This dissertation consists of three essays on the role of social values in financial markets. Chapter 1 uses geographic variation in religious concentration to identify the effect of people's gambling behavior in financial market settings. We argue that religious background predicts people's...

Utilizing daily instantaneous forward rates of nominal and inflation-indexed bonds as well as realizations of stock and bond index returns, I examine the informational content of a broad set of macroeconomic announcements. I find evidence that, with a few exceptions, price variables mainly move...