We investigate how political ideology affects corporate innovation by using the expansion of Sinclair Broadcasting, the largest conservative media network in the U.S., as a plausible shock to the local ideology. We find that innovation quantity (patent counts) and quality (citation counts per...

We explore whether banks use loans as a tool for political influence. Using close elections as our setting, we show that firms linked to members of Congress receive lower interest rates on new loans, which are also larger and have fewer covenants. Such firms, however, do not experience...

This paper studies how bank competition influences the resolution of distress and bankruptcy of firms. We compile a large and comprehensive database of US public and private bankruptcies to address this question. By exploiting positive shocks to bank competition, we find that higher competition...

We find a significant positive relation between changes in policy uncertainty and changes in credit spreads. Macroeconomic conditions, including general uncertainty, do not explain this result, which also holds when we use instrumental variables to address endogeneity issues. Policy uncertainty...

Exploiting the random assignment of cases to judges, we document that judges appointed by a Democrat president impose larger fines for corporate crimes involving environmental and labor regulations while Republican-appointed judges impose larger fines for crimes involving the hiring of illegal...

We study the impact of exposure to conservative media on firms' CSR activities using the quasi-natural expansion of Sinclair Broadcast Group: the largest conservative broadcasting network in the U.S. local TV markets. In a difference-in-differences setting, we find that firms significantly...

Research shows that bank competition affects general economic and banking-related outcomes, but much less is known about how it impacts firms' risk-taking. By exploiting staggered regulatory reforms across different U.S. states, we show that bank competition significantly reduces borrowers'...

This study proposes a novel method based on within-zone leverage variations to measure the magnitude of stable leverage episodes at the firm level. Using this method, we investigate a leading candidate determinant of such episodes' length: access to credit. Using a discontinuity approach with...

We study the effects of country-level creditor protections on the firm-level choice of debt structure. Using data from 46 countries, we show that firms have more concentrated debt structures in countries with stronger creditor protection. Firms choose debt structure concentrations by trading-off...