Essays in Empirical Finance

Abstract: This thesis contains three self-contained chapters, covering different subjects but using similar methods: The Effect of Foreclosure Laws on Securitization: Evidence from U.S. States shows that mortgage loans are less likely to be securitized in states with costlier foreclosure procedures. I interpret this in light of prior literature showing a higher foreclosure risk for securitized loans, due to unwillingness to renegotiate by the agents working on behalf of investors. Moreover, the magnitude of the effect increases for loans with higher risk of default, and disappears for loans where state foreclosure laws usually do not apply. Do daughters make family firms more sustainable? studies listed companies with a family owning a large block of shares, and asks how the family composition affects the company’s policies. Creating a novel Swedish data set, I find that environmental performance improves when the family has more daughters. The effect does not seem to operate through more adult daughters leading to more female CEOs or board members, or through the appointment of family members as CEOs. Bank taxes, leverage and risk uses staggered changes in US state-level bank taxation, and documents an increase in leverage when taxes are raised. Banks partly dampen the effect by adjusting their Tier 2 capital (a lower-quality form of regulatory capital that is less able to absorb losses), and by reducing the risk on the asset side of the balance sheet as measured by regulators.