Innovation has become the dominant economic idea of our time and has resulted in a proliferation of innovation-oriented rhetoric, and policies. There is a great need to understand and harness innovation, but it has proven to be as difficult to measure as it is to define. At present, the quest to...

Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have proven their dynamism in West Africa. They are perceived by policy makers as an important reservoir for growth. The African Development Bank considers they represent over 90 % of business and provide about 50% of GDP and employment in Africa....

Japanese major alcoholic beverage companies, whose businesses are mainly the production and sale of beer products, stand at a strategic crossroads. There are several reasons: a slow decrease in the Japanese population, which leads to a smaller drinking population; diversification of customers'...

Sikorsky Aircraft Co. currently finds itself in a critical growth period, in terms of both sales contracts and supplier agreements. Popular supply chain strategies preach reduction and simplification of the supply base, but Sikorsky encounters "must-grow" situations with their supply base, due...

PIPEs (Private Investments in Public Equity) are unique in that they are negotiated privately between sophisticated investors and the public firm. As a result, the issue price deviates from the firm's stock price, often resulting in a substantial PIPE discount. However, only a limited set of...

This thesis consists of three chapters exploring predictability of stock returns. In the first chapter, I suggest a new approach to analysis of stock return predictability. Instead of relying on predictive regressions, I employ a state space framework. Acknowledging that expected returns and...

In the first chapter, I provide evidence that investment-specific technological change is a source of systematic risk. In contrast to neutral productivity shocks, the economy needs to invest to realize the benefits of innovations in investment technology. A positive shock to investment...

This paper examines the properties of accounting numbers using a real investment framework that predicts asymmetric timeliness of both investment and its outcomes (i.e. sales, earnings and operating cash flows) even in the absence of conservative accounting. In particular, I predict and find...

This dissertation is centrally concerned with the management of a firm's global non-market environment. The non-market environment of a given firm is conceived as the set of relationships, confrontational or collaborative, that it establishes with actors other than its clients, suppliers and...

(cont.) In total, my thesis suggests that recent changes in the book-tax income gap may be exogenous and transitory, due to changes to the calculation of book income, general business conditions or other factors which generate temporary differences, rather than due to the deceptive and permanent...