This thesis is a collection of three essays on entry regulation, institutions, and development.Chapter 1 examines the effect of a business registration reform in Mexico on economic activity. This reform made registration procedures less complex and was implemented in different municipalities at...

The first essay finds that the market betas of value and small stocks have decreased by about 75% in the second half of the twentieth century. The decline in beta can be related to a long-term improvement in economic conditions that made these companies less risky. The failure to account for...

This thesis is the collection of three independent studies that analyze the interplay between institutions and economic development. In Chapter 1, I examine the relationship between wealth inequality and institutions. I present a model of regulated entry where entrepreneurs form coalitions of...

This dissertation consists of three essays in the intersection of the theory of international trade and the theory of the firm. The first essay starts by unveiling two systematic patterns in the volume of intrafirm trade. I then show that these patterns can be rationalized in a theoretical...

In the first chapter, I study the impact of statistical arbitrage on equilibrium asset prices. Arbitrageurs have to learn about the long-run behavior of the stock price process. They condition their investment strategy on the observation of price and volume. The learning process of the...

Chapter 1 focuses on corporate governance and business cycles. The delegation of control to insiders fosters initiative but it also gives them the opportunity to expand their firm beyond the profit-maximizing size. When goods markets are imperfectly competitive, firms are too small relative to...

This thesis consists of three empirical essays on different aspects of macroeconomic volatility. The first essay provides evidence of a causal and economically important relation between financial development and macroeconomic volatility by looking at the effect of financial development in the...

This thesis is a collection of three empirical essays in international finance. The first chapter studies the transmission of monetary policy through the lending channel in a partially dollarized banking system. Taking advantage of the cross-sectional and time-series variation in the individual...

The first chapter of this thesis analyzes how the gossip process can be manipulated by malicious people and the impact of such manipulation on information transmission. In this model, a single piece of information is transmitted via a chain of agents with privately known types. Each agent may be...

This thesis consists of three unrelated essays in the fields of labor and urban economics. The first essay exploits the creation of a formal college system in Quebec in the late 1960's as a quasi-experiment to estimate the value of community college. Focusing on the effect of the policy on...