Essays on Mergers and Acquisitions and Event Studies

To my family Acknowledgements The meaning of life for me is experiencing new things and learning from them. Enrolling in the Ph.D. program has enabled me to gain invaluable experiences along the way. Though only my name appears on the cover of this dissertation, many people have helped me to produce it. I am indebted to all of them: it would not have been possible to reach this point in my life without their support. I would like to use this opportunity to thank them. Foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Professor Lars Nordén, first for accepting me onto the Ph.D. program, and then for supporting, advising and helping me continually throughout the program. I am truly thankful to him for giving me the freedom to explore independently and for showing a lot of patience and consideration in training and mentoring me. I also owe a great deal of thanks to my co-advisor, Associate Professor Rickard Sandberg at Stockholm School of Economics, for his constant support , guidance and dedication to improve my work. He has been always there to listen and give advice. I am deeply grateful to him for the discussions that helped me sort out the methodological issues of my dissertation. I have been amazingly fortunate to have Lars and Rickard as my advisors; they have encouraged me to do my best in writing this dissertation, helped me to overcome the challenges I faced during the Ph.D. process, and prepared me for an academic career. I can never thank them enough for what they have done for me. I would also like to extend my appreciation to Professor Martin Holmén, Associate Professor Björn Hagströmer, and Associate Professor Michael Hal-ling for making insightful comments on the earlier drafts of this dissertation. I am also thankful to Professor Neslihan Ozkan, who has agreed to be the opponent at my public defense. I am very glad that they have all been willing to contribute to the production of my dissertation. I give my sincere thanks to Associate Professor Thomas W. Bates at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University for offering me a six month visiting position at the School, where I presented my first article, discussed my dissertation with their faculty members on many occasions and received invaluable feedback from them, interacted with many talented researchers , attended numerous seminars, …