PhD Defense S. An

The three essays collected in this PhD dissertation concern agency costs, incentive contracts, mergers and acquisitions, and firm risk. The first essay demonstrates that manager sentiment, a managerial trait proxy for managerial optimism, can incur agency costs. The second and third essays state incentive contracts as an effective way to suppress agency problems and reduce agency costs. Specifically, the second essay demonstrates that firms using relative performance evaluation exhibit lower stock price crash risk and the third essay finds that relative performance evaluation increases long-term acquisition performance.

Suwei An (1992) received his Bachelor’s degree at Central University of Finance and Economics in 2014, majoring in Human Resource Management and minoring in Finance. He obtained his Master’s degree in Finance at The University of Melbourne in 2016. He has been engaged in investment work for several years. He currently takes charge of the Strategic Investment of the People’s Daily Media of China. He previously acted as director, senior analyst, analyst of the Investment and Financing division of Beijing Fangshan Future City Investment. He also served as a supervisor of Beijing Fund Town.

• Location: Cobbenhagen building, Aula
• Supervisors: Prof.  X. Tan, Prof. L.T.M. Baele
• Co-supervisor: Dr. K. Wu