This thesis empirically evaluates three key financial and macroeconomic issues: Essay 1 examines the effectiveness of China fuel oil futures in hedging a domestic spot fuel oil position as well as hedging a spot position in the Singapore fuel oil market. To the best of our knowledge, this is...

The recent incremental risk charge addition to the Basel (1996) market risk amend- ment requires banks to estimate, separately, the default and migration risk of their trading portfolios that are exposed to credit risk. The new regulation requires the total regulatory charges for trading books...

Interaction effects have been consistently found important in explaining the variation in outcomes in many scientific research fields. Yet, in practice, variable selection including interactions is complicated due to the limited sample size, conflicting philosophies regarding model...

Every year, the federal government regulates how many pounds of summer flounder (while these fish are called summer flounder, they are caught throughout the year) can be caught along the eastern seaboard. Annually, the federal government sets the total allowable landings (TAL) based on...

The first essay uses a model of profit-maximizing hospitals to examine hospital responses to global budgeting in the forms of dumping and cost shifting. The main findings include: (1) Hospitals dump insured patients when the covered services are priced under costs. Whetherthe budget target is...

In this study, we employ a statistical arbitrage approach to demonstrate that momentum investment strategy tend to work better in periods longer than six months, a result different from findings in past literature. Compared with standard parametric tests, the statistical arbitrage method...

The first essay uses a model of profit-maximizing hospitals to examine hospital responses to global budgeting in the forms of dumping and cost shifting. The main findings include: (1) Hospitals dump insured patients when the covered services are priced under costs. Whetherthe budget target is...

Is a more heterogeneous population beneficial or harmful to long-term economic performance? This paper addresses this and other questions in a dynamic general equilibrium model where consumers have different labour productivity and time preference. We show how differences in the cross-sectional...

Is a more heterogeneous population conducive or detrimental to capital accumulation and economic growth? This paper addresses this question using a dynamic general equilibrium model with ex ante heterogeneous consumers and progressive taxation. We show that the answer depends crucially on the...

This paper examines the relation between diversity and long-term economic performance in a dynamic general equilibrium model where consumers differ ex ante in time preference and labour productivity. We show that changing the distribution of these characteristics will affect the steady state by...