Essays on the economic analysis of risk

An important challenge to risk management is to understand the role that shocks play on measures of economic activity. Here, such unexpected disturbances or shocks are defined as "news." This dissertation focuses on how economic news affects financial and labor markets in three essays. The topic of the first essay is the impact of news on health care sector retum volatility. The second essay deals with how information and shocks are transmitted through the health care industry and finally, the third essay examines how labor market conditions respond to a catastrophic event such as a severe windstorm. Each essay incorporates time series econometric techniques to analyze the dynamic response to economic news and events. A brief synopsis of each essay follows.