Thèse de doctorat : Università della Svizzera italiana, 2014 ; 2014ECO009.
Financial intermediation plays a central role in connecting capital demanders, i. e. firms, and capital suppliers, i. e. investors. My essays focus on two types of financial intermediaries, namely investment banks, who provide a variety of services for firms and institutional investors, and sell-side security analysts, who analyze and provide information about firms, mainly, to institutional...
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Thèse de doctorat : Università della Svizzera italiana, 2014 ; 2014ECO002.
In my PhD thesis I unveil somewhat controversial trading practices and conflicts of interests in mutual fund industry and brokerage business. I aim to provide empirical evidence of premature information diffusion in capital markets. The novel data and identification approach of the study allows answering the questions so far not answered in the literature. In Chapter I of my thesis, I study a...
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Thèse de doctorat : Università della Svizzera italiana, 2012 ; 2012ECO002.
The first paper (joint with François Degeorge and Roni Michaely) examines the role of brokers in the performance of securities analysts, after taking into account the inherent abilities of the employed analysts. The question we are asking is if working at a large and resourceful Wall Street firm has overall advantages to the analyst, after controlling for an analyst's inherent ability. From the...
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Thèse de doctorat : Università della Svizzera italiana, 2010 ; 2010ECO004.
The aim of this research project is to discuss the information flow between managers, analysts and investors in the financial markets. It examines the official information releases such as quarterly earnings announcements, unofficial flows of information between managers and analysts, and uncertain information as interpretation of managers' actions, so-called "signals", used by analysts and...
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Thèse de doctorat : Università della Svizzera italiana, 2009 ; 2009ECO001.
The aim of this thesis project is to investigate the managerial behavior, the conflict of interest as well as the flow of information in the financial markets, in particular in the setting around equity offerings. An Initial Public Offering (IPO)s represents a fertile testing ground for these topics as this event constitutes a major structural change in the life of a company. At the time of...
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Thèse de doctorat : Università della Svizzera italiana, 2004 ; 2004ECO008.
Large-block trades have been typically handled over the counter in the upstairs market. Institutional trading raises several issues of concern, such as the fragmentation of order flow, potential liquidity shortage in the downstairs market, and implications for market efficiency. Large investors’ trades may infact produce a price impact that can adversely influence their investment decisions....
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In: Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 2004, vol. 28, p. 195-228
We analyze the risk level chosen by agents who have private information regarding their quality. We show that even risk-neutral agents will choose risk strategically to enhance their reputation in the market, and that such choices will be influenced by the mix of other agents’ types. Assuming that the market has no strong prior about whether the agents are good or bad, good agents will choose...
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In: Journal of Financial Economics, 2004, vol. 71, p. 169-210
In 1997, France Telecom went through a partial privatization. Using a database that tracks over 200,000 eligible participants, we analyze employees' decisions whether to participate; how much to invest; and what stock alternatives to select. The results are broadly consistent with our neoclassical model. We report four anomalous findings: (1) The firm specificity of human capital has a negligible...
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In: Revue d'économie financière, 2005, vol. 79, p. 221-227
We analyze financial analysts’ activities and their added value, the pressures on analyst independence, and the 2002 Global Agreement in the U.S. and its impact on independent financial analysis. Financial analysts are potentially confronted with many pressures on their independence. These pressures are inherent to the multiplicity of their activities, and are not necessarily due to conflicts...
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The book-building procedure for selling initial public offerings to investors hascaptured significant market share from auction alternatives in recent years, despite significantly lower costs in both direct fees and initial underpricing when using the auction mechanism. This paper shows that in the French market, where the frequency of book-building and auctions was about equal in the 1990s, the...
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