Author: Bosung Jang

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13:

This dissertation studies how asset prices are related to various macroeconomic and financial factors. In the first chapter, I examine the influence of external financing costs on growth and asset prices. Using U.S. high-tech firm data and the aggregate financing cost measure of Eisfeldt and Muir (2016), I find that an increase in financing cost can have negative effects on R&D by reducing equity finance. This result suggests that financing cost can have substantial impacts on long-run productivity through the R&D channel. Motivated by this idea, I construct a general equilibrium model where financing costs affect innovation activities and future productivity. My model endogenously generates long-run risk and matches key features of macroeconomic and asset price data. The model produces a sizable equity premium, doing a good job of matching macro moments in the data. Furthermore, a large risk premium of R&D-intensive stocks is justified in the model as in the data. In addition, as a higher financing cost forecasts lower productivity growth in the model, this prediction is supported by empirical evidence. In the second chapter, I investigate whether heterogeneity between domestic and foreign households can help explain the cross-section of stock returns. For this analysis, I apply Yogo’s (2006) durable consumption model to a two-country setting using Korean stock market data. In Korea, U.S. investors have been a dominant foreign investor group, given that the total share of foreigners is considerably large. By incorporating the stochastic discount factor of the U.S. into the model, I find that it plays a significant role in pricing assets. In particular, our model is successful in accounting for the expected excess return of relatively high book-to-market equity groups, producing lower pricing errors than the Fama-French 3 factor model. In the third chapter, I study the effects of debt maturity choice on stock returns and financial structure. I construct a model where firms can issue both short-term and long-term bonds, subject to collateral constraints. I also assume that, when they run financial deficits, firms use equity finance paying issuance costs. The model performs well in matching empirical facts about stock returns and the financial structure of firms. In addition, the model provides an interesting implication that firms substitute between leverage and maturity. In the literature, theoretical explanations for the substitution relationship have been mainly based on conflicts between stakeholders. Without hinging on the contract-theoretic approach, my model replicates the theoretical prediction.