The first essay investigates whether managers learn about their own default risk through feedback from credit default swap (CDS) spreads and, if so, whether this learning influences their risk management. I find that managers who learn more from CDS market feedback lower the leverage ratio and are more likely to record contingent liabilities in the following year than those who do not. Also, I find that overconfident managers, who are likely to rely less on outsiders’ judgment about their own firms, are less likely to record impairments or writedowns, compared to those who learn from CDS spreads. Finally, I find that the CDS learning channel is more effective with higher analyst following and disagreement. Overall, the feedback from CDS spreads appears to be more relevant when learning about downside risk, compared to the feedback from stock prices that resolve upside uncertainties such as potential investment opportunities.The second essay is on investor disagreement and learning from stock prices. The divergence of opinions among investors brings two conflicting effects on the managers’ ability to glean information from stock prices. On the one hand, investors’ divergent opinions could supply more information and signals to the price, improving the chance of learning new information from stock prices. On the other hand, they could inhibit managers’ ability to learn from stock prices since signals with different directions can confuse managers. Generally, my findings align more with the latter: higher investor disagreement appears to inhibit managerial learning from stock prices, leading to reduced investment-q sensitivity. However, these results become more nuanced when price movements are likely influenced by informed traders.

This dissertation contains three essays that study the implications of online search activity for new-product marketing. Using the U.S. motion picture industry as a test case, the first essay examines the dynamic causal relationship between traditional media, consumers' media generation activity, media consumption activity, and market demand of movies. Consumers' media generation and consumption activities around movies are operationalized by the blog volume and search volume of those movies. I develop three separate models--a pre-launch period model, a post-launch period model, and an opening-week model--and examine the relationship between them separately for each period. As the focal variables are jointly determined, I introduce instruments and explain how to correct for endogeneity bias. I find that consumer searching activity is a key mediator between advertising, consumer blogging activity, and market demand.

The second essay examines the pre-launch advertising effectiveness of new products using online search indexes as the response variable. I model the relationship between the advertising schedule and the online search volume process during the pre-launch period of movies. The model incorporates consumers' willingness-to-search and the time-varying effectiveness of advertising as key elements that influence online search volume at specific times. The model is represented in a Bayesian dynamic linear model framework and applied to the U.S. movie industry. The empirical analysis reveals important features of consumers' pre-launch interest development for new products. First, consumers' pre-launch responses to advertising are substantially influenced by the timing of advertising. Second, advertising effectiveness varies over time as a function of past advertising outlay. Third, the time-to-launch effect and time-varying advertising effectiveness vary substantially across movies. The estimation results are used to suggest a more effective pre-launch advertising schedule.

The third essay provides an explanation of the varying predictive power of online search volume by examining the effects of consumers' quality perception on the search activity for and actual demand of new products. I hypothesize that both the perceived quality and quality uncertainty of a new product increase consumers' search activity for the new product, while only perceived quality positively influences the conversion of search activity into actual demand. Using the U.S. movie industry as a test case, I find that both perceived quality and quality uncertainty are positively associated with the pre-launch search volume of movies, whereas only perceived quality positively influences the conversion of pre-launch searches into opening-week revenue. Similar findings are maintained in the post-launch period analysis. These findings imply that systematic over-/under-prediction of market success may occur if managers use an online search index without considering the effects of quality and quality uncertainty of new products.

This paper documents a previously theatrically untrained pianist’s process of preparing Jerome Kitzke’s Sunflower Sutra, a speaking-pianist work, in the theatrical performance tradition. It explains Antonin Artaud’s platform of theater and its application to Sunflower Sutra, and provides the author’s experience researching acting and vocal techniques and their application to performance. Additionally, this document analyzes the effects of lighting design, sound design, and stage arrangements in a piano recital.

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