Translation Errors in the Aggregation of Consumer Recommendations There has been a substantial increase of websites providing consumers with recommendations about products and services. These recommendations are usually presented in the form of verbal reviews and numerical ratings. It...

We analyze issues related to proprietary disclosures by specialized investment institutions such as hedge funds to their trading counterparties and creditors. In this paper, disclosure can be costly because of the potential for exploitation through competitive trade or "front-running". In...

There is growing belief that countries with better financing environments are associated with higher economic growth because they facilitate entrepreneurship and hence the Schumpeterian process of 'creative destruction'. This dissertation explores this hypothesis in more detail by understanding...