We study the cyclical fluctuations of leverage and assets of financial intermediaries and GDP in the United States. Leverage and assets are several times more volatile than GDP, and experience larger fluctuations for unregulated (‘shadow’) intermediaries than for regulated ones. While the...

My study examines the relationship between principal and agent in a moral hazard setting where the principal has the ability to monitor the actions of the agent at an interim stage of the project. I show that monitoring can induce the agent to exert higher levels of effort and can result in a...

We consider a risk averse entrepreneur who approaches a diversified venture capitalist (VC) for financing of a project with positive potential return. We develop several models that capture key features of the venture financing, including staged investment, VC oversight costs and agency...

Im Fahrzeugbau und im Verkehrswesen hat die praktische Umsetzung von Ubiquitous Computing Technologien einen hohen Grad erreicht. Unter diesem Begriff ist die Ausstattung unterschiedlicher Gegenst?nde mit Prozessoren und Sensoren zu verstehen, welche in der Lage sind, Daten ?ber ihren eigenen...

Medicare has recently experienced the largest expansion of benefits since its in- ception: the inclusion of prescription drug coverage under the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003. The policy debate has mainly focused on estimating the cost of implementing the...

This thesis examines a number of issues regarding the Mortensen-Pissarides search and matching model’s empirical performance. Chapter 1 documents the volatility puzzle with the Canadian data. The combined data from both Canada and the United States present an additional difficulty. Even if the...

The main goal of this dissertation was to obtain an understanding as to the true economic nature of employee share options and the problems surrounding the accounting thereof.The main conclusion of this study is that employee share options should be expensed in the income statement as and when...

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. July 2010. Major: Economics. Advisors: Patrick Bajari and Robert Town. 1 computer file (PDF): x, 136 pages, appendices A.

Essay One examines the asymmetric information problem between primary insurers and reinsurers in the reinsurance industry and contributes uniquely to the separation of adverse selection from moral hazard, if both are present. A two-period principal-agent model is set up to identify the signals...