The number of U.S. publicly traded firms has halved in 20 years. How will this shift in ownership structure affect the economy's externalities? Using comprehensive data on greenhouse gas emissions from 2007-2016, we find that independent private firms are less likely to pollute and incur EPA...

We investigate the motivations and effects of financial firms' hiring of former U.S. financial regulatory employees. The number of top executives with regulatory experience per firm has increased 24% over 2001-2015, and hiring is associated with positive average announcement returns and a salary...

We create a database of company codes of ethics from firms listed on the Standard amp; Poor's 500 Index and, separately, a sample of small firms. The SEC believes that ldquo;ethics codes do, and should, vary from company to company.rdquo; Using textual analysis techniques, we measure the extent...

A large literature finds evidence that pricing kernels nonparametrically estimated from option prices and historical returns are not monotonically decreasing in market index returns. We argue that existing estimation methods are inconsistent and propose a new nonparametric estimator of the...

We provide novel evidence supporting the notion that arbitrageurs can contribute to return comovement via ETF arbitrage. Using a large sample of U.S. equity ETF holdings, we document the link between measures of ETF activity and return comovement at both the fund and the stock levels, after...

We design a new test for diseconomies of scale at the mutual fund level, and document that quarterly changes in fund performance are negatively related to lagged predicted fund flows. The effect is economically and statistically significant for both inflows and outflows. Results hold for factor...

Private equity firms have discretion over the timing of their funds' capital calls and distributions, making the popular internal rate of return (IRR) an incomplete measure of private equity fund performance. Do investors avoid the textbook pitfalls of the IRR when cash flow timing is partly...

This is the first paper to examine the microstructure of how mispricing is created and resolved. We study dual class-shares with equal cash-flow rights, and show that a simple trading strategy exploiting gaps between their prices appears to create abnormal profits after transactions costs. Trade...

Tax equity investors in renewable power projects, generally large banks, have deep investment experience but little technological expertise. Do they add value commensurate with the premium that they charge? In 405 U.S. solar and wind projects from 2007-2021, tax equity investors are associated...

The aggregate amount of venture capital investments in non-publicly traded firms since 1980 is more than $390 billion. We test two economic hypotheses on the connection between venture capital investment and subsequent firm performance. We find that lagged VC investments scaled by industry...