Empirical essays on corporate finance and market microstructure

This dissertation comprises three self-contained papers that contribute to the empirical research in the area of Corporate Finance and Financial Market Microstructure. The first essay (Chapter II), titled “Breaking Up Large Trades: Do Theoretical Trade Execution Models Explain Insider Trading Behavior?”, examines trade execution models by exploiting the availability of actual trading data for insiders on a daily basis. The second research paper (Chapter III), titled “Repurchasing Shares in the Open Stock Market: Beneficial or Harmful to Stock Market Liquidity?”, deals with open market repurchases and their impact on the stock's market liquidity. The third essay (Chapter IV), titled “Measuring the Quality of Corporate Governance: Is There a Uniform Standard?”, investigates the issue of measuring the quality of firm-level governance across countries and institutional environments