Higher-Curvature Gravity, Black Holes and Holography

Higher-curvature theories of gravity are extensions of General Relativity that arise in effective descriptions of quantum gravity theories, such as String Theory.  In this thesis we collect several recent results about higher-curvature gravities, including the characterization of theories that are ghost-free at the linear level, the construction of black hole solutions and new applications in the AdS/CFT correspondence.