We examine the differences in the stock holdings of wealthy households in different counties of the U.S. with different political preferences over the past 25 years. Al- though political differences between counties have been increasing since at least 1996, it is not until 2013 when they started...

Using administrative data from the U.S. Census, this study provides the first direct evidence on the positive effect of firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies on employee retention. Following an exogenous shock leading to deterioration in firms’ CSR policies, we find that...

Do equity investors care about pay dispersion and income inequality? We address this question by examining equity markets' reaction and investors' portfolio rebalancing in response to the first-time disclosure by U.S. public companies of the ratio of CEO to median worker pay in 2018. We find...

We explore whether public attention to gender equality is associated with an increase in female board representation. We find that firms are sensitive to changes in public attention to gender equality. However, the effects are mostly driven by firms whose ex ante culture is more sympathetic to...

We examine the role of cultural heritage in shaping U.S. CEOs' attitudes toward uncertainty, in the context of their corporate acquisition decisions. We find that CEOs with a more uncertainty-avoiding cultural heritage are less likely to engage in acquisitions. Conditional on making an...

We measure U.S. publicly traded companies' exposures to skilled labor risk, i.e., the potential failure in attracting and retaining skilled labor, by the intensity of their discussions on this issue in their 10-K filings. We show that this measure effectively captures firm risk due to the...

We show that after the revelation of corporate fraud in a state, household stock market participation in that state decreases. Households decrease their holdings in fraudulent as well as non-fraudulent firms, even if they did not hold stocks in fraudulent firms. Within a state, households with...