Studies in applied financial economics

This thesis contains three studies in financial economics. The first study explores the relationship between CEO compensation, bank performance and risk taking in European banks using a panel data set of 63 banks in 15 countries during 1992 to 2010. The major finding is a positive relationship between performance and compensation, but also a negative relationship between short time incentive and risk. We argue that such relationship is not causative, and bonus may not induce risk taking. The second study examines the efficient market hypothesis and forward premium puzzle using high frequency daily data from 31 countries including both developed and emerging economies during 1990 to 2013. The study provides evidence covers 9 different time horizons of forward exchange rates. We show that the predictive power of forward rates decreases in longer time horizons in a way that similar to the term structure of interest rate. The third study investigates whether financial liberalization plays a role in explaining the current crisis. Our sample consists of 12 developed countries for the period 2000 to 2013. Our results support that financial liberalization contributes to crisis, and suggest that reregulation is needed after deregulation