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Understanding how humans behave has received increased attention in research in the most recent decades. While insights into human behavior are essential for the functioning of markets, these insights are also crucial for the guidance of policymaking and public spending decisions to ensure that markets are fair and accessible for all. This research has the unique opportunity to use a dataset of commercial grain trader transactions to study the decision-making and behavior of commercial traders in agricultural commodity markets rather than institutional investors or speculators. Paper one focuses on the performance of commercial grain traders and their ability to perform above expectations consistently and the role of gender and experience in achieving their performance. First, a Fisher Exact ranking test is consulted in assessing the ability of traders to perform persistently in two consecutive periods. Next, a top and bottom rank test is used to evaluate the magnitude of their profitability over successive periods. In addition to the two tests for persistent trader performance, the influence of gender and experience were also investigated in paper one. The second paper focuses on the use of reference points in the decision-making of commercial grain traders. For this study, a two-way panel data model was chosen to test the influence of a trader’s past performance or commodity price level, grain basis, influenced the purchasing decisions of commercial grain traders when purchasing grain with forward contracts. Past trader performance is measured in trader margin, calculated after a transaction is completed. The amount of bushels purchased and the forward contract length were investigated to capture risk in commodity markets by the size of the transaction or duration of the forward contract. Finally, in the third paper, the role of the United States Department of Agriculture World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimate (WASDE) report is investigated regarding its public value compared to private estimates that try to forecast the stocks-use-ratio of commodities. In this paper, we also analyze the reaction of corn producers and not only the commercial grain traders. Further, the different grain marketing seasons and weeks around the release of the WASDE were tested for their importance in making buying or selling decisions in corn markets.

This dissertation studies the ongoing process of institutionalizing investor capitalism in Kenya's Nairobi Stock Exchange. The research is presented in three papers. The first paper studies active efforts by the state to recruit new investors through the use of mass advertising campaigns. The second paper studies investor entry into the market via a social diffusion process, where profits earned by geographically proximate and ethnically similar previous investors attract new investors. The third paper investigates how newly recruited, inexperienced investors utilize their shares after entering the market, focusing on rates of speculative trading. A unique, individuallevel dataset of investor behavior was constructed based on access to the Nairobi Stock Exchange's electronic clearing and settlement platform to which data from several national surveys was merged.

The fear of rent dissipation has been proposed as the main reason firms are hesitant to enter markets for technology. In this paper we investigate conditions under which firms are particularly reluctant to out-license their technologies due to shifts in the relative magnitudes between potential rent dissipation and revenue effects. Specifically, we offer theoretical arguments and empirical evidence suggesting that firms operating under higher product market competition are more reluctant to license their technologies. Firms’ openness to external knowledge, while having a direct positive association with greater licensing rates, also partially mitigates the negative effect of increasing product market competition. Exogenous sunk costs, however, increase firms’ reluctance to out-license and also further fuel the negative association between out-licensing and product market competition. The empirical investigation builds on a sample of 227 licensors involved in licensing contracts in the US pharmaceutical industry from 1986 to 2005. The study has substantial implications for management, research, and policymakers.

My dissertation consists of three distinct but related chapters on Energy Economics and Finance. My first chapter is an empirical evaluation of market conduct in global crude oil markets. "Hotelling rule" states that even in competitive equilibrium, price of an "exhaustible resource" exceeds its marginal cost due to the opportunity cost of depleting the non-renewable resource. This cost is called "scarcity rent". Oil price exceeds its marginal extraction cost significantly. This can be attributed to two different sources: effect of scarcity of oil on prices or exercising market power by OPEC (collusion). In this paper, I use Porter (1983) approach considering the possibility of "scarcity rent" component involved in the gap between price and marginal extraction cost in the oil market. The novelty of my approach is to empirically estimate scarcity rent using data on cost of production of oil. Two benchmark cases, where scarcity rent is either zero (non-exhaustible resources hypothesis (Adelman 1990)) or equal to minimum price-cost margin are considered. The results show that in both cases OPEC failed to cooperate effectively and in second case, market conduct estimated is closer to Cournot behavior. In the second chapter of my dissertation, we employ a real options approach to evaluate oil and gas companies' investment decisions in an empirical setup. We develop a theoretical model to derive testable predictions. A unique measure of investment costs is obtained from energy industry data vendors. This novel dataset contains details of contract terms and pricing for offshore drilling equipment, which constitute the major share of investment costs in offshore oil field development. The investment database is combined with financial and macroeconomic data, which enables us to perform a panel data analysis of investments' response to variations in investment costs and market variables such as the slope of futures curve, firms' past earnings, cost of capital and implied oil price volatility. Our results show that the larger firms, facing less financial friction, are more forward looking while the smaller firms, who have less access to capital markets, are more dependent on their past earnings. The third chapter of my dissertation is about the effect of recent natural gas production boom on U.S. manufacturing. Natural gas production in North America has increased significantly over the past decade causing the prices to plunge during past 5 years. The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of low natural gas prices on energy intensive U.S. manufacturing industries using market data. I empirically evaluate the stock market reactions of publicly traded companies in energy intensive industries to arrival of new information about the unexpected price shocks in natural gas futures markets. My results show that the stock market does not react significantly to innovations in the expected price of natural gas, proxied for by monthly changes in natural gas futures contracts with a fixed maturity date. I then split the sample into two groups based on their expenditure on natural gas as a ratio of their total production value. The stock market valuation of companies in high "natural gas intensity" industries were positively affected by unexpected downward shocks in natural gas prices and the results are significant.

Consumer acceptance of buying goods and services online via the Internet is growing, although e-ecommerce has been mostly a mirror of traditional methods of pricing transactions – fixed price or auctions. The proliferation of personal mobile devices with pervasive Internet access and localization capability means a richer set of pricing parameters can be used. Allowing buyers and sellers to more explicitly price requests and filter offers, including information about time and place, allows for better transaction results for both parties. This paper examines the impacts of including the time and place of performance of a service as part of the price. A system for implementation is proposed, a simulation of the system is evaluated, and the results presented.

Two main relationships between finance and growth are often emphasized: i) the role that financial markets have in channeling savings towards investment and ii) theinformational problems that financial markets are able to solve that would otherwise lead to inefficient outcomes. This paper emphasizes a model where prospective entrepreneursare evaluated in turn by financial markets on their ability to come up with a successful innovation which determines the level of productivity in the economy. With efficient financial markets loans are made to those who are the most likely to come up with marketable innovations. Because marketable innovations lead to higher growth rates, countries that have more developed financial systems will have higher growth rates. My work differs from previous work in this area in that it differentiates the effects of the domestic financial markets from those of the foreign fmancial markets in allowing for the impact of anincreasingly global financial system on an economy.